Kinect Adventures is a collection of short mini-games that showcase the Kinect controller-free gaming device for Xbox 360 quite nicely. Although the game will be bundled with Kinect when it launches later this year, we thought you’d like to know a little more about what you can expect after we got some hands-on time at gamescom recently.

You’ll be able to enjoy 20 adventures in the game, each designed to show off Kinect and give you an adequate taste of exactly what Kinect can do. First up was River Rush, the mini-game that you’ve probably seen a number of screenshots for, and my favourite of the three we got the opportunity to try out.

River Rush is a whitewater-rafting game that sees players moving their bodies to steer their raft through an obstacle course set in a river. You’ll be able to lean side-to-side or jump in the air to help your raft over rocky areas or rapids, as well as to collect the all important pins dotted throughout the level that give you your score. It’s tons of fun, even more so when you team up with a friend and need to work together to get your raft to collect those hard to reach pins in those hard to reach places.

Sometimes you may need to lean left to steer your raft up a jump and then jump to collect the pins, sometimes you may need to jump a couple of times so that your raft goes soaring into the air and lands on top of a cliff (or even a cloud), then jump some more to move it along and collect the pins. And another time your partner may need to lean right while you remain still so the raft veers to the right and you collect those pins. It puts your co-operative gaming skills to the test when you’re playing with two players, but remains fun.

A really neat feature that River Rush includes is that Kinect will take snapshots of you on your rafting adventure at designated spots throughout the game. So get ready to pose when the game prompts it and you’ll get a hilarious picture of you, and your friend if you’ve teamed up, jumping wildly into the air with your arms flailing about. Of course since this is the online age you’ll also be able to share these photo moments online.

The second mini-game we tested out was a little less fun and energetic than River Rush, but still enjoyable. Basically you’re floating around in space and you need to collect as many bubbles as possible. You’ll need to move your body forwards and backwards, left and right to place your on-screen character in line with the bubbles to collect them.

Things are bound to get a little interesting because firstly there’s no gravity, and secondly if you’re playing with a friend you’re bound to get in each other’s way with hilarious results, especially when viewing your photos afterwards.

The final mini-game saw us navigating our way through an obstacle course of sorts, attempting to collect as many pins along the way as possible. You’ll have to duck to avoid overhead obstacles, then lean first left and then right to not get caught out by the next few barriers standing in your way to reaching the finishing line with the most pins. The only catch is that the pins are placed in various shapes which you have to mimic if you’re going to successfully collect them.

So get ready to do a ‘Y.M.C.A’-like arms pose, or hold your arms vertically then horizontally to catch the most numbers of pins possible. It’s a really fun game that can get pretty hectic at times, giving you quite a work-out in the process as well as a few hilarious snapshots of you along the way. You can also team up to compete with a mate on this one, just watch out for those flailing arms again!

From what we played of Kinect Adventures it’s filled to the brim with really responsive and fun mini-games that are sure to keep you and your mates entertained for a good couple of hours. It’s a great showcase of what you can expect from controller-free gaming with Kinect, with some wonderfully coloured and excellently detailed environments thrown in for good measure, and I’m sure before long it will make you want to try out the other Kinect titles too.

It will be interesting to see how it shapes up against Nintendo’s popular Wii Sports which was bundled with the Wii when it was first released in November 2006, and has since go on to become the best-selling videogame of all time with over 60 million copies sold.

Kinect Adventures will be available when Kinect launches across South Africa and Europe on the 10th of November, and a few days earlier on the 4th of November in the US.