Forming part of Microsoft Game Studios’ controller-free gaming spearhead is Kinect Sports for Xbox 360 and Kinect, a collection of sports-themed mini-games that require gamers to mimic the real-life movements of a variety of physical activities in front of the Kinect device to interact with the game.

What this means is that you’ll soon be deftly throwing air punches, frantically running on the spot, intensely curling your arm, swiping with your hands in a frenzy, kicking, jumping and lots more in an effort to increase your score and defeat your friends in the included range of sports games.

Fortunately, it all works amazingly well.

Kinect Sports includes the physical activities of (ten-pin) Bowling, Volleyball, Table Tennis, Soccer and Boxing, with Track and Field sports, too, split up into Javelin, Hurdles, Discus, Sprint and Long Jump events. What’s so great about these sports is that you play them in exactly the same way you would expect to play them in real life thanks to the controller-free nature of Kinect, which makes everything very intuitive.

Most sports will require you to choose which hand you prefer to play with (left or right), which is easily done by holding that hand out and waiting a second to select it. Once done, your sporting implements (like bowling balls, paddles and javelin spears) will automatically be snapped to your hand of choice.

As for actually playing the games, that’s easy, too. To bowl, all you’ll need to do is pull your arm back, aim your shot using the indicators on the floor, and throw your arm forward again to release the shot, curving either left or right to put spin the on the ball. Table Tennis is similarly simple to play, requiring you only to time your mid-air hand swipes to hit incoming balls from your opponents from across the table.

Boxing may be a little on the base side of the functionality equation, but you’re still able to raise your hands to block your opponent’s blows and perform a few vicious attacks of your own by throwing air punches, while Volleyball will have you jumping on the spot and spiking balls over the net in no time.

Kinect Sports’ take on Soccer is very interesting and actually incredibly fun, as it becomes a turn-based strategy game (of the most basic, unrecognisable kind) as the ball is passed from one player to another. If your team has the ball, the action stops and you’ll be able to kick it in one of a few directions (usually only two) to team mates on the field, but there is always an opponent in front of you when you’re making the kick. It’s up to you to get the ball to your mate, but your opponent must ‘guess’ where you’re going to kick it and jump left or right to block the ball. If successful, your opponent wins control of the ball and the cycle continues.

If your challenger manages to get the ball up to your goal in order to make a shot, you’ll take control of your goalie, who’ll then be tasked with blocking the incoming shot. Very fun, and one of the best games in the collection.

As mentioned, the Track and Field offering in Kinect Sports comprises Javelin, Hurdles, Discus, Sprint and Long Jump events, which as you may expect, will all require a fair bit of physical exertion on your part to succeed in.

Javelin will have you running on the spot down a track with your arm out holding a virtual spear, ready to lunge that extremity forward to throw that implement as far as possible, while Discus asks only that you extend your arm out and spin it in a half circle as fast as possible (and at the right elevation) to hurl the thing into the atmosphere.

Hurdles, Long Jump and Sprint all begin the same – run on the spot as fast as possible, taking care to lift your knees as high as possible and not pass out with the effort – but are all different in obvious ways, as you’ll be tasked with jumping multiple times over barriers, jumping once at the end of a track, and simply keeping up the pace, respectively.

All of these activities are pretty enjoyable on their own, and the included sets of computer AI are fairly good at doing their job, but what really elevates Kinect Sports is the ability to play with other people… you know, people. Friends and family, and maybe enemies/frenemies, too.

You can choose either to play in sets of four players (as everybody takes turns to bowl or throw a discus for example), or you can play two at a time (as you face off in Table Tennis, Soccer or Track and Field Sprints, and others). Naturally, the game keeps track of all of your scores so there’s always an air of friendly (with undertones of ferocious) competition to keep everybody’s ‘challenging spirit’ at maximum levels.

Also included in Kinect Sports are two game modes that offer alternative ways to play the various sports, with Party Play and Mini Games mixing things up nicely. In Party Play, you can split players up into teams, choose a mascot to represent your outfit, and go through the normal selection of sports, only now they really have been relegated to mini-games with specific tasks to complete per game, such as ‘return as many balls as possible’ in Table Tennis. With the Mini Games mode, you’re able to play these modified versions of the sports without the need to go into Party Play.

The magical thing about Kinect Sports is that it just ‘works.’ Sure, there may be the odd bit of glitchy behaviour here and there, and sure you may need a bit of physical space in order to fully appreciate the two-player functionality, but the actual recognition of your movements, and the translation of those movements into in-game interaction, hardly offers any problems at all. The scope of Kinect Sports is perfect for loads of party game fun, and you and a group of friends will easily be able to extract that enjoyment after only a few minutes with this title.

As a mini-game collection, and a sports-themed one to boot, Kinect Sports is the only choice on the market at the moment.

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