- Kinect Sensor Required
- Publisher: Warner Bros.
- Developer: FarSight Studios
- ESRB Rating: “E" for Everyone
- Genre: Arcade Minigames
- Pros: Variety of games
- Cons: The games either don't work, or aren't fun; lefties will struggle
Game Party in Motion is a videogame version of a Chuck-E-Cheese prize arcade. Only in this game, you don't win tickets to turn in later for cheap junk. I can't decide if that is a plus or minus. There are 16 mini-games in all, but we'll just cover the highlights here. Not mentioned here but also included - horseshoes, bocce ball, football, double racquets, and bean bag toss.
Hoop Shoot is the typical arcade basketball game where you try to score as many baskets as you can in 60 seconds. It is hilariously easy. You don't have to take full, proper form shots. Instead, you just sort of hold your hand at about head-level and flick your wrist forward. You'll get into a rhythm and make about 25+ in a row. Fun to play once, then crazy boring.
Skill Ball is this game's version of skee ball. The same rules apply - you roll balls up a ramp and try to jump them into holes of different point values. It doesn't really work, though. The game makes you wait until your last ball is scored before you throw another one, and that second or two delay really sucks all of the fun out of it. No fun.
Smack-a-Troll is this game's Whack-a-Mole. Again, same exact rules, only this game also lets you step on trolls on the floor in addition to whacking the ones that come up on the table with your hands. It actually does work okay but is sort of stupid and not fun.
Warner Bros. Interactive
Tic-Tac-Toe Face-Off is Tic-Tac-Toe on a 4x4 grid. You play against another player (or the CPU) and one block of the grid will turn red. Whoever steps on that block first, changes it to their side. It does work just fine, but is really boring. Plus the CPU cheats and moves way quicker than you can.
Darts is a failure from the word go. You move your body forward, backward, left or right to line up your shot. Then you select "OK". Then you actually throw your dart. Then you have to line up your next one. Then you select "OK". Then you throw. Etc. It is just stupid. Your accuracy is determined by your fast you move your arm to throw, and it is pretty darn easy. Again, though, not fun, especially considering you have to "OK" every throw.
Puck Bowling is like a miniature bowling lane where you slide a puck into pins instead of rolling a ball. Accuracy is easy to line up - just move your body - and then push your hand forward at different speeds for more or less power. Sort of fun, and pretty easy. The Shoveboard game uses the same exact controls as bowling, and plays like a mini version of curling.
Billiards actually works okay. You move around left or right to line up your shot (then select "OK", ugh) then pull your hand back and push it forward like you were using a real pool cue to hit the ball. It does work quite well.
I didn't have issues with the controls for most of the games. They worked fine. But little things made them not all that much fun. Many games have a slight delay before you can do stuff, or actually make you select the "OK" button at the bottom right corner of the screen before every turn, and these little delays and annoyances just suck the fun out of the whole experience. Also, a lot of the games are just stupid and not fun to play. Hoop Shoot is too easy. Whack-a-Troll is dumb. Tic-Tac-Toe is dumb. Ping Cup is dumb. Root Beer Tapper is dumb. Darts is poorly designed. Skill Ball has that delay I mentioned. Billiards (called "Pool Hall Party" in the game) works, but has the delay between shots. These games are just not fun to play more than about once each. Even among the handful of games to do work, nothing jumps out as being super fun. A couple of the others do stand out as being really terrible, though. The rest are just sort of "meh". And "meh" is a bad thing when you're spending $40 on something.
Warner Bros. Interactive
Graphics
The game does look okay, and you can use your Avatar at least. The menu is fairly good, with consistent "OK" and "Back" controls (hold lower left corner for back, lower right corner for OK) that work well. The game isn't lefty-compatible, though, it must be noted. Even though you can select a lefty mode in the menu, many of the games require your left hand to be at the lower left corner, which results in a lot of accidentally cancelling out of games because it thinks you're selecting "Back". Bad design.
Sound
The sound is okay, but mostly forgettable. Okay music. Okay sound effects. Nothing annoying, thankfully.
Bottom Line
Game Party in Motion is a bad game, but in a different way than other bad Kinect games are bad. The controls actually work fine in most of the mini-games, but the mini-games themselves are either not any fun to begin with or poorly designed so they are hard to play. The various mini-games are sort of fun to sample once, but most of them are so stupid and un-fun you'll never touch them again. It was like the core design idea was just to cram as much stuff in as they could without worrying about whether any of it was actually fun or not. Well, its not. Skip it.
