This is the pack-in game, so it’s a bit silly to write a review on it, but how good Kinect Adventures is could very well determine whether you pick up the system at all. Let’s get to the point, shall we? It’s a fine showpiece, but it doesn’t have legs to keep you interested.

The whole thing has a nice feel to it, though: think Indiana Jones. The premise, as if the game needed one, is that you are part of a group of adventurers, doing adventurous things like river rafting, obstacle-dodging, leak-plugging and Breakout-paddling. So it’s a tenuous connection for a bunch of minigames.

River rafting has you standing in a raft, moving around and jumping to steer it through rapids to collect badges strewn across it. No, this doesn’t make sense, and you should stop trying to make anything in this game come close to logic. This is the iconic part of the game, and it’s a fun thing to get people playing. The obstacle course has you moving to avoid bars and walls in an attempt to gain speed on your moving platform. It’s a bit tough to maneuver when a light graze of a shoulder counts as a hit and you live somewhere smaller than an open warehouse or a field of some sort. The most fun is becoming a paddle for a game of Breakout, with all sorts of multi-ball action keeping you moving arms and legs to bounce the balls back toward the bricks. 

Collecting badges in all these events gives you bronze, silver or gold medals, and this does allow for a bit of replay to earn that gold rank, but the real reward for completing a challenge is unlocking a living statue. It’s a little trophy of some sort that you get to bring to life with your movements and speech. The first is some sort of furry creature, and from there you get dancing groups, a shark eating your avatar and much more. It’s just a little diversion, but you didn’t buy a Kinect for the next BioWare epic, did you?

So that’s it. Kinect Adventures. You will own it. You will be mildly amused. You will move on to the game you actually wanted to play.