Bend, twist and move your body to hug the curves
Having had experience of a fair few racing games on Wii, armed with a tiny plastic steering wheel, pretending to hold an imaginary wheel in Kinect Joy Ride feels rather odd. Not having anything whatsoever in your grasp is quite a strange sensation that leaves you feeling quite detached from the gameplay. Because you're having to constantly move your hands and other parts of your body to drift and perform stunts, it's very easy to inadvertently career off course, or overcompensate around corners. As a result, the control scheme isn't as tight as it should be - this doesn't feel like true 1:1 motion-sensing. Although pulling off the likes of barrel rolls and twists and turns by moving your body can be fun, especially when there's others in the room to laugh at you, more often than not it feels like you're battling against your vehicle as well as others in the race.Part of the problem is that you can't slow down because there are no brakes in the game nor is there an accelerator to increase your speed; it’s all done automatically. If you could accelerate and brake then you’d feel far more in control of the vehicles, but we spent lots of time trying desperately to keep on track when really we should have been enjoying a game that consistency produces races that flow and excite. Maybe mastering the sensitive control scheme comes with practice, but throughout our experience of Kinect Joy Ride it's worth noting that we were desperate to play with a normal control pad - but then that's what we're used to using.
Being able to boost does give you some of that control back, when it works, but there appears to be some detection issues. You build up your metre and can then thrust your fists forward to boost. It's a worthwhile addition when it works as you can use it tactically at certain points in the race to move ahead, but it can be very frustrating when it doesn't do what it's supposed to do and you lose the chance of spurting ahead. In the standard race modes, all you generally need to worry about is leaning hard around corners and ensuring that you stay on track by moving your imaginary steering wheel very cautiously. The high sensitivity of Kinect and the smallest of movements meant that we spent a lot of time zigzagging across the tracks wrestling with the car to gain control. With patience - and after spending more time with the game - you do get more accustomed to steering an invisible steering wheel, but rarely does it feel like an intuitive process or a more immersive experience than if you were using a gamepad.
