The Next Best Thing To The Magic Kingdom

Jeff Cork — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:16:00 GMT

Kinect Disneyland Adventures wasn’t designed for the people who will undoubtedly snicker at the sight of player avatars getting long hugs from Donald Duck. Instead, Kinect Disneyland Adventures is geared toward the folks who are likely to visit the park in real life. It might not offer the same sights and sounds as an actual trip to Anaheim, but families that are looking for a way to escape the winter blues with a vacation (even a virtual one) should check it out.

Disneyland Adventures is a series of minigames based on familiar park attractions, all wrapped up in a faithfully realized recreation of the Magic Kingdom. One or two players can explore the park, help Mickey and his friends with tasks, and play through the slew of minigames. Take that reductive approach, however, and you risk missing how well the entire package has been put together.

Navigating the park is a bit strange at first, but it quickly becomes second nature. To move, you hold a hand out in front of your body, moving it to either side to turn. You’re free to roam around and soak in the atmosphere, or you can be more productive and perform special tasks for various characters throughout Disneyland, such as collecting autographs or finding missing items. A sparkly trail shows where you need to go next if you get lost, and I appreciated the ability to pull up a map of the park and warp to the areas I needed to visit next instead of hoofing it. Teleporting also saved me from getting caught in corners, which is one unfortunate problem I ran into while moving my avatar around.

Frontier did a great job of transforming well-known Disneyland attractions into interactive games. Instead of simply occupying a seat on the Jungle Cruise, you play a multipart adventure where you spray water into hippos’ mouths, paddle a canoe down a raging river, and retrieve an artifact from a massive gorilla by throwing bananas. The Matterhorn adventure features a bobsled run, a snowball fight with yetis, and a ski race. If you’re looking for something less frantic, you can dance with a variety of princesses. There’s a decent amount of variety in the minigames, and some feature cel-shading and other visual tweaks that make each area feel unique. More importantly, I didn’t run into many issues with Kinect’s motion tracking aside from the frustrating throwing mechanic.

This clearly isn’t a game for the hardcore cynics out there. It is, however, another solid option for families looking for a new game to add to their library or for Disney junkies looking for another fix. Best of all, you don’t need to worry finding your car when you’re done. Fist bump!

New Screens And Impressions Of Kinect Disneyland Adventures

Matt Helgeson — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:01:00 GMT

While much of its E3 presentation was devoted to showing gamers that Kinect could be used for hardcore games, it did not abandon the casual and family crowd that made the motion control camera unit such a success. Today, the company released some new screenshots of one of the titles aimed directly at that audience – Kinect Disneyland Adventures.

Kinect Disneyland Adventures will be playable on the show floor at Gamescom in Germany, which kicks off tomorrow, but Game Informer's Jeff Cork got an early look at the game and sent us his impressions.

"The Gamescom demo shows off a few new areas of Disneyland Adventures, including a Peter Pan level where players fly high above London, and a set of missions based on Pirates of the Caribbean. In the latter, players paddle a plank through a pirate cove. If you jam the paddle down into the water on either side, you can make sharp turns to avoid rocks and other obstacles. Pirate skeletons also lob bombs at players, and you have to bat them back with the paddle. I also saw a level where players took a sled down a bobsled-like track, chasing after a skiing Goofy. You can throw snowballs at targets and other objects."

While we were hoping that Kinect Disneyland Adventures might offer some depth of gameplay to go with its accessible visuals and appealing kid-oriented license, Jeff came away less than impressed with what was shown.

"So far, everything I've seen from the game is a variation of falling ahead, sliding ahead, floating ahead, or paddling ahead. Maybe there's more to the game than moving forward on rails while collecting items. If so, Microsoft and Disney haven't done a great job of showing that stuff off."

The game's virtual Disneyland, which serves as a hub world, is open for exploration. Kids can take pictures with park mascots, just like in real life, and even hug them. While players can mime walking to traverse the park, you also can raise both arms above your head to teleport to various locations on the map.

Be sure to read our previous E3 impression of Kinect Disneyland Adventures.

Kinect Disneyland Adventures - Xbox 360

The Next Best Thing To The Magic Kingdom

New Screens And Impressions Of Kinect Disneyland Adventures