Kinectimals

Since the success of Nintendogs on the DS, virtual pet games have been a dime a dozen, but Kinectimals is the first to really get to the core of the pet-owning experience; after all, the joy of having a pet comes not from carrying out the plethora of tasks necessary for keeping it alive and healthy and clean, but from interacting and playing with it. This is where Kinectimals shines brighter than any pet game before it.

To say that Kinectimals is a revolution in interacting with a videogame character sounds suspiciously like hype-fueled hyperbole. It also happens to be kind of true. After adopting any one of the five available cubs, you get to give it a name – not by typing it in with an on-screen keyboard, but by saying it out loud. There’s no guarantee that the cub will even like the name, though, and you’ll have to keep suggesting alternatives until it shows you that you’ve found one it likes. Experiences seem to differ here, with some finding their given name is accepted straight away, while others will go through a long list of names before your cub (i.e. the game) finally accepts it.

The naming process is just the beginning of your interactions with your pet cub. When you move around in front of your TV, its eyes will always remain fixed on you. When you raise a hand, it’ll switch its attention to it, its face lighting up with curiosity. It’ll also watch your physical gestures to know which of the many tricks it can learn from you and then perform. While Kinect’s voice recognition functionality is not officially supported in South Africa, you can still activate it to simply tell it what you want it to do. Pet or brush it, and it responds naturally – and adorably! – to your hand’s movements.

The magic is that the animal responds to YOU, and not to a controller or button inputs. These interactions are not one-sided, either. There is a myriad of mini-game activities to play with your cub, and more often than not it’ll tell you what it wants to play by bringing the appropriate prop to you. The game activities will not be engaging to any core gamer, but they do offer enough variety to keep youngsters happily busy for hours on end. They make great use of Kinect’s abilities as well, ranging from throwing objects at other objects, steering radio-controlled cars around tracks, and guiding your pet along obstacle courses. Herein lies the game’s main failing, however: often, you’ll be pushed into one activity after another when you really just want to play with your cub in a natural, unstructured manner.

The game is helped by the fact that both the pets and the mysterious island on which the story (yes, there actually is one) unfolds are rendered in gorgeous graphical detail; this is probably the best-looking game in Kinect’s current line-up. The cubs’ animation is particularly impressive, and it’s sometimes tempting to forget that these aren’t real animals. If you don’t believe me, just say “no” to your cub when it suggests a mini-game and see if you can bear the look of dejection on its face.

In some ways Kinectimals is the best game available for Kinect. The pet interactions and various mini-games demonstrate Kinect’s capabilities more effectively and convincingly than any of the other launch games. But as a game its appeal will be limited. Most adult gamers are not going to find it compelling. However, if your inner child is just waiting to burst out, then Kinectimals might still be worth checking out purely as a cute but short-lived toy. The best part: no poop-scooper required.

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