The Highway to Hell
Before Kinect was released you may (or may not) have looked at Joy Ride and thought how fun it would be to control a car with a pretend steering wheel. Perhaps thoughts of Mario Kart Wii came into your mind, and the countless hours of fun that provided. Well, Kinect Joy Ride is fun for a while, but it has nothing on Mario and chums that's for sure.
In Kinect Joy Ride, you are a racing driver who only needs to consider steering and not worry about any of this accelerating or braking lark. The cars speeds and slows automatically while you mimic a steering wheel and race around the stunt infested racing track. By pulling back you can charge a boost meter, which is then activated by pushing forward. Doing so will give you a temporary burst of speed, which is ideal to get that stomach churning feeling as you take on a ramp and jump over oblivion.
Joy Ride offers several fun-filled tracks, as well as numerous vehicles of all types. Both of which provide unlockables to give you that incentive to master all the given tracks to see what else is in store. Performing well in a race will win you fans, who are the key to unlocking new venues and vehicles.
Unfortunately with any new gimmicky console or peripheral, the launch titles usually act as a show case for the devices basics. The DS and iPod Touch had plenty of simplistic games that let you rub stuff to show that you can indeed rub stuff on a touch screen, and even the Wii and PS Move launched with 'nothing' games to teach you how to move the remote up and down.
Unfortunately, Joy Ride is one of those games for Kinect. Even then the controls lag at times, meaning your car takes a little while to do what your body is doing. Even the sharp bends will have your body almost touching the floor, and the car will still hit the crash barrier. As Kinect works best in a standing position, you can't really sit down to enjoy Joy Ride, and after two races your arms will begin to ache having held them in the same position for so long.
Problems aside, Joy Ride does provide some fun at least for the first hour or so, as the novelty soon disintegrates and you'll wonder why this wasn't merely a Kinect Sports event instead of the proper release full price game that it is.