Ryan is a keen gamer working for a company that deal with baby friendly holidays. You can of course find him on Twitter @ ryanogs

Now a lot of people have been asking whether this game is worth getting if you aren’t a small child, but the thing is, there is a lot more to Kinectimals than you might first think.

A Great Game To Test Kinect

If you are short on cash this Christmas and can only pick up a couple of the Kinect launch titles, than the two that I would choose would be Kinect Sports (see my previous post) and Kinectimals. This is because Kinectimals does a fantastic job at showing just what Kinect can do! Kinectimals does pretty much what all of the other Kinect games do (apart from dancing) in a very approachable way. If you were thinking about picking up Joy Ride then think twice as Kinectimals actually allows you to drive a small RC car around with your animal of choice on top of it. Although Kinect Adventures is the game that is packaged with Kinect you can do a lot of the things within this game in Kinectimals and I have to say it is a lot better in this game too.

Insane Amount Of Things To Do

You can do everything from knocking down skittles and dominoes by throwing a variety of items at them, to kicking footballs at certain targets and even throwing tennis balls into the mouth of a giant frog, madness but great fun! There are twenty cats altogether that you can unlock simply by exploring the island with your pet and once you have unlocked a cat you can then switch between any one of them at any given time.

The tricks that you teach your pets during the course of the game also help to test exactly what the Kinect sensor can do as you will have to jump, crouch, lay on the floor and speak to the sensor to get the pets doing what you want them to do. I didn’t really have any problems with doing this other than the fact I couldn’t be bothered to lay on the floor!

Graphics

In terms of graphics this has got to be the game that looks the best on Kinect so far, the kittens have an insane amount of detail, the environments are lush, varied and interesting, full of rabbits and other critters.

Just A Pet Simulator?

This game is a lot like other pet simulators but they cannot drop down dead after a few days of not feeding them and this is because they are all felines and very independent. You are not restricted by a calendar so what you do and when you do it is your choice. As a strong hater against games like Nintendogs I see this game as new, refreshing look at the pet video game genre and one I would certainly recommend picking up no matter how old you are!

The Verdict

The only flaws in the game come from the tutorials, there is a lot of hand holding involved and my thinking is that even kids might get a bit bored with this, other than that I am giving it a strong 7.5/10.