I can’t be sure, but there may actually exist a subset of people who like the idea of riding a virtual pig in the real-life presence of their friends and family. And not just riding one mind you, but leaning to avoid obstacles and spanking yourself to make your rotund ride go faster. Now, this may not sound like a core gamer’s idea of a quiet night of blood, guts and gunfire, but that in no way means there aren’t readers who could possibly be looking for a game to play with immediate or extended family, or even one that gets some of the less technologically included members of the household to partake in their favourite hobby. With that in mind, and after a thorough play through, I write this review with an open mind and a painfully sore posterior.
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Carnival Games is essentially a collection of workable mini games for the Kinect, chaperoned by one of the most annoying voices I’ve ever had the misfortune of setting ears to. Going for a carny/circus vibe and cartoony graphics is all well and good, but you honestly just want to punch this man (or, considering the PG nature of the game, strongly reprimand him) for hamming it up so much. You have five primary selections available, with four mini-games nested within each of them for a grand total of 20. They aren’t grouped in any perceivable order, and there are three vacant spaces on the selection tray that hint at DLC, but is most likely the by-product of bad UI design and menu structuring. The mini games themselves are all reasonably agreeable and mildly fun, but the epithets that popped to mind most often were average and ordinary.
You can’t escape the throwaway nature of the product, as you’re always confronted with a lack of customization options of any kind, and bafflingly, the lack of a separate multiplayer menu or online support. For a social game, there isn’t a bigger mood killer than popping into each and every game to see if it has a multiplayer option when not all of them do. There also isn’t any form of levelling up or player progression, given that everything’s unlocked off the block. You do earn tickets when you perform well, and there’s even a mini game that lets you wager them to earn more (kiddie gambling).
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Unfortunately, the only use for these tickets is at the carnival store that lets you buy boring avatar items. It also tracks high scores, but only just. You won’t find the extensive leaderboard support or name entry that fosters friendly (and/or unfriendly) competition. The only sign of personalization of any kind is the ability to see your Xbox Live avatars playing the games, along with other random avatars roaming the carnival fairground. It’s cute, but doesn’t really affect your gaming experience beyond the aesthetic. Let’s get back to the mini-games, though. You’ll hold a tray in order to catch and balance pies falling from the sky, ride a rollercoaster while collecting gold stars and avoiding the red ones, throw a baseball at stacked milk bottles, shoot hoops, throw underhand objects of varying weights into a raised bucket, toss balls into holes, darts, and a whole bunch of other randomness. And pig racing.
The reason these games are actually playable and don’t fall flat is because of the Kinect hardware itself. Where Carnival Games goes over and above what titles like Kinect Sports achieved is accurately conveying a sense of depth, weight and gravity. The games themselves may be relatively easy going, but there’s no denying a nerdy techno-geek pleasure in watching pies stack on top of one another and then fall over convincingly, or throwing a bowling ball and ‘feeling’ its weight pull it down before it reaches the target bucket. You can tell that the tech itself is destined for greater things, if not for accurately simulating dunking a random avatar into a tank with an accurate throw of a baseball.
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Conclusion
So, is novelty enough to recommend a purchase? Not unless you have cash to burn and need to give your Kinect a short-lived workout, or have kids in the household that would get a kick out of the games. Unfortunately, with the lack of a progressive hook, they’re likely to drift away, relegating Carnival Games to just another party game that you pull out when you have people (or their youngins) over. Being workable isn’t enough, it turns out, and 2K Play would do well to flesh out the experience for the inevitable sequel.