No steering wheel or controller required.
Alongside the straight-forward A to B races, are Mario Kart-style battles across some great looking tracks, where you'll find speed boosts, shortcuts, power-ups and weapons that you can pick up and use to disrupt the course of your competitors. It’s a real highlight with many imaginative tracks and a host of ways in which you can tactically try and get the upper hand over your rivals. The flick of your arm might freeze the car in front, for instance, or send a rocket around the track to destroy an opponent. You’ll still be swerving all over the place, but at least you might pick up some power-ups and have some excitement along the way. It's nothing you won’t have already seen in a host of other kart racers, but it does provide some decent entertainment, particularly when playing against others.Stunt mode, where you attempt to achieve an array of stunts for points and medals, also offers some variety away from the racing modes, while Trick mode throws in something completely different by pitting you as a wing-walker on a aeroplane and tasking you with pulling off a variety of poses. It's a game mode that the kids will probably enjoy for a while, and it's nice to see a something that we weren't expecting in a racing game, but the novelty factor soon wears off.
Like Kinect Sports, reviewed earlier this week, Kinect Joy Ride continues the theme of customisation allowing you to bring your avatar into the game and pimp him out with a range of items from the avatar marketplace – that’s if you want to look like someone who’s paid real cash for imaginary clothes to put on an computer animated character, but hey, whatever floats your boat. There's also plenty of unlockables and challenges to get through which gives you good motivation to progress. Indeed, you can’t really fault the amount of replay value that Kinect Joy Ride offers.