Kinect Disneyland Adventures - Xbox 360

PROS-a true immersive kinect experience-great mini games-great narrative work-character design and voice acting superb-drop in drop out coop-easy to use menu using kinect or voice commands-full set of options to tinker withCons-to be honest......I CANT THINK OF ANY!Frontier studios thought of everything and left no stone unturned!This is one MUST HAVE kinect game for your library! Kinect controls, as always, work great and the games are great fun, even more than Kinect adventures! They really get into the story and adventure your playing.Once you boot up the game, your presented with the main menu, which you can navigate using voice commands (very useful!) or your hands. One thing that is great about this game is that they have plenty of settings you can tinker with and they also allow you to turn of the music, which helps a lot when one needs to be quiet but can keep the sound effects on. You can start a new game, choose a location for your save file then your plunged into a virtual disneyland. Its been a while since ive been to the real disneyland, but I have to say they developers did a great job capturing the look and feel for disneyland. Even when you open the park map, it actually looks like the one they give you at the park! The visual and audio immersion coupled with kinects augmented reality creates an amazing experience that has you feel like you are part of the disney world. And if you ever need to pause, you hold up both hands and the menu comes down. if you dont feel like using ur hands, you can shout out your menu option, which can be much faster and easier.So the game starts you off by having to do little tasks for mickey (getting autographs and pictures from other characters) which is slow and can get boring for older audiences, but great for kids. And they included a lot of disney universe characters, all of whom you would see at the park. Voice acting is great as well as the personalities of the characters so kids really get a blast out of high fiving, dancing, or taking pictures with some of their favorite old school disney characters.Nonetheless, you are given you first foray into mini games fairly quick and let me say, it is GREAT FUN for all ages. The minigames are actually setup as park rides but are either re imagined rides or newly crafted minigames that help facilitate the story. And again, the cutscenes in between the games really bring the players into the game. Frontier studios did a great job with the narrative for this game as the story line really ties neatly together. But after taking it all in, you realize that the pattern is basically going to meet all the characters, some of whom give you quests which then require you to go on the "rides" aka play minigames to retrieve certain items or objectives for the characters. You get a quest log that details your adventures and your current quest and if you forget where to go, there is always a golden trail that can lead you to your next objective. Since the park is a virtual recreation of disneyland itself, its huge, but rest assured, frontier studios allows users to fast travel to any location by checking the map. A quick look at the map also shows you where your objectives are located.That's basically it for the main game. if you want, you can just walk around the park as frontier did a great job creating an open world environment full of people having their side conversations, kids pulling their parents to their next rides, etc which again does a superb job getting the player fully immersed into the game. If your just into the mingames (which is the good stuff), you can ignore the characters around the park and just search for the minigame entrances. As I said before, mini games truly shine and each one seems unique with no repeats from the previous batch. You get to ski with goofy, fly and shoot your blaster with buzz lightyear, follow the rabbit down the hole with alice and dance with the hatter, and all of it is just great fun.Best part of the game is drop in co-op. Frontier studios made it very easy for the initial player to setup their avatar (you get to create your person since this game does not use your xbox live's avatar) but at any time a friend or family member can join either and run around the park with you with no hassle of signing in or out, all the have to do is walk and stand right next to you.All in all, this is one of the best kinect games out there, and is definitely a must have if you have a younger person in your family. Even if you don't but you're an avid kinect fan, then the minigames in this game outshine the games on kinect adventures, kinect sports, and just about any other game you could think of! Frontier was very creative in crafting them and truly spent their time designing each level and each minigame to have this game be the best experience for consumers. Thank you, Frontier!

We bought this game for our kids for Christmas and my wife and I have probably played it as much or more than they have so far. It's a great family game. This game is huge! There is so much stuff to do! The developers really crammed as much stuff in there as they could. You have the whole huge theme park to explore (which is very accurate to the actual thing!), a whole bunch of "attractions" (minigames), and much more. It has been a pretty "magical" experience so far for me and my family.(we're planning on visiting the actual park this year so that makes us even more excited)I had a lot more that I was going to write but if you read the excellent review from Nutwiisystem.com that is currently listed as the "Most Helpful" that is basically what I would say. There are a few other things I would add/change -He said his one gripe was the repetitive gameplay. I don't disagree that the way that a lot of the minigames are played is virtually the same. However they are so varied in the graphics, theme, music and everything that happens during each level that more than makes up for the repetitiveness for me. There are also enough tweaks in a lot of them to keep them from feeling like complete copycats.Multiplayer works well for the most part and adds to the fun. As many have noted there are some issues with characters being assigned random avatars (which may be upsetting for some) during drop in/drop out co-op. I have found that the player that has the profile where the game is saved is the only one that can expect his/her avatar to remain consistent. Even though the game recognizes my daughters and signs them in on their profiles it will still assign them random avatars (although if they have changed into a costume (like a princess dress) the random girl avatar will usually retain that). They have learned to deal with it and don't get too upset (if they want a girl and it assigns a boy, leave the play area and come back and it will switch)****Update - the random avatar thing isn't an issue anymore. We got it to save so when the Kinect recognizes my daughters or they sign in on their profiles it will have their customized avatars appear.Overall this is a great game and one of my favorite Kinect games. If you have kids, are a kid at heart, or a Disney fan, definitely give this one a look!