The cover of Kinect Sports Rivals shows a Champion – it’s the term being used for your sporty avatar – standing on top of a cliff, looking down at a luxury cruise liner and rocky, tropical island where its various events take place.

6. Football/Soccer

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5. Shooting

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He stands there, arms held aloft, surveying his triumphs and lording it over the competition. That pose also serves a reminder of what’s in store – if you’re to become a true champion, there’s plenty of arm waggling, foot waving, jumping, and finger pointing ahead.Like it’s predecessors, Rivals contains six sports. During my time at Rare, I got to spend quite a bit playing each one, and favourites quickly emerged. Below is a list not only of how I would rank them in terms of fun, but also what they’re like to play, their individual strengths and weakness, and plenty of footage showing the sports in action.Without doubt, I think football is the weakest of the sports on offer. In part, this is down to your foot being a much cruder source of information for Kinect to interpret. Whereas other sports in Rivals take advantage of its ability to recognise an open or closed hand as an input, the foot doesn’t really give away much.Furthermore, the overall framework into which it is used isn’t that appealing either. Games always begin from the back, with goalie passing the ball to a defender who tries to play it up to the striker. Defenders are on rails, literal statues that move back and forth in predictable rhythms, attempting to block your through-balls. You pass by swinging your foot, and to apply curl you exaggerate the follow-through motion.The resulting passes were hit and miss representations of what I was actually doing. It definitely seemed to recognise my attempts to loft the ball into the air, but then would entirely fail to recognise how much pace I had put onto the pass, each ball zipping to the next player.Eventually, the ball reaches your striker, which initiates a one-on-one encounter. You aim offscreen to hit the corners, or sometimes you even have to jump to connect with the ball, with Kinect assessing the orientation of your face to work out where to place the header. Early on, I fluffed some shots, getting the timing all wrong, but eventually it's pretty easy to get every shot on target. When roles are reversed, I found it really easy to save shots since you're informed of where the shot is going way in advance – there's no need to dive, just casually take up your position.Shooting is definitely the least physical of all the events on offer. All it requires is a steady finger, which you point towards the screen to aim.In front of you there’s a transparent fence, with your opponent visible on the opposite side. The screen quickly fills with an array of targets which must be cleared in a set time. There are three rounds, which become successively more difficult as targets begin to move.

Sometimes if you hit them at the wrong time, you’ll lose points. Now and then, targets intended for your opponent poke out above the barrier that divides you, allowing you to ‘steal’ points if you can shoot it first.

4. Bowling

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The sensitivity and accuracy aren’t bad – the crosshair didn't wildly dart all over the screen, as I expect, and the Kinect remains well-trained on your finger tip. It's the action of shooting that proves counterintuitive. Even though you’ll find yourself pulling the trigger often, the shot is fired automatically once you’ve lined up the shot. This doesn’t allow you to fluently obliterate stages and is a bit of nuisance when you’re moving from one side of the board to the other and there’s a target along the way. Instead of quickly pulling the trigger in one fluid motion, you’ve got to stop and wait for just a fraction of a second to unleash the shot. It’s not long at all, but it’s long enough to become frustrating.Ah, bowling. The motion-controlled sport for the connoisseur. Okay, I may have played too much Wii Sports bowling.Firstly, bowling is a lot of fun but is best experience with a bunch of friends. I played it solo, but there are a few things that quickly became apparent. There are nice touches, like the way you reach out to the right and grab your ball when it's your shot. If you open your hand accidentally, it'll drop to the floor. It's a neat bit of 'avateering', the term used to describe the way in which your onscreen avatar is mapped to your movements. Unlike the previous version of Kinect bowling, the sensor is now actually interpreting the action of putting spin on to the ball when you twist your arm.However, I'm slightly concerned by just how easy it all seemed to be. I played a couple of rounds and hardly ever got a gutter ball. I seemed to get a disproportionate number of strikes and found it fairly easy to pick up spares (I'm really not that good). I'm unsure if the game is quite forgiving or if there are some silent assists at work, helping you out, making the experience more enjoyable from the off.