"Does the Kinect stuff work well?" That's the question that matters most for Kinect Sports Rivals. The sports, the leaderboards, -- it's all for nothing if the main motions of swinging a racket or scaling a cliff don't feel good. Fortunately, they do, most of the time. Kinect Sports Rivals' six games, from sharp shooting to wave racing, are fun and generally control well, but some, like soccer, trip over motion controls too often to forgive.

I like how Kinect Sports Rivals blows past the pomp and circumstance of menu wading and goal setting that other fitness games often get lost in. It's not that playing with a larger goal in mind is bad, but that can wait until I've had some fun first. Within minutes, Kinect scanned my face, and a surprisingly accurate version of myself appeared on screen. After a few tweaks (my haircut was silly), I jumped in and started learning the fundamentals of Jet Ski racing. A few minutes later I was dodging mines and doing flips like a champ.

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Wave racing in particular controls very well, and I was surprised at how accurately the Kinect read my hand motions. Open your hand to let off the gas, make a fist to go faster, and turn by moving your hands like they’re attached to handlebars. Even on more challenging levels, I was able to dodge obstacles and keep up with the competition through skill alone.

My personal favorite was the rock climbing game. The motion of reaching out to grab a ledge, closing my hand to grab, then pulling my hand down to my side to lift myself up is natural and easy to get the hang of. It sounds simple, and it is… until the traps come. I encountered electrified grips, wind gusts, and AI competitors who grabbed my ankles and ripped me from the cliff. Seeing someone creep up behind you, their hand only a few inches away from your feet, is a strong motivator to hurry up. Of the six minigames, this one felt most like its own thought-out game, and the Kinect was almost never frustrating.

Motion-controlled tennis and bowling are pretty much the same as the popular, original Wii Sports versions, but by enabling me to use techniques from real bowling, Kinect Sports Rivals brings more depth. Putting spin on a bowling ball seems like it might be too slight a movement for a Kinect sensor to track, but for me it worked almost every time. Cleaning up the lane for a spare feels great, especially when I took time to line up my shots and add a tactical twist.

Tennis is equally nuanced. For example, when the opponent rushes up to the net, I'm able to reliably lob the ball over his or her head, which feels skillful. However, when I played alongside a friend, our movements weren’t translated onto the screen quite as reliably. We had to start swinging a tad earlier than what felt natural. It’s a shame, because playing along with friends is a huge draw of Kinect Sports Resort. It just doesn’t feel like the tech can handle multiple players with quite the same accuracy.

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Kinect Sports Rivals’ soccer game is the biggest disappointment. It's more like a big game of foosball than soccer, where some teammates are difficult to pass to, but it's worth trying because pulling it off powers up your final goal shot. I do like the idea on paper, as a full on soccer game probably wouldn't translate well to Kinect. The problem is that even with a calibrated Kinect in a spacious room, several of my kicks completely missed, and it felt like it wasn’t my fault. It's frustrating when I just want to kick a ball, but my character's on-screen legs are flailing around like limbs possessed. Other sports perform so well, it’s surprising that this one is so unreliable.

The other two games are simpler, but they’re fun in their own ways. Sharpshooting simply required me to hold out my hand like a gun, and water skiing is sort of like riding a bike without pedaling. The focus here is definitely on earning high scores on the Kinect Sports Rivals hub leaderboards, which updates with new challenges.