Game Guys review - Red Bull Crashed Ice Kinect

Red Bull gives you wings and apparently ice skates, as the game Red Bull Crashed Ice Kinect shows.  In this Kinect only title, you're racing on a frozen downhill course with obstacles to tackle.  Although it seems like just another generic racing game spit out for Kinect, it actually offers a bit of solid game play.  On the downside, those experiences are rather short-lived.

In Crashed Ice Kinect, there are two modes of play to choose from, championship series and trial mode.  Unfortunately, they hardly differ from one another, save the leaderboards that the trial mode offers.   The game doesn't offer too much in the way of variety.  Five courses are available and aren't too different from one another.  While the options are limited, the developers at least made up by creating a decent experience with the options presented.

While the game follows a similar path to other Kinect games, by using your own Avatar to represent your skater, you also have the option for other skaters who are vaguely modeled after professional racers.  No matter which Avatar is selected, however, cosmetic three cosmetic options are available to alter, namely helmets, jerseys and pants.  Once these options have been selected, it's off to the races.

To begin racing, pushing off from the gates starts you on your way.  The race doesn't begin until the player is ready, which is handy if something pops up, such as a phone call, unexpectedly.  After that it's a matter of flailing your arms as fast as possible for speed, while leaning side to side for turns and corners.  Jumping will also provide your character with higher jumps off ramps, though it's necessary to adjust your jumping to compensate for lag.  

Along with the ramps and rails are ice block obstacles that need to be blocked or ducked under.  Blocking is accomplished by moving your arms up around your head in a protective fashion, while ducking is done by simply ducking.  Although the blocking detection for the most part was fairly decent, the ducking left something to be desired.  Too many times, the ducking maneuver would lead to the character on-screen to duck briefly then stand up straight and hit the obstruction.  The obstacles in the way, even when they aren't avoided, don't make it impossible to finish the race in a respectable place.  This is especially true when following a few shortcuts.

All courses have multiple paths and some are faster than others.  As expected, the faster paths are much harder to hop on than their slower counterparts.  That's not to say they're impossible, but at times they do prove tricky to get the perfect timing on jumps to hit them just right.  Each path can shave off seconds on your time, which with the limited amount of tracks is extremely important if the leaderboards are any concern to you.

While the mechanics and paths are fairly rounded for what's available, the presentation is fair at best.  The character Avatars lack charm and detail, while the blandly textured tracks and environments aren't much to write home about.  Even the audio is mediocre with the rock music being generic and expected for the genre.  Nothing grabbed your attention, but at the same time, nothing was horrible either.

At the end of the day, Red Bull Crashed Ice Kinect isn't a horrible game for 400 Microsoft points (a.k.a. $5), though essentially you're paying to play five tracks over and over again.  What's there is passable and at times can be quite fun, but the lack of content is certain to bother many gamers.

GAMEPLAY:	PRESENTATION:	STORY:	QUALITY:	FINAL SCORE:
20/25	15/25	5/25	24/25	64/100

Version tested: Xbox 360

- by Andrea Campton for news10.net's Game Guys

(Microsoft supplied a copy of this game for review.)

News10/KXTV