Kinect Sports Rivals was announced at Microsoft's E3 conference last year. It was originally planned for release alongside the Xbox One however was delayed for further polish. The game is finally coming out and it actually has a basic story.

The game looks incredible; Some genuinely awesome tech; Multiplayer fun

Menus and load times are frustrating; returning sports are a wasted opportunity; Kinect still has issues

"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.

Great use of Kinect; Good variety of games; Straight to the action

Poor soccer controls; Multiplayer lag issues

Kinect Sports Rivals arrives as an important exclusive title for the first year of the Xbox One, produced by the seminal developer Rare and carrying the flag of the Xbox brand. While it undoubtedly looks terrific and is delightfully fun in sections, the overall package is a bit too hit and miss to...

Charming art style; Lots of customization options

Small rooms are a non-starter; Unskippable cutscenes

Rare has overcome nearly all preconceptions of motion control - Rivals is responsive, accurate, deep, reliable and well integrated. It just needs the space.

Deep; tactical gameplay; Reliable motion controls; A cohesive and charismatic game world

Kinect still requires a large space to operate smoothly; Wake Racing feels better suited to controller play

With the new Xbox comes a new Kinect, one that Microsoft claims can read your movements more precisely than its predecessor. But the first game that put the device through its paces, Fighter Within , was an unmitigated disaster.

Wake racing is beautiful and controls responsively; Option to create champions modeled on yourself is fun; if inconsistent; Rock climbing and bowling are pleasant diversions

Target shooting and soccer are silly and frustrating; Disposable story and superficial progression mechanics

Kinect Sports Rivals is the newest exclusive for Xbox One from developer Rare. Kinect Sports Rivals follows the tremendous success of the original Kinect Sports released for Xbox 360 back in November 2010.

We've seen hints of the new Kinect sensor's power throughout the Xbox One interface, mostly in the form of its vastly improved camera and wide range of spoken commands, but the two launch titles that required its use - Just Dance 2014 (largely the same as on Xbox 360) and the awful Fighter Within -...

Up until now the new Kinect for the Xbox One has really only been useful as a voice input device for voice chat, TV navigation, and the occasional voice feature in games like Dead Rising 3 and Ryse .

Positives Some events are really fun; Incredible facial scan tech puts player IN the game; Nice sense of progression and great reward system keeps you playing, highly competitive online and off

Negatives Kinect can be twitchy at times; cutscenes plays every time you restart an event and cannot be skipped; horrible Kinect menu navigation

Kinect Sports Rivals is an important exclusive title for the Xbox One, more than most people may realise. With the Kinect being bundled in with every purchase of an Xbox One, to widespread criticism, Microsoft need a killer app that has the kind of impact Wii Sports had for the Nintendo Wii and...

Wonderfully cartoony art style; Avatar creator tool is pretty impressive and quick; Plenty of customisation options; Tons of fun with a group; Controls are simple and easy to pick up

Players with limited room will struggle; 6 games feels too little; Cut scenes get annoying and are unskippable; Some games feel like a chore

Sports games have become the go-to genre for any sort of motion controls. It all started with Nintendo and Wii Sports, continued with the launch of Kinect with Kinect Sports, and it continues into this new generation of games with Kinect Sports Rivals (KSR).