Last year on Christmas I bought the Kinect & Xbox 360 for my three year old daughter. OK, I play on it too sometimes (although I’m mainly a PC gamer) so it was for us both 😉 Now after about three months I have to say I’m a bit disappointed by the overall experience.
- The Kinect needs a sensor holder mounted to your TV in order to see small children. Putting it on the recommended height for adults (your eye level) won’t work for children. You have to buy that extra.
- There is no HDMI cable included. The image quality with the bundled AV3 cable is terrible. You have to buy that extra too.
- The recognition of player profiles for small children is poor. The Kinect sometimes doesn’t recognize my daughter or asks her again to select her profile and at that point the most annoying bug occurs: Suddenly the recognition fails and she can’t get into the game! Very annoying. Waving at the Kinect sensor doesn’t help. Here is a photo of this profile selection screen:
- The gamepad should have a trackball. Without auto-aim the sticks are useless IMHO. There is a 3rd party trackball controller on the market but it’s a bit expensive: http://trackballcontroller.com
If the Kinect sensor works as it should my daughter and I have a lot of fun with it (like here in Happy Action Theater)!
Here a few games that are 3+ years old friendly:
- Kinect: Disneyland Adventures – the best game for the Kinect for kids in my opinion (a true must-have). It even features characters from Toy Story and Finding Nemo as well as all the Disney Princesses: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/kinect-disneyland-adventures
- Sesame Street ‘Once Upon A Monster’ – Awesome game if your kid knows Elmo and the Cookie Monster already from TV but the player profile recognition fails often: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/sesame-street-once-upon-a-monster
- Happy Action Theater Arcade – The favorite game of my daughter. This game turns your living room in different playground (see photo above). Very cool: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/double-fine-happy-action-theater
- Carnival Games – A lot of nice mini-games that are a lot of fun (but unfortunately one of two of them crash). My daughter likes it a lot: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/carnival-games-monkey-see-monkey-do!
- Fruit Ninja Arcade – Cool fruit mid-air cutting fun. You just to have to try it out: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/fruit-ninja-kinect
- Just Dance 3 – Although this game is aimed at an older audience my daughter likes it a lot and manages to play in a competitive way: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/just-dance-3