Can you stamp the high note?

Keeping in mind that Kinect is supposed to be a piece of equipment which the entire family can enjoy, Kinect Fun Labs: Musical Feet initially appears to be a lot of fun; recording and playing a virtual keyboard in your own living room while also messing around to other sounds such as a dog barking or cow mooing.

Upon loading up the game you’re asked to calibrate the sensor, with the game recommending a minimum play space of 7.5 feet (2.25 metres), with most of that being horizontal as you'll need to step around a fair bit. If you have a small space, be warned: this game will not be happy, sending you immediately back to the title screen and bringing a halt to any fun you can have when looking at a calibration screen.

On top of this, if the Kinect Sensor moves too much, the game will once again send you back to the menu screen; until you get your Kinect sensor in the perfect position, you’ll be spending a lot of time here. Whilst other downloadable Kinect titles — Hole in the Wall, Burnout CRASH!) do allow gamers with smaller living rooms to play, this title is a space-eating monster.

However, once the game does start you can choose one of nine (if you include the “instrument” of a self recording, e.g. you saying hello) instruments to play on a virtual keyboard which is laid out across the floor. If you don’t have a preference for a particular instrument however you can choose a shuffle option that will select different instruments to add a bit of variety to your play time.

The keyboard works generally quite well and is impressive for a Kinect title; though, with Kinect being over a year old now, perhaps games should be pushing more towards innovation than recreating the most famous scene from Tom Hanks classic Big. Though even this compliment to the game is taken with a pinch of salt after realising that you don’t even need to touch the floor for the game to register that you have ‘apparently’ hit a key.

Conclusion

The paid Kinect Fun Labs titles have been hit and miss so far, and sadly Musical Feet is more miss than hit: the amount of space required and fiddly calibration will put many players off, and the whole experience is a bit of a bum note.