Fri, 24 Feb 2012 by Trent Milner
If you go down to the woods today
Set in a kids' summer camp with a sergeant keeping on things, the heat is on in Cabela's Adventure Camp as you compete for gold medals against three other happy campers.
With six customisable characters to choose from — no Avatar support, sadly — you and three friends can take part in summer camp-themed minigames including kayaking, wave riding, skeet, archery and more. As you'd expect they're hit and miss — ninja, bear, hunter is a new spin on rock, scissors, paper but it's unresponsive and dull, whereas the shooting commands in skeet work surprisingly well, creating a fun little score attack game. Wave riding is a highlight: Kinect takes photos as you race around on a jet ski, grabbing coins and performing tricks. Others are less physical, relying on pattern repetition, but there's some good little games in here.
Menus are a breeze to navigate — Dance Central's greatest gift to the world is surely elegant Kinect menus — and select games have impressively accurate controls while others suffer. It's the usual Kinect compilation, then.
Decent environments and simple graphics don't inspire amazement, but things are clear and work well, particularly in the speed-based games. Some more variation in scenery would have been welcomed — while some familiarity is understandable considering it's all supposed to be set in a summer camp, varied backgrounds or times of day could have spiced things up, though perhaps Activision was worried about encouraging players to disregard health and safety regulations.
Conclusion
Cabela's Adventure Camp is quite a good mix of mini games; as usual, some flourish while others wither. With friends involved things are better, and the high scores provide a decent reason to return. While the games are well structured and some very enjoyable, the limitations of some holds the package back: you might come back to play once in a while, but long-term play is far from assured.
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