Kinect Disneyland Adventures (pre-order on Amazon now) was announced at E3, a popular computer and video game trade show. The premise of the game is that players can roam around Walt’s original park in an effort to ride various rides and complete challenges. Gameplay also lets players high five Mickey, hug Snow White and create souvenirs for Kinect Share. While this game has some appeal, I worry that it won’t compare to Epic Mickey or even Disney Universe, another recently announced title from Disney.
Players get to interact with over 40 popular Disney faces including The Queen of Hearts, Cinderella, Captain Hook, Winnie the Pooh and many others. Avatars explore the park and enter various levels within certain attractions. Pirates of the Caribbean, Peter Pan’s Flight, Big Thunder Mountain and many other beloved rides are featured. Players earn coins along the way, and rewards for challenges include a few other experiences familiar to any visitor of Disney parks.
I probably won’t buy this title, but I wouldn’t be surprised if many parents buy it for their younger children. The paid actors that Disney hired to be the “kids having fun on stage” clearly enjoyed the game. If I were younger, I’d probably love the game. It allows children who are mesmerized by the parks to be able to experience a little bit of that at home. That is what I view as the strongest selling point of the game.
On the flip side, that’s also probably my least favorite thing about the game. It cheapens the experience of actually going to the park. Epic Mickey involved a similar notion of exploring a Disney park. However, that was a variation of the living, breathing parks. This is as close to the real park experience as current technology allows for. That all being said, I think the game also functions as a great way to teach your children how to behave in Disneyland or Walt Disney World. There should be bonus points for walking from ride to ride, and you should be forced to wait in line for a FastPass.
See two amazing videos featuring actual game play below the jump:
First the official trailer
And now a demo from the E3 Conference (sorry about the pre-roll)
Like what you see? Pre-order Kinect Disneyland Adventures today and help support The Disney Blog. Thank you.
This will be a must have for my family since Disneyland is to far away from us and we really cannot afford to go to a Disney World anytime soon. According to people on the show room floor of E3 this is the game to watch compared to the other Kinect games that don’t seem so be working as well as they should be. I don’t think it cheapens the real experience but it does give my 3 year son the chance to understand what it is so he is not overwhelmed in a few years when we hope to take him.
I’m actually pretty excited about this title myself. I think it will be a great way for the die-hard Disney fans to keep a “piece of the magic” home with them. I don’t know if it would cheapen the experience, per-say — if anything it might make you even more excited for the real thing?
What would have been awesome is if they integrated this concept with Walt Disney World and worked in some kind of Kingdom-Hearts and/or Kingdom Keepers style story line. Imaging racing from the top of Spaceship Earth to the tallest tower of Cinderella’s castle in an attempt to thwart the scheme of some bad guy intended to kidnap Tinkerbell or something…
Really, the potential of this idea seems limitless to me.
Paul, in response to your comment that it should be WDW – the designers of the game said that they wanted to pay tribute to the original park.
And I guess I’m in the minority here. Again, I don’t hate the game, but as a fan of most other Disney video games, this is pretty low on my list. I’m way more excited for Disney Universe.
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I think this will be a great thing. As far as cheapening the experience, it won’t do much, because even the best graphics can’t give you the true feel of being there. This is, in my opinion, dutifully continuing Walt’s dream for Disneyland. He wanted it to be available to everyone, and this game is closing the gap of location and cost (although if you don’t already own a 360 and Kinect, the entire package gets pricey) that stop many from visiting. It also looks to have some great mini game type experiences which are fun for family game play. Although a Kingdom Keepers style overlying story arch could bring this game to E-Ticket categories.
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