As far as sports games go for the Kinect, Kinect Sports is the default choice among consumers. Its use of the Xbox 360 avatars and the familiar, though often used, sports like bowling, boxing and table tennis bring comfort to players who have played Wii Sports, and its easy-to-grasp gestures make it perfect for players to get used to the nuances of the new controller. As good as it is, though, a portion of the audience may be interested in the Kinect but want to try out the technology with other renditions of other sports. For those players, Ubisoft tasked its Milan branch with MotionSports: Play For Real, a sports minigame compilation that is billed as a complementary game to Kinect Sports rather than a direct competitor. For gamers looking to expand their sports minigame library, is this game worth purchasing?

MotionSports features six different sports, most of which have different challenges to overcome. Boxing is the first sport and one of two that is also covered by Kinect Sports. Like most of the other motion-controlled boxing games, the boxing is simple. You can do straight jabs to the face or body with either hand and execute uppercuts and hooks just like you would in real life. On the defensive side, you can block punches, but you can't duck or dodge to the side. It's different from Kinect Sports boxing in that you never see your hands delivering any blows, and there isn't a minigame associated with you getting up from a knockdown. A few other differences include a more powerful blow that can be initiated after doing three successful parry moves and a final combo moment where, after whittling down your opponent's energy, you can unleash a flurry of punches before the opponent is knocked down.

Soccer is the next sport. Unlike the Kinect Sports iteration, this lets you play several different parts of a soccer match instead of a truncated version of the game. Penalty shootout has you taking turns between striker and goalie as you either try to fake out the keeper to make the shot or stop said shot from making it to the net. Target shooting has you aiming for specific targets with your kicks, and scoring zone has you trying to bring the score down to zero by hitting specific number squares. There are also specific moments in soccer history that you can re-create with your actions. While the inability to play a full game of soccer is missed, the minigames are fun enough to make you enjoy the sport.

Football, which is the sport that is often highlighted in advertisements for MotionSports, plays similarly to soccer in that you take part in key activities of the sport instead of playing the complete game. Quarterback has you trying to avoid tacklers while you throw the ball to your receiver. Kicker has you trying to make as many field goals as possible, and target throw has you playing the role of the quarterback again as you try to throw at certain targets in the field. The role of the running back is assumed for the last three activities, which have you doing lateral runs, vertical runs and making a touchdown run while avoiding tacklers. Unfortunately, the controls completely kill the fun. While jumps and stiff arms are read almost instantly, and ducks are more miss than hit, often resulting in you being penalized for the subsequent hit. Side-to-side movements also seem to suffer from a second of disconnect, so your movement from one side to another isn't recorded by the system instantaneously. Considering how often you'll be ducking or doing spins and side movements, the poor implementation means that the flagship sport for the package ends up being the least amount of fun.

Skiing, a sport is usually relegated to Olympic games, also features different activities and, depending on which activity is chosen, becomes a hit-or-miss affair. There are a few activities to partake in, two of which have the option of placing tokens in the course for a high score run. The Super G event has you getting down from the mountain as quickly as possible. Ski cross is the same but with other skiers involved in the race, and ski jump is similar to the Olympic event where you try to jump as far as possible and land gracefully. Ski jumping is tons of fun, but the other two events feel less fun due to the under- and oversensitivity of the controls. Like football, the game seems to have a tough time detecting your ducks, preventing you from gaining speed just when you need it. As for steering, you don't feel like you have total control with your leans, often resulting in you fishtailing down curves and hitting fences in the process. You'll eventually get used to the steering so you won't lean as far as you expect, but the learning curve is high enough that players with little patience will start to avoid the sport.

Hang gliding is the next sport, and it feels like something that should have been included in a PilotWings game for the Wii, if it had existed. The goal throughout the various courses is to guide your glider from the starting point to the end while trying to land as close to the center of the target as possible. Reaching the end can be straightforward, but you can search for hidden rings in the vast landscape to earn bonus points and catch updrafts to gain more altitude and explore more of the course. The game does a good job of reading your mimicry of flying a real hang glider, and while the sport isn't exactly the most pulse-pounding, it is a fun change from the normal sports offerings.

The final sport in the package is horseback riding, which is rarely in video games that aren't intended for females. The event is split up into two different event types. Races are exactly what you would expect from any fairground, minus the betting aspect. The objective is to come in first, but the horse's stamina is key to ensuring a win. Obstacle courses have you following a specific path while you get the horse to jump over obstacles of varying heights and distances. The controls are responsive, though the races are much more fun; even the most difficult obstacle courses don't provide much of a challenge to players with a fair amount of skill.

Aside from the spotty controls in some of the games, another gripe is that it is never clear how one goes about unlocking the other challenges in the game. At first, one may think that gaining a high enough medal in an event would unlock the next one, but there are times when a platinum medal opens nothing or opens an event in a completely different sport. Players will eventually unlock everything in the game, but the lack of a clear set of rules on how things are unlocked can become frustrating if you're trying to unlock everything before a big multiplayer session with friends.

The multiplayer features are good, but they could have been better given time. The inclusion of a second player doesn't hinder the game much, and it makes a few of the weaker ones, like skiing, more enjoyable to play. There is also four-player support for a few of the games, though it has to be done with two people playing at a time since the Kinect doesn't currently support more than two simultaneous players. There is never a clear indicator as to who should be playing at any given time, so unless you're keeping track of who should be doing what, you'll run into a few situations where you'll accidentally take control of your partner's character.

Kinect Sports supports online multiplayer, but unfortunately, MotionSports doesn't. There isn't even an option for online leaderboards for any of the events, though you do have local leaderboards. Unless you plan to only have competitions with your friends, you'll find that this lack of online competition limits how often you'll play the game.

Graphically, MotionSports isn't amazing, but it pulls off a few interesting tricks. The environments look fine, but the cool feature is that your live video feed and still pictures are used to present you on a big screen after each game. Seeing the video feed during a boxing match is a good touch, but seeing your still photo being held by the crowd as you run in for the touchdown is awesome and unexpected. The character models look good when it comes to your opposition, but you always tend to look bland; it's not something that can be remedied since there isn't a character customization option.

The other issue concerning characters has to do with animation. In games like hang gliding, horseback riding and soccer, the animations look great. Boxing straddles the middle of the animation spectrum, where the opponent looks fine until he lies motionless on the mat. Getting your head knocked around produces bouts of screen tearing. Skiing falls on the lower end of the spectrum since your poles constantly clip through your character. Watching your character move in football is also painful due to the excessive bobbing in every step, making the whole scene look very unnatural.

The sound is good most of the time. The music isn't anything special, but it is good enough that it doesn't become annoying as the game progresses. The same goes for the effects, which are good but not excellent throughout each sport. Where the sound begins to deviate is with the announcer. Most of the time, he's calm and features a few words of encouragement but there are times, like when you deliver an excellent performance, when he goes over the top with the praise. The words of praise go so far that the lines will often be skipped because the lines are too long for anyone to sit through. Few players will sit and look at a stats screen just to let the announcer finish what is being said, so toning down the enthusiasm and shortening some of the lines would have made the announcer more tolerable.

As stated earlier, MotionSports: Play For Real is more of a complementary title to Kinect Sports than a competitive one. Even though two of the sports offered here are in Kinect Sports, MotionSports presents a different take on soccer, and the other sports are different enough that players will want to go through them a few times, even if it's just for curiosity's sake. It lacks online play and has spotty controls on a few sports, so if you're in the market for only one sports title, Kinect Sports is the better game. If you're looking to play something that features some non-traditional fare or have already grown tired of Kinect Sports, try renting MotionSports. If control responsiveness is addressed and corrected in future MotionSports titles, Ubisoft will be sitting pretty.

Score: 6.0/10