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Review: Cabela’s Adventure Camp

By
Don Parsons
– December 6, 2011Posted in: Kinect, Nintendo Wii, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Mini-game collections are abundant this time of year. With the holidays coming up, and motion controls of various forms coming into more and more households, it’s easy to see why. You’ve been treated to a carnival-themed collection, now behold Cabela’s take on mini-game action with Cabela’s Adventure Camp. Replacing hunting with various camping activities, you’ll compete for the top spot amongst either the AI or your friends.

After a brief introduction to camp and the festivities that are about to take place, you can get started with either a Free Play session or the Cabela’s Cup. Free Play lets you pick from the events, but some of them are locked and you have to play a different event first. Events are broken down into two main types; racing and shooting. There’s usually always more than one type of sub-catergory too. For example, there are two  of each race type, and four of the two shooting games each.

While they share the same name, Archery 1 and Archery 4 are very different, mind you. Archery 1 has you shooting at targets (some stationary, some mobile), while Archery 4 mixes it up with cardboard cutouts of deer. You can’t shoot the doe (teaching trophy hunting ethics early!), and wolves can appear and make the targets start moving.  Skeet shooting is clay shooting, with powerups (like shooting a green balloon that makes your crosshairs gigantic for a set amount of time). Both types of shooting control by pointing the Move wand at the screed as the crosshairs, but arrows have drop. Archery was more difficult because of that, and the fact that skeet shooting has a bigger crosshair.

Using a simple trigger pull for arrows seemed a little lacking in the creative department, especially since they were shooting for a camping experience. A modification to make the controls a little more realistic in the motions would have improved the feel of the game considerably. They added a “reload” motion, so you get the gist of drawing a new arrow, though.

Racing events range from kayaking through river rapids, avoiding boulders and trees in the river, to bicycling down a mountain path taking jumps. All racing events have you collecting coins, so you want to collect as many coins you can, and do it quickly because there is a hefty bonus for being fast. All racing events controlled with the wand pointed at the screen, and veering it from left to right while pressing the T button to gain speed. It wasn’t anything strenuous, but it worked, and the events were fun during their short duration.

The only other thing besides those two catagories is fishing. Fishing is tossing a line out (underhand for close, overhand for far), and catching fish; either of a certain color (Fishing 1), or by swapping baits for certain sizes (Fishing 2). It was one of the only event types I had a problem with the motion controls, as I couldn’t get the overhand throw right. I tried to avoid these events after failing multiple times. Perhaps it was just my Move setup (though every other game I played during that sitting worked fine).

You don’t gain much from Free Play, but can play mutiplayer. I only have one controller, so I couldn’t do the “grieving your opponent” that is a highlight on the back of the case. Also, while it says “hotseat” multiplayer (which tells me only one controller is needed), you can’t play by passing the controller, you have to have at least 2 controllers. Free Play is also a great place to earn the awesomely easy trophies.

Cabela’s Cup first has you selecting a character; though there is no importance outside of what you look like (I played as a girl, as there is a trophy for completing all events as a girl. A gold trophy. Remember, Girlz Rule!). The first of seven events is always Bear, Hunter, Ninja. Think Rock, Paper, Scissors. I won’t go into detail, but it seemed silly as you gained no points towards the cup, and didn’t loose anything either. But my seven-year old loved it, so he obviously got what I didn’t.

You can choose to pick the next five events, or have them chosen randomly. You get points and medals for the events based on your score, and a running score for the cup. Event seven is a whack-a-mole style game that takes cues from Simon Says. Four groundhogs take turn singing notes in a particular order, you have to follow the pattern. After this event ends, the cup is given to the winner, and a stylish postcard is written by the winners avatar. End.

The events are fun and I personally enjoyed the whole game. I’d like more content, which is pretty much the only drawback. Yes, there are multiple variations of games, but I played through them all in a few hours. I loved the theme and the games, and I could see myself breaking this out for various get-togethers if I had more Move controllers. My son, seven, loved the opening  game and all of the racing games, and he was quite good at them, but he hated the archery. I must add, it was also fun cleaning up trophies in the game after I finished. So while Adventure Camp was fun, like real summer camp, it goes by a little too fast.

Pros:

  • fun games, fun theme
  • trophies make the replay value
Cons:
  • too short, not enough substance
Score: 3*/5

 

1

Kinect Review: Hulk Hogan’s Main Event

By
Chris Scott
– November 1, 2011Posted in: Kinect, Reviews, Xbox 360

As a kid I grew up watching wrestling. The World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE) had a Saturday morning show that was the equivalent of a live action cartoon and like many kids I sat down to watch it every week. Everything was black and white, with the forces of good, led by Hulk Hogan, taking on the evil villain of the week. Hogan was at that point the biggest name in professional wrestling, but wrestling has changed a lot since that time and oddly, despite his best efforts, The Hulkster has largely remained the same. This simple fact is the foundation that Hulk Hogan’s Main Event is built on.

Hulk Hogan’s Main Event is a Kinect game that puts the player into the boots of an up and coming backyard wrestler as he sets out to become the biggest name in professional wrestling, all under the tutelage of Hogan himself. Before stepping into the ring though, one will have to create their wrestling avatar.

The game has a decent set of options for character creation and customization; however, problems arise when attempting to utilize the Kinect to fine tune your creation. I found it easy enough to make a simple character but setting him up the way I actually wanted was more of a challenge as selecting individual menu options that are clumped closely together is not one of Kinect’s strong points. However, the most frustrating part of the character creation ordeal was going through all the trouble of setting him up and completely missing the option to edit his name, leaving him with the awkward title of Caliente.

User error aside, I took Caliente to the ring to get the real game underway. I was somewhat surprised to find that the game is actually a mini-game collection masquerading as a wrestling game. You won’t find yourself “wrestling” an entire match in Hulk Hogan’s Main Event, but rather participating in key moments in a match. These key moments are considered stunts by the game and players will start out by posing in various positions as their avatar walks to the ring.

Every match starts out this same way with the game throwing more and more poses to be performed at the player as well as the task of having to avoid flying obstacles from disgruntled fans. Performing an entrance to the ring makes quite a bit of sense being as so much time is spent on it in actual wrestling, the rest of the stunts however are a hodgepodge of wrestling related actions that don’t really blend well with the pacing of an actual wrestling match. Taken out of the context of the career mode and done individually, which can be done, these events can be somewhat fun but having a stunt where you body slam your opponent upwards of 10 times in a row as you progress through a match makes little sense.

Compounding issues is the Kinect functionality itself. I have played quite a few games on the Kinect and there are those that work really well (Dance Central, Kinect Sports) and those that do not (Sonic Free Riders, Motion Sports), sadly Hulk Hogan’s Main Event falls in the latter pool. Motion recognition was all over the place. Sometimes it worked flawlessly but oftentimes it would interpret motions incorrectly making the game somewhat frustrating for me and near impossible for my kids to play.

One of the things Kinect has done really well is bridge the gap between players such as myself and a more casual crowd, like my wife and kids. Unfortunately, Hulk Hogan’s Main Event drops the ball. Many of the stunts require specific movements at very specific times and the game is unforgiving for failing to do these things exactly the right way. Worse yet, failing to successfully complete a stunt results in a failure screen that gives one the option of retrying or quitting and it does this even in multiplayer. When you watch a player fail a stunt for the fourth time in a row, the game starts to get boring for the watcher and one can only guess how frustrated the actual players is.

Surprisingly, the most frustrating aspect of the whole game is not the weird design choice of making a mini-game collection out of a wrestling match or even the shoddy motion detection. No, the most frustrating aspect of the game is that it bears the Hulk Hogan name on it, yet lacks the Hulk Hogan personality. The Hulkster only has a handful of actual vocal lines, you never actually wrestle against him nor do you have him wrestle with you. Simply put, his involvement in the actual game is superfluous.

Not everything is all doom and gloom though; Hulk Hogan’s Main Event does provide a fairly decent workout for those that give it a go as I found myself sweating up a storm just as the Kinect told me I should take a rest. It also has a fun art style that reminded me of my WWF action figures as a kid. But in the grand scheme of things, it is hard to recommend Hulk Hogan’s Main Event to anyone as it does far more wrong than it does right.

2* out of 5