Kinect Rush: More Than Child's Play?

Asobo Studios is densely populated with masochists. It's the only explanation as to why it keeps setting itself the unenviable task of adapting the universally-adored and critically-celebrated films of Pixar into video games. Already it has brought the likes of Toy Story, Wall-E and Up to a variety of consoles but its latest game, Kinect Rush: A Disney-Pixar Adventure, is a different proposition. It doesn't stand in the shadow of a single Pixar movie. Instead, it attempts to recreate the magic of five films – Toy Story, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Cars and Up. Yet despite this pressure, there's strangely a greater sense of freedom about Kinect Rush.

"We're trying to achieve the same thing with the audience [as Pixar]" says David Dedeine, Asobo's co-founder and chief creative officer. "They know how to lead a kid through a movie, even if they don't understand everything, and when the parents look at it they will see something else."

Unlike a straight movie-to-game adaptation, Rush doesn't have to approximate the plot of a particular film; memorable sequences don't have to be stretched and strained into memorable levels. Rush is an extension of the Pixar Universe, and this is reflected rather charmingly in its presentation.

Start the game and you're asked to undergo a full-body scan. Using the attentive eye of Kinect, key details are taken – the colour and style of your hair and clothes, the ratio between facial features. After a brief moment of contemplation, and regardless of your age, you are reborn as a child of Pixar. The look and movement of the avatars are sympathetic to the animation studio's distinctive style - in fact it provided constant feedback to ensure aesthetic continuity.

The avatar is used to explore the Pixar Park – the game's hub, where other children interact and play. Walking around this area, you'll be able to enter one of the game's five worlds, but instead of banally opening a door, this is done rather charmingly by receiving an invitation from one of the other children who will invite you to play Toy Story 'pretend', for instance. Accept the friendly offer and you'll be plunged into the world of that movie.

Entering the world, your shiny new avatar doesn't remain unaltered; using information from the initial body scan, a new avatar is fashioned, one that seamlessly fits into the world of that film. In most cases the physical resemblance to the player is lost, with only Up's avatar retaining the features of your initial avatar who is recast in the part of an intrepid adventure scout. But wade into the world of The Incredibles and you're suddenly a superhero with bulging biceps and bright spandex. For the remaining worlds of Ratatouille, Cars, and Toy Story, specific features are sacrificed. Only the colour of your clothing and gender influences the appearance of these characters –¿wear a red t-shirt and blue jeans and your car will have a red chassis with a blue racing strip.



Rush's levels are fairly straightforward, and as the title suggests the game rewards speed. The motivation may change depending on setting – return a lost toy to its owner, escape from The Incredible base – but the underlying objective remains the same: get to the end of the stage as quickly as possible.

The game centres around replaying the same stages over and over. While this may sound boring to some - adults place a premium on originality and on experiencing the unexpected, but in stark contrast children adore repetition, and smartly that principle is at the heart of Rush's design. Dedeine revealed that the studio regularly invites children into the office to play and provide feedback on the game. One recurrent observation was that even if children were provided with a compelling, carefully-constructed storyline, the child won't necessarily invest in that drama; they will ask to play the same section again and again. "You want to tell them to look at the rest of it, but they just want to play the same level," admits Dedeine.

The mistake is to infer that kids enjoy exact repetition. Kids like to experience the same thing repeatedly as long as they are deriving something new from each iteration. "If they like something they tend to redo it as much as they can, but they need to find something new each time they play it. If it's boring, it's boring – they're not stupid. They won't look again and again if they get everything the first time they play it – they will forget it."


One way in which the game introduces variation into its repetitive form is by taking a cue from Pixar. It echoes the successful buddy dynamic that lies at the centre of its most successful movies – think Woody and Buzz, Mike and Sully, Marlin and Dory. If a child collects enough points, a new companion is unlocked who will teach the player a new ability allowing them to access new area. Remy will lead you into previously inaccessible areas thanks to his trusty 'smell-o-vision', for exmaple. This mechanic allows levels to incrementally unfold – "a kid will get more and more out it," hopes Dedeine. "We dynamically unlock more things in order to give him or her the right amount of interaction."

It's also a part of the game's attempt to embrace and reproduce the elusive magic of Pixar – namely, the way in which the studio is able to entertain both children and their parents alike. "We're trying to achieve the same thing with the audience" says Dedeine. "They know how to lead a kid through a movie, even if they don't understand everything, and when the parents look at it they will see something else." The game supports drop-in-drop-out co-op play, allowing friends and parents to jump in, assuming the role of the buddy, and help out them out.


But key to recreating the magic of Pixar could come from the game's pioneering use of 1-to-1 motion control. When playing Rush, the player isn't performing a crude action to trigger a stock animation; he or she is the character. This is most noticeable in the game's climbing sections. You don't just wave your arms around; you must reach towards each handhold.

"A kid will much more get how to do something if he can believe everything he does is his character, which means if you create this relationship between the user and his character he will not wonder how to do something - he will do it," according to Dedeine. "Which is really, when it works well, the magic of Kinect."


He's right: when it does work, it is magical. The space between player and character is instantly eroded. Reach out and pick something up, and you reach out and pick something up. The illusion delights. It still needs work, though. Tweaks are still being made. But if Rush can consistently pull off this trick upon release, it will not only demonstrate the potential of Kinect but go some way to reproducing the magic of Pixar.


Daniel Krupa is the games writer at IGN's London office. No Pixar characters were harmed in the writing of this article. You can follow him on Twitter .

• More Xbox 360 Previews
• Latest Xbox 360 News, Reviews, and Videos