Kinect Sports comes packed with more than half-a-dozen ways to play, but my limited time with the game only gave me a chance to check out one of them: Bowling.
Nintendo's Wii Sports proved just how popular bowling can be on a video game console. It may not be the sexiest game, but it was the game people most wanted to play when they visited my home after Nintendo's console launched.
So it makes sense that Microsoft would want their own version of the popular, casual, pick-up and play sport.
Unlike with Wii Sports, with Kinect Sports you don't have anything in your hand when you go bowling. Instead you stretch your arm out to your side to get your on-screen avatar to pick up the digital bowling ball.
Cradling air, you then pull back and throw, as if hurdling a bowling ball down the lane without the help of finger holes.
It takes a bit of getting used to for those of us who rely on those finger holes to bowl, but it's not that different than the typical experience of bowling in real life.
The game did seem to roughly detect where I was throwing the ball, but I found the experience all together way too forgiving, making it much easier to clear the lane of pins than it should have been.
I also wasn't a big fan of how you put spin on the ball. Because the device is using the motion of your arms and hands to detect motion, and not your fingers or wrist, you had to exaggerate your motions to get the ball to spin. That meant whipping your arm tightly across your body to pick up a little english on the ball. It worked but it didn't feel natural.
I wasn't able to try out the other sports titles on in the game, but the bowling experience left me yearning for a bit of Wii Sports.