This is not what you will look like while playing this game. (Publisher: Disney Interactive, Developer: Harmonix, Release: 2014)
Genre: Music, rhythm.
What it's about: A recreation of sorts of the 1940 Disney classic Fantasia. Players invoke Mickey Mouse's symphony conducting scene using the Kinect gesture sensor.
Why we should care: Guitar Hero and Rock Band creator Harmonix tries to make Kinect fun for something other than dancing games.
What happens in the first hour: First things first – it's time to dig the old Kinect out of the closet and dust it off. It's been a long time since it has seen any action.
After a quick calibration, Tinkerbell leads us into a movie theatre playing Fantasia where we see Mickey decked out as the sorcerer's apprentice. It's a subtle hint that watching the movie is required viewing if this is to make any sense.
A narrator teaches us the basic gestures: hand sweeps, punches, sweep-and-hold and punch-and-trace. Then there are remixes, which are accomplished by building up multipliers, and then song recordings done by outlining a glowing pyramid.
Huh, what? Did the game just dump a thousand rules and instructions on us in a matter of minutes?
It's an awful lot to take in and there's no chance to digest. The Police's Message in a Bottle is starting up. It's time to learn how to do those basic sweeps. Glowing stars fly across the screen and when they hit a cone-shaped section, we're supposed to swipe a hand in that direction.
As if we needed a reminder about why the Kinect was in the closet, very quickly because my movements only seem to register in the game about half the time. Fortunately, the difficulty is low at this point and the scoring is forgiving. I pass the first sweep test. Oh God, are my arms killing me.
A kindly sorcerer, who I'm guessing Mickey apprenticed with, greets us and tells us we must assemble the stars on a magician's hat to progress. He sounds amazingly like Saruman from The Lord of the Rings movies. That is to say, evil.
Up next it's Mussugorsky's Night on Bald Mountain, which just about no one outside of classical music aficionados could name, even though the symphony is recognizable. This time around, we practice punching, and again the Kinect routinely misses my gestures. Remember how frustrating it was when one of the buttons on your plastic guitar in Guitar Hero didn't work? It's a lot like that.
The section-by-section tutorial continues with Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody going over sweep-and-hold skills, and a Lorde's Royals showing the finer points of how to activate remixes, which uses a meter system similar to Guitar Hero's "star power."
The long tutorial isn't even done yet, but I'm already wondering why I'd want to play this game any longer than I have to. The narrator tells us we have to explore different realms to unlock songs and clear away The Noise, an evil force that's muddying up the music. I wonder if The Noise is actually a euphemism for Kinect.
Highlights: The unlockable remixes are cool. There probably aren't too many other places where you can hear a reggae version of a Mozart symphony.
Lowlights: One word: Kinect.
Time suck factor: Can be played for minutes at a time, although practice – and speed – will be needed to hit all those arm gestures right.
Worth more than an hour: Not to anyone who doesn't like Kinect games. And even then it's pretty shallow.
Peter Nowak