Rivals is responsive, accurate, deep, reliable and well integrated. It just needs the space. [June 2014, p.76]

Kinect Sports Rivals shows many evolutions on the technical side of Kinect, but still struggles to deliver a flawless experience, gamplay-wise. Across the six sports, however, a good amount of fun can be found.

It's just disappointing that the game doesn't have that much depth, and with few exceptions, its only successes are things that have already been done before with different technology.

Kinect is still a solution in search of a problem, and while this is an impressive tech demo it’s a largely uninteresting video game experience.

In a motion control game it is simple; control is paramount. When Kinect 2.0 behaves, Rare’s creation can be plenty of fun, especially in a social setting. But its lack of consistency breeds a sense of distrust in players, and with that the fun fades. It seems that flawless hands-free motion control applicable to a variety of living room environments continues to remain just out of our reach.

You can squeeze a little bit of fun out of Kinect Sports Rivals.

Kinect Sports Rivals answers the question “What has Rare been up to?”. Sadly, the game falls short of the mark on almost every category, with the biggest hit being on fun. With three of the six included events ranging from unpleasant to unplayable, you get dragged through dialogue I’d never, ever want to hear again.