Squid Hero for Kinect Review

"The Space Squid"

Campaign

For a second Xbox One title after Boom Ball, Virtual Air Guitar has brought us Squid Hero for Kinect. Floating above in space the squid notices ice floating towards the planet and heads in to destroy it. I would say this ice might help prevent the warming of the oceans, but let's just say that it's evil ice. Anyways from there we face off in a number of locations across the various worlds which has use doing repetitive tasks to break the build-ups of ice. These levels are mostly rivers in form and split off with multiple checkpoints across them. When playing you're essentially just completing a number of tasks which revolve around breaking down the ice. Whether that be smashing ice with ice, matching ice colors or saving animals trapped in ice. Honestly the animals trapped in ice segments were incredibly hard at some points to where the game is kind enough to offer a skip area option after a few fails. This is where the element and my comment of this being a great game for kids. I personally had fun on it aside from the repetition that appeared with tasks though the younger individuals will just love this game. It's got a bright colored and happy squid with funny facial expressions while he flows along the water. You can even do cooperative play if you got two people though it's semi weird having one in front of the other and that was a tad touchy as it kept pausing to re-adjust players if we moved too much. Back onto the campaign portion there's a great amount of content within the various levels though not much to do afterwards. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent sized campaign with many levels to go through just nothing really for after that. At the end of each chapter area which is a bunch of levels combined you'll also have to face-off against a boss enemy!

Gameplay

As always I'll state I'm a big fan of the Kinect and believe in its potential, with Squid Hero for Kinect I feel the company has really gotten the whole hand gestures movement down perfectly. This game is more of a top body system where your hands are mostly used to destroy ice while you can sway back and forth during turbo events. Tracking was great when it came to Kinect and the menus also were really simple to navigate through which other games have issues with. They also included great hints or side information to further help with this which again is perfect for a Kinect game. When in-game colors are bright, the music is enchanting and the squid has a lot of personality. You can also buy some hats for squid if you buy them with currency collected through playing.

The Conclusion

While I had some great fun with the game this particularly title will target mostly the younger demographic. They will certainly love it and enjoy playing with this charming squid character. The Kinect controls, menus and gameplay were handled perfectly within the title. I had no issues in that regard and there's a good chunk of content available for play though not much to after that. I also did have some issues with how repetitive areas did get later on and that the animals in ice segments were almost impossible. Definitely a solid Kinect title to check out on Xbox One.

Squid Hero for Kinect Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by Virtual Air Guitar

Rating Overall: 7.4