Happy action theatre

Double Fine Happy Action Theater
Released:1/2/2012
800 msp
Double fine have seem to have a magic touch with making games that are full of imagination and are so unique to anything else on the market. They seem to understand how to create unique experiences using kinect, firstly with "once upon a monster" and now with this title.
I would be hard pressed to call this a game though. I would define a game as an interactive media that had levels or high scores to beat and this game has none of that. It's made up of 18 activities, which range from lava you can roll around in to a Breakout-style level withyou as the paddle or a black-and-white scene that could be straight out of the original king kong movie.


What first grabbed my attention was that you're launched straight into the action. By default, "Director Mode" is on, meaning the "games" are cycled through automatically every so often. In other words, parents can totally start the game up and let their children go wild without assistance. Which is great for me, I just let my 6 & 4 year old kids go to it.

Should you have a specific activity in mind, you can either press the start button on a controller or do the standard pause the game pose to land on an interactive level-select menu. While in an activity, you can also use a controller to manually skip to the next one. As far as navigation is concerned, they nailed it. It's all very unobtrusive.

The games-some are far better than others. Though a few of the activities in Happy Action Theater tread over similar ground, essentially executed in the same way but there's more good than bad here. Even the less enjoyable activities are still entertaining. For instance, one of them puts you inside of a jelly dessert. That's all you do. You wiggle around and laugh at first. Replay value is definitely a valid concern , less so for younger kids. I wouldn't go in expecting to get more than a few hours of fun out of this, personally.
None of the games are that inventive but that does not mean that they are boring. This is especially engaging for young children. I think the kids favourites were the lounge being turned into a ballpit where the balls would squeal when you knock them about and the dancing games went down well. This is the first time my little girl has really taken any notice of the kinect for sure so it was worth the 800 points for me. It may be a god send come half term later this month.

The achievements are no bother at all really. I just sat there watching the kids muck about and all sorts of achievements were popping. the only one that may be of bother is getting six people playing at the same time.

Double Fine Happy action theatre reached the goal to fully entertain us without any constraints or rules, thanks to a touch of genius that has always distinguished the works of Tim Schafer. The game is unusual but very suitable for children or as a way to leave the TV on during parties or gatherings with friends and family so that everyone can enjoy themselves as and when they want. If you want to add to your library of kinect titles, at 800 Microsoft Points its definitely worth the small cost.


7/10

Good review mate. I'm definitely going to pick this up now. I've loved all the Double Fine arcade games released thus far.

Nice review mate