Kinectimals Now With Bears is basically an expansion to Kinectimals which only had cat cubs. Now your children can play with bear cubs. I was going to totally rip the game for the need to purchase a new disc, however that’s not the case. You can, in fact, just download the Bears gameplay via Xbox LIVE. So kudos on that feature.
Just be sure to warn them of the dangers of trying to play with real bear cubs, or big cat cubs for that matter. I keep thinking that somehow one these games is going to get someone killed one day.
In Kinectimals Now with Bears, you can choose to pick up your previous saved game if you can Kinectimals, or to begin again. Since we reviewed the first game we had a game save so that was what we loaded. Then you have the choice of Bear or Cat adventure. The latter would obviously allow you to pick up where you left off while the second would begin a new bear adventure starting with the choosing of a cub.
There are five to choose from; Grizzly, Black, Panda, Polar and Cinnamon which I can’t decide is based on the crackers or not. From there you jump right into exploring the island and connecting with your bear cub.
A welcome addition is the ability to skip over every cut scene and speed up the excruciatingly slow game pace. Hallelujah!
Once you watch, or skip the cut scenes you instantly get to work with Mira, the guide from the original, pushing you along to do all sorts of things with your cub like juggling, tree climbing, knocking down statues, learning tricks, etc.
Speaking of the tricks, you can now actually speak the commands to your cub and they will generally respond. You can even name it verbally and it will react. That was pretty cool in fact so then you can use a combination of body movements, gestures and voice in the game. However, none of the menus have this voice functionality which is where it could really be useful at time. You also can’t use any of the standard commands to exit the game, etc.
