When I was a kid growing up, I liked to watch game shows. Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune were awesome, and who doesn’t like The Price Is Right? However, as time wore on, more and more game shows started flooding the airwaves, and they all started to…well…suck. Some pretty ridiculous premises were introduced, and like reality TV, game shows started to become dime a dozen. In fact, these days, it’s hard to determine what’s a game show and what’s a reality show anymore.
 
When Minute To Win It launched in 2010, I felt that it was a breath of fresh air. Not only did it follow a pretty classic game show format, but it had truly unique games and a relatively charismatic host. I liked the show quite a bit, and was excited to hear that a Minute To Win It game was being created for the Kinect. To me, that game would be tailor made for Microsoft’s motion sensor.
 
I should mention that the review copy I received was an unfinished version with some bugs. I’ll mention where the game seemed a little glitchy, but I can’t be sure if this is simply a big, or part of the game itself.
 

 
GAMEPLAY
 
For those who aren’t familiar with the show, the premise is pretty simple; you have 60 seconds to perform a task (preceded by a Blueprint, a preview of the task ahead). Each completed task nets you a certain amount of money (up to $1 million), and as you move up, the tasks get harder. Simple, basic, and loaded with laughs.
 
The Kinect version replicates this format pretty faithfully. From an Avatar version of Guy Fieri to that disembodied female British voice that presents your Blueprint, the game is a pretty accurate representation of the show. Not only that, but there are a few extra challenges thrown in that normally wouldn’t be possible on the show. It gives the game a very slight fantastical nature, which made what would have been a fairly mundane game more fun.
 
The actual gameplay is pretty hit or miss. Obviously as we have come to expect with most Kinect games, the movement is contained to an area of about 2 feet or so. Most of the challenges require no more than running in place or flailing various limbs around; however, there ARE a few truly unique uses of Kinect that I won’t spoil here.
 
The Kinect tracking can get a little wonky at times. Again, I want to reiterate that I don’t know if this is merely a bug that will be worked out in the final retail copy or not, but there were some instances where it affected gameplay quite severely. The nature of so many of the challenges is so fast paced that most of the time it doesn’t matter if the Kinect misses a couple of moves here and there, but for some of the slower paced events, any hiccups can be a huge detriment.
 
Another downside is the fact that once you’ve played the game all the way through, you’ve pretty much done it all. Each subsequent playthrough offers the same challenges, which isn’t really a shock. Perhaps later on down the road there will be some DLC that offers new content, but in the meantime, what you see is what you get.

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