Protip: Choosing the right torturer is the key to success

Disneyland Adventures for the Kinect: The Nintendo Power Glove of Video Games

If I had to design a torture chamber for my most hated enemy, I would only offer Disneyland Adventures for the Xbox 360 as the only video game available. Then, I would have absolute certainty there was no higher bar of torture I could provide. The CIA would applaud my choice of interrogation as the most painful way to get information from a terrorist.

Disneyland Adventures came out for the Xbox 360 around the time of the motion gaming boom. Microsoft and Sony jockeyed for control of Nintendo’s grasp on jaggling and waggling. While the PlayStation 3 stuck to Sony’s business model: “Try what the other guy is doing and then quit.” Microsoft struck out to make a full-body gaming experience called The Kinect. They counted the cash in their dreams as they envisioned children clamoring for mini-games, franchise tie-ins, obligatory sports fun, and dance shovelware. One such game was Disneyland Adventures for the Kinect. In Japanese, it translates to “Stupid American wastes time.”

The idea behind Disneyland Adventures was to make the gamer feel like a wide-eyed child roaming the streets of Disneyland without a chaperone or care. At the same time, large animatronic furries and bearded men ask for hugs and invite you to dance with them (no red flags there). The joy of navigating the world’s happiest place came with high expectations, as the Kinect mirrors the motions of a human. This is where the many flaws of the game came out.

Protip: Dropping your sense of ethics and moral understanding of the world helps with the gameplay

The lead engineer has never seen humans move, gesture, or express themselves in any way, shape, or form. He must be a tentacled alien who uses levitation to travel because no human in history’s 10,000-year expanse would ever consider Disneyland’s walking a natural way to move. Your character traverses the 60-square-mile park as a leech moving through pudding (and that is when it works). In other moments of walking, your character will stop and perform a reverse moonwalk. On your end, you are burning trillions of calories performing the Ministry of Silly Walks to have your cursed avatar talk to Goofy. Now, add globs of guests blocking your path, and you will wish the game came with GTA pedestrian violence.

Simple things like stopping, turning around, and approaching someone (all problems the first Mario Bros game nailed on the first try) are incredibly frustrating. Your character will become possessed by a wicked spirit and run an extra mile even when you have begged him to stop. You need to access your inventory by raising your right hand, but instead, the camera spins like a tornado while your avatar tries to become one with a guardrail. Even the video games in hell have more mercy.

But that’s not the fun part, even though gamers love doing the fetch errands of Disney characters. The obligatory mini-games are where the game truly shines like a polished turd. Imagine flying through the streets like Peter Pan or catching ghosts in the Haunted Mansion. It’s all baked into this 20 gb trash fire.

There’s a game where you have to mirror the motions of the Mad Hatter. It’s as simple as the camera picking up your motions. However, the alien lead designer on Bizarro Earth did not understand the assignment. One out of every three moves, the game will brazenly tell you you are not doing the pose. Even if you are in a room with a hundred choreographers approving your form, this Microsoft troll engine has the gall to deny your monkey pose. The Disney characters shamefully repeat themselves as you throw a barbell at the screen. This game hates your success and wants you to pay for being limber.

Protip: You don’t win this level as much as you tolerate it with the least trauma

To overcompensate for the game’s leperous motion controls. The levels will reward you with a generous four stars even after getting hit by several trains, poles, and bombs. The gameplay programmer pitied your game choice and at least wants you to walk out of this experience with high self-esteem. After your character flails around the stage, grossly misrepresenting your body motions, you get a congratulatory “You did awesome,” “Four stars,” and “No one is as good as you,” which is akin to your mom announcing that you are potty trained after peeing everywhere but in the toilet. Any gamer trying to get a 100% completion rate will end up becoming a sociopath,

Perhaps the most deceptive part of this game is that Disneyland wants you to collect and not spend money. Your avatar comes out wealthier from each experience, which goes against everything Disney stands for. That is a lie from Satan himself.

However, my four-year-old son loves this game and only allows me to play it despite my pleas for Kinectimals and Kinect Adventures. I am having him checked for evil personality traits, BTW. Despite teaching him that the world is cruel and unfair, these moments are precious to his development. As I share this experience with my PTSD therapist, we will both agree that enjoying this time together is better than not playing at all. 

Did I mention that including a second player gunk up the controls 100-fold?

7 out of 10.