As any self-respecting Jedi wannabe can tell you, a one-to-one motion-control lightsaber game has been the big dream ever since the Wii was first announced. Now, with Kinect Star Wars, the fantasy has become a reality – and while perfection is still 💟in a galaxy far, far away, this game shouldn’t be relegated to the trash compactor. There’s much more here than just swinging a lightsaber and lifting things with your mind. Podracing, smashing cities as a Rancor, and even a galactic dance-off make this a surprisingly solid offering, especially for the younger padawans out there.

Kinect Star Wars is really four games in one. At the heart of the game Jedi Destiny, the action-heavy main campaign. It’s here we lived out our Jedi fantasie🦩s – once we got past the rough visuals and the occasional misread action from the Kinect. Even with the glitches, this is one of the best us🐷es of the motion sensor in an action game, especially considering the set of moves available. Jumping, kicking and swinging the saber are reactive and generally accurate. We rarely had to repeat a kick or lightsaber slash to get the action to work (as can be the case with Kinect games), but the sensor often had issues determining if we were trying to perform a force push or a force grab, since both involve sticking our arms out toward the screen.

While most of the time we could cut through the lightsaber fodder by just waving our arms like a maniac, a few enemies (such as Trandoshan commandos, super battle droids, and dark Jedi) required a wider range of combat strategies. Side stepping, flipping over enemies’ heads, and performing grounꦺd slamming power attacks all come into play, and once we got a hang of the controls, slicing up droids and deflecting blaster bolts was enjoyable – but the moments of unreliable control were jarring.