Disneyland? Located entirely on your Xbox? At this time of year? (Disneyland Adventures thoughts)

     Hey friends, as you know, I'm a big Disney guy, so today's writing is very on brand for me. In the year 2011, a game was made for the Xbox 360 using Kinect called Kinect Disneyland Adventures. I got that game for my birthday that year, and I had a Kinect, but I didn't use it much. The Kinect, if you don't know, was a weird camera peripheral for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One that Microsoft was really trying to push for a few years before they just pulled the plug. I played a decent amount of the game, but with most Kinect experiences, they weren't all that fun, but also they were kind of exhausting. Look up videos of people playing the "Big Thunder Mountain" minigame on that game if you don't believe me. In 2017, however, a new version of this game was created for the Xbox One, and there's a choice to play either with Kinect or with a controller. I'm going to be perfectly honest here, I vastly prefer the version with the controller that I've been playing for the past few weeks or so. Sure, you lose some of the charm of actually reaching out to give Mickey a hug, or posing for a picture, but it really doesn't matter. The controls of this game were way too complicated to play with the Kinect, especially considering so much of this game just involves running around Disneyland and finding secrets. If the game was just the minigames, I think it would make perfect sense for this to be a Kinect experience, but there are just too many moving parts I think. This week, I would like to take a step back in time to the year 2017 and experience this game in its  newer iteration. Come on, there's an extra ticket for you too!

It's not all fun and games here in virtual Disneyland!

    This game has basically no plot, the point is just to emulate a trip to Disneyland, and honestly that's enough for me. Of course, it's not just like Disneyland, because there are lots and lots of quests for you to do for all of the different characters, as well as different elements of the park to interact with in different ways. The characters themselves have their own unique stories that materialize through you doing different errands for them, but in terms of overall plot, there's nothing really here. This is more of a chore than a vacation with the amount of running around to find things for the characters, but I'll get to that a little later on. Honestly this is one of the more tedious games that I've ever played, and yet I'm definitely hooked. In order to do these quests and interactions, you'll need all of your magic items, which include: Camera, Magic Wand, Fishing Pole, Megaphone, Laser Gun, Conductor's Baton, Spyglass, and a Water Gun. In each of the different lands of the park, there are a certain number of secrets hidden around, you unlock secrets by hitting all of the umbrellas with the magic wand, or basically just interacting with all of the environment in some way. The most peculiar example of this is definitely using the megaphone on certain trees. Not all of the trees will interact, but if you yell at the trees, sometimes coins will pop out. I don't know why they decided that would be one of the things that the megaphone would react to that, but oh well.

Walking down virtual Main Street USA!

    Part of the charm of this game for me is just that I've never been to Disneyland, so it's interesting to run around and compare the layout of the game's world (which I assume is pretty similar to how the actual park is laid out) with my memories of going to Walt Disney World down in Florida. Of course, the park here isn't nearly as crowded as the parks are in reality, and you're able to ride the rides whenever you want, but instead of the rides as they normally are, they are little minigames originally envisioned for the Kinect, but now are played with the controller. In the actual "Jungle Cruise" ride, for example, you sit in a boat and listen to the skippers tell corny jokes for the whole duration, but in this game, you're shooting water cannons at hippos, dancing with gorillas in camps, and kayaking after a runaway boat. There's even a section of this attraction that emulates Time Crisis or some other light-gun games that you might see at an arcade, but with throwing fruit at gorillas. It's pretty wild stuff (pun intended), and lots of fun! I can't tell you how the Kinect controls work for the attraction, but I have to assume that it would handle pretty awkwardly, as many games behaved that way when the Kinect was introduced into the equation. Not always, mind you, there were some really fun Kinect games that I played, such as Fable: The Journey, Fantasia: Music Evolved, and Kinect Adventures is kind of cheating since it was a first-party development that came with the attachment, but it was an example of how Kinect games could work. Disneyland Adventures definitely offers some fun minigames that use the theming from classic attractions and weave in some imagination to create some experiences that you definitely couldn't get from the actual park, which is probably why the Kinect was used for this game in the first place. They wanted little kids to interact with their favorite characters and actually potentially feel like they were helping Buzz Lightyear fight against the Evil Emperor Zurg, or other scenarios of the like. It's a cool idea for little kids, though even with them in mind, I'm not sure how successfully the idea was implemented.

    This game is a strange one for sure, a "collectathon" which often consists of doing chores for your favorite characters. You have so many secrets to find, hidden achievements in nearly every attraction, autographs to get, unique interactions, etc. that it's very easy to feel overwhelmed with the tedium of this game. The funny thing about it, though, is that I have really enjoyed basically every minute. There's something so cool about combing through a virtual recreation of the famous park and having a job of your own, to help out all of the characters that live inside. To me, it's definitely worth checking out, especially since it's on Xbox Gamepass now.

    I know this isn't my longest post by any means, but I honestly don't know what else I can say about it. If you like Disney parks or Disney characters in general, I think there's enough here to give you some good feelings. If you're not into that sort of thing, I don't know what you would like here. There are a lot of different things to do in this game, but when they could easily be explained as "chores for animated characters" I can't imagine that non-fans would be too interested. If I had to complain about one thing in this game, it would have to be the fact that there's a building here that says Tangled on it that is themed around Rapunzel's tower... but Rapunzel is not in the game. The original game came out in 2011 after the movie came out in 2010, but I guess they didn't know enough about the movie to put any characters in before the game came out. This makes sense, but I wish they could have made a new version of the game in 2017 instead of just porting all of the same game over to new hardware. Either way, it's a great game, and I totally understand not putting in more stuff, especially given all of the movies and attractions introduced into the park between 2011 and 2017.

    Thanks for reading my thoughts on Disneyland Adventures, friends! I decided against saying this was in review, just because it's a little less in depth than some of my other writings (which I'm sure means that you're thanking your lucky stars that this isn't as long), and also there's just less to say about it I think. It's a fun little novelty if you're a big Disney fan like I am, but if you're not interested in Disneyland or the characters there, I don't think there's much for you here. Thanks a lot for all of your support as always, and I hope you have a great week! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, your self-proclaimed Disney Park guide, and I'll see ya real soon!