The Playstation Move launch didn't exactly go off with the biggest bang ever in the games department - we were treated to a few moderately interesting tech demos, while a random selection of old titles were given the waggle makeover. Checking out the list of Kinect launch titles, it doesn't seem as though Microsoft will be providing such a huge initial burst of great motion-controlled gaming either.

Having said that, Kinect is definitely turning a few more heads than its PlayStation rival due to some genuinely interesting features and concepts hidden away in its seemingly mediocre launch games. Kinect Adventures is one such game, and the preview build available had us pretty uninterested for one moment, then had grabbed our full attention the next.

The water rafting game wasn't so great, but still gave a good feel for what Kinect is all about

Kinect Adventures is a collection of minigames, developed with the intention of showing off Kinect's capabilities to their extremes. The demo had three different game types to play through that were all very different from each other indeed.

The first game had two of us riding down rapids in a dinghy, leaning left and right to steer the vessel and jumping every now and again to collect coins and reach higher areas. The first thing every single player was doing however - ourselves included - was a bit of 'The Robot', i.e. moving our arms around in a robotic, Peter Crouch manner. The hardware picks up your movements very well, and the lag isn't too noticeable - at least not to an annoying degree.

Once the raft is launched into the water, however, things aren't so great. The time between you jumping and your character jumping on screen is far too long, and eventually you find yourself jumping very early when coming to a jump to accommodate the lag. The problem is that, while other actions aren't too problematic, jumping is a very physical act and hence it's incredibly obvious that the character on the screen is not in time with you.

The fact that this rafting game relies for the most part on you jumping for coins means that it's really not very fun at all. At the end of the course, the game will show you a few select photos it took while you were playing, although a lot of the photos we saw were rather blurred - this may well be the expo environment's fault, however, so we'll reserve judgement on this particular feature for now.

The one-to-one control between yourself and the character feels excellent

So the lag issue takes away from the immersion in the rafting game, but the other two games on show were really great fun. Game two puts you in a glass chamber under the sea, and fish begin to crash into the side, causing cracks in the glass. As water leaks through the gaps, your job is to move your hands and feet to cover these cracks, allowing you to fix them up and stop the leak.

It's one of those games that needs to be played to understand just how much fun it is. At first we found ourselves shuffling around, getting a feel for the movement, but by the end we were all over the place, throwing our arms up into the corners and stepping over certain areas all in one go. This game is quite the opposite of the rafting game, in that while you play, you completely forget that you're playing a game, so fantastic is the one-to-one control between yourself and the character in the tank.

Yet it's the final game that really makes us want Kinect right now please. Two players face off in an unusual sort of race, which is like a time-trial take on that mental Japanese gameshow where contestants have to stand in a specific shape so a huge wall doesn't knock them into water. Each player is standing on a moving platform, and must side-step or duck under obstacles, whilst also moving their body into crazy shapes to collect as many coins as possible.

The one-to-one movement really shines here, and every single shape you make will be perfectly recreated on the screen. See a line of vertical coins? Put your arms up above your head to collect them. A horizontal line of coins? Put your arms out as if you're pretending to be a plane. It's all immensely good fun, and the fact that you're also racing against someone else at the same time is quite the added bonus.

Of course, it's all very kiddy to keep the little ones entertained too

All these games can be played either one or two players, with a lovely drop-in/drop-out feature that means a player can simply walk into the Kinect's view and the game will automatically know a second player has arrived, and add them into the game.

As far as launch titles go, Kinect Adventures is going to be a gem - as iconic as Wii Sports, perhaps. Sure, not every game included is going to knock our socks off, but there's definitely going to be plenty to talk about bundled in there. Let's hope that the rest of the launch titles can be as interesting as this.

Kinect Adventures will be released at the same time as the Kinect hardware on November 4th.

Most Anticipated Feature: Checking out the rest of the minigames on offer - hopefully they'll be just as much fun.