It’s that time again, when we get the slightly remixed transcript of the latest episode submitted to Ciao. It’s the Kinect Sports text review and it includes some fresh remarks, such as the one you may find after the break:

It’s a little known, but well spread, disease in games journalism that launch titles get artificially inflated scores. This has inevitably happened with the Kinect‘s first crop of games, but it’s thankfully nowhere near as pronounced as say, the Xbox 360‘s. I’m not about to start analyzing this right now, I just want to point out and marvel at the fact that Perfect Dark Zero, one of the worst and most disappointing games of all time, currently has a Metacritic score of 81.

Fantastic.

We continue our analysis of Kinect launch titles and get on location to check the enjoyability, as well as the authenticity, of Rare’s Kinect Sports.

Featuring strikes, spikes & shocking swerves.

Just under 20 minutes, this review might seem needlessly lengthy, especially for a casual game, but there is a lot to be said about the Kinect, Rare and sports simulations in general. I hope we’ve managed to keep a refreshing pace throughout.

Taking a cue from Red Letter Media, I’ve also added background music pretty much everywhere and I think it worked out great. The narration sounds remarkably clean too, so, as far as the audio department is concerned, this just might be the best episode yet.

It is definitely the official season finalé, since we shot it in early December only to post-it mid-January, and I figure it kinda fits the erratic scheduling we had for season 1. Stay tuned for season 2, featuring a more traditional timetable, but starting with a more fourth dimensional episode!

It’s time to finally decipher what I was trying to say in my fast-talking Dance Central video review, with the text review version, alternatively titled “Dance Central Gets You Dancing“.

It’s mostly a remix of the video’s script, with some new insights thrown in, as you can see in the passage after the break:

There is a slight difference in tone between my text reviews and video scripts and I’ll admit this one reads more like the latter. It’s definitely easier for me to write the review properly then whip up the script, but thinking of the script first is much more fun! I’ll probably switch up the order a few times in 2011, for variety, but the next review is again script-first and should be up before Christmas.

One issue the title alludes to but I didn’t manage to explicitly address in either of the reviews, is that it kinda bothers me that Harmonix knew Dance Central was going to be one of the top selling Kinect titles, no matter what. It allowed them to nonchalantly cut features when, had this been a Wii title, it would have resulted in a certain critical & commercial failure.

Now, it is entirely plausible that had Harmonix gone for those extra features, they would have spread themselves too thin and the gameplay would have suffered. At the same time, it’s not that outlandish a possibly that they would have pulled through successfully, and deliver a clearly superior game, pretty much what we’ll inevitably get with Dance Central 2.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, pulling punches and playing it safe was the smart move, but I always liked the credo “no guts, no glory”.

We take on Harmonix‘s Dance Central, easily the hottest title for the newly-launched Kinect, and try to resist the urge to drop it like its hot.

Featuring robots, dance-offs and pirouettes.

There is certainly some sort of magic at work when it comes to Harmonix-made games and, like the best forms of magic, it only works when you believe in it. And, while most everyone wants to be a rock star, the question that will determine Dance Central’s commercial success is “What’s the percentage of people that want to be dancers?”.

Just Dance showed us that it’s probably quite big and Microsoft will certainly hope so since this is Kinect’s only hope for a passable first impression. Every single Kinect title so far had to cut corners, but Dance Central is the only one to do it cleverly enough to remain presentable. It’s certainly not the title that will make everyone instantly love the peripheral, but it might well be the only one that doesn’t instill a feeling of terrible disappointment.

Back to Ciao! to review a high-profile release, this time Fable 2 for the X360 and, later, the PC.

I always have fun with the Fable games, if only because of the irony that even though they feature fantastic realms, grotesque monsters and larger-than-life heroes & villains, I always think of them as the most generic stories ever. In a word-association psychology test, I’d always answer “fable” to “fantasy” and vice versa.

Anyway, allow me to disclose my open letter to developer Lionhead‘s spearhead, Peter Molyneux.

I’m still waiting on that, but, even with the “bug”, Fable 2 was pretty enjoyable.

Yet another high-profile title gets under my microscope, as I examine Microsoft‘s Halo-substitute and saw together a review of Gears of War.

While I understand why shooters, be they first-person, or over-the-shoulder, are incredibly popular, I always thought it was a real shame such star power is wasted on such a bland genre.

Sure, some shooters have their moments, but the lot of them are uninspired rehashes that still manage to make millions: Call of Duty 4 was great and well-deserved of its success and recognition; Call of Duty 5: World at War was, at best, an average game and something I’ve already seen a million times before. I cringed every time I saw it topping the charts, while the magnificent World of Goo trailed miles behind, despite retailing at a quarter of the price and still being considered an unexpected hit.

But this is a debate that could go on for hours and feature predictable name-dropping, like Grim Fandango and Psychonauts. So let’s just say I find even more worrying that a lot of games feel the need to add as many FPS elements as they can; I loved Fallout 3, but I would have liked to have seen the original turn-based strategic system the previous Fallouts had.

I don’t want all games to have one of, like, three different gameplay styles.

My review of Kameo: Elements of Power for the Xbox 360.

This was my first ever review for Ciao! and I really am amazed at its length. Clocking in at under a thousand words, this could make it to print… if it was written a bit better. Of course, some people prefer this much shorter and personal recounting of my experience with the game to my current reviews, but my OCD really dislikes it and I only reluctantly regress to this style when pitching for a print review.

My writing style sure has changed over the years but I always find a few signature lines that really scream “Johnny”, even in the oldest reviews. It’s fun, but this is as far back as we are going to get. Older reviews are too painful for me to even read, let alone post.

By the way, me from 2006 would probably condense all this text to: “My legendary review of Kameo is the first ever to hit the excellent Ciao! and is worthy of your attention.”