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  • Hands-free: Camera-controlled Racquet Sports

    by 
    James Ransom-Wiley
    James Ransom-Wiley
    12.10.2009

    Call to mind Wii Sports' tennis, and you don't have to stretch your imagination too much further to arrive at Ubisoft's Racquet Sports. If you own a Wii, you already own this experience, to which Ubisoft has added some variety, including ping-pong, badminton, squash, and beach tennis, and a more fleshed-out art direction than Nintendo's pack-in or even its sequel, Wii Sports Resort. There's no Mii support, but Racquet Sports offers its own dollish avatars, customized with unlockable trinkets. There's a derivative multicultural vibe, too, as the characters and playing courts span the globe in classic and fantastic scenarios. Grandma vs. dashiki-clad boy in an aquarium squash court? Yes. Of course, the experience you don't own is "tennis" played with a motion-tracking camera. No, not Natal -- not at all. Ubisoft's USB camera, first bundled with scarcely-reviewed Your Shape (featuring Jenny McCarthy), might be on the cutting edge of a revived and revamped gaming tech trend, but its implementation in Racquet Sports is painfully dull. %Gallery-79917%