Microsoft finally did what they initially intended with the game; Making a kart racer wrapped around the cute avatars from our dashboard that we cherish so much – played with controllers.

Kinect Joy Ride (which haven’t been named at the time) was announced to be a free to play game on Xbox Live Arcade, but a couple months after the Kinect sensors announcement, the project was changed to be a launch title for the sensor. Now BigPark have been taking pieces, places, everything from the Kinect game basically and made a controller-handled kart game from it. And it works.

A bunch of (7 to be exact from what I’ve read) tracks has been brought over from the Kinect game into this version, and more tracks added that are more challenging with a controller (more precise steering and brakes enabled), makes for smaller tracks and more turns.

Joy Ride Turbo is fundamental a kart racer. While you get your money worth considering the price, you might feel cut short of gaming time if you’re really into racing games. The single player mode consists of championships and a stunt park – multi player is presenting you to fun for all both online and locally. Now, if the game just had more debt and perhaps different characters to choose from, this could have been the equivalent to what Mario Kart and Modnation Racers is for the Wii and the PS3.

The cars look slick, cute and well polished – and your avatar is fitting right in them. Just a little sad that if you as a player jump straight into the championships, it is very unlikely you’ll unlock any cars at first. To unlock cars, you have to pick up the parts that are scattered throughout the courses, which makes sense in the long run, but I suggest every gamer out there to try and find the boxes in the free running mode before jumping into the championships.

The tracks have some great surprises, the environment is cartoony and adorable – yet so detailed that you actually just want to sit back and take a look. There’s plenty of different obstacles to be vigilant about – some will help you, some will ruin the race for you.

If you just want to have pure fun, try out the stunts, and explore a big arena there’s a stunt park available in two big and very different environments. Canons that will shoot you out, ramps and boostpads that all will help you reach the in-game coins, trophies and car parts that are required for you to unlock the cars.

If you’re looking for a short, cute and fun arcade kart racer, this game hits the sweet spot. You can literally convince non-gamer friends to play this game over a beer – of course after a short intro on how to control the cars. It’s the equivalent to Super Mario Kart – we can only hope that this is something Microsoft will consider making their trademark, because I think this will work very well.