Kids become Pixar cartoon heroes

— -- Kids who love the Pixar movies Cars, Ratatouille, Up, Toy Story, and The Incredibles will find a lot to like in Kinect Rush: A Disney Pixar Adventure, a new video game playable exclusively on Xbox 360 using Kinect.

Kids pair up with their favorite movie characters to go on brand new adventures set in the worlds of these five favorite movies. With Sheriff Woody (from Toy Story), you navigate a playground from the perspective of being a toy robot. With Bob Parr (a.k.a Mr. Incredible), you become a superhero to battle the destruction-bent Omridroid within Metroville. For the Ratatouille adventure, you become a rat, and leap and gambol over the rooftops of Paris to save fellow rat Twitch who is trapped inside a rolling glass jar. In the Cars world, you turn into a talking car and race with Mater. For Up, you help Russell chase after the floating house as you too become a competent Wilderness Explorer.

Kids experience these adventures when they visit the newly-opened Pixar Amusement Park and meet other boys and girls who also love these movie worlds. Before entering the park, you have an option of being turned into a Pixar character. Using the Kinect camera, the game scans your likeness, and then presents you with what you might look like if you were a cartoon. It then shows you what you will look like in each of the five different Pixar worlds.

Instead of going on rides in this amusement park, you participate in adventures that are really just imaginary romps thought up by other enthusiastic kid visitors. Like you, they love pretending they are a part of these movie worlds. In each movie area, you can meet three new friends who each come up with an adventure for you to imagine. The fun begins when these imaginings turn into a video game level. There are 15 total levels in the game.

Depending on your interests, you may like some of the games more than others. Obviously, the adventures dreamed up in the Cars world involve racing. When playing as a superhero in the world of The Incredibles, you are fighting off bad, destructive robots. The levels that you play in the Ratatouille, Up and Toy Story worlds are more about platform puzzling and fast action.

What makes Kinect Rush unusual is that you play it standing up with a good bit of physical activity. You steer your racecar character by putting your hands out in front of you while pretending to grasp a steering wheel. You will need to jump up in the air to make your car leap over barriers. In The Incredibles levels, you will pick up large objects and mimic the motion of heaving them at the Omnidroid to defeat it. Players will also need to lean from side to side as they swish down long swaths of ice and time their jumps at just the right time to avoid falling into holes. As a rat in the Ratatouille levels, you will jump to go from pillar to pillar, balance on balls by leaning forward and backward, swim underwater by mimicking the swimming motion, as well as run in place to move forward. In the Ratatouille, Toy Story and Up worlds, you will swoosh down zipwires by jumping up and raising your arms to grab onto wires. And in the Toy Story world, you will be able to fly toy airplanes that you control by outstretching your arms and leaning or, at times, pointing both hands in the direction you want to fly. It is exhilarating fun that can work up a sweat.