Download Games Roundup

So, for the first time since I was introduced to Kinect, I've encountered a game that didn't make me want to run screaming from the living room within 15 minutes.

That game, surprisingly, is Fruit Ninja Kinect, a potentially ill-advised port of a huge-selling mobile game that I didn't exactly shower with praise 16 months ago. It's especially surprising because, in reality, it's not doing much more than one of the throwaway EyeToy mini-games from about nine years ago.

And yet, there I was on Monday night, flailing around my lounge with absolutely no dignity, with a ton of other, presumably more pressing things to do. Halfbrick, I salute you with my increasingly toned arms.

Fruit Ninja Kinect

• Xbox Live Arcade - 800 Microsoft Points (£6.80)

In the wake of Fruit Ninja's multi-million selling success on mobile phones, it's clear that society's collective cibophobia knows no bounds.

But as mildly amusing as Halfbrick's promotional trailer was, and as mildly engaging as I found the iOS original, it was never one of those games I became involuntarily obsessed with - unlike, say, FlickKick Football or Tiny Tower. Fortunately for Halfbrick, plenty of you disagreed, and I'm beginning to understand what a plonker that bloke from Decca must have felt after rejecting The Beatles.

On Kinect, though, it's a completely different story, and works by actually turning you into the frenzied blade-wielding assassin that you knew you always could be, given the chance. Well, that chance is finally here in probably the least likely reason to dust off the Kinect yet.

As usual, your duties extend to little more than slicing up fruit as it drifts gently across the screen and trying to avoid the bombs that appear to spoil your fun. But what appears to be little more than an EyeToy mini-game from 2003 somehow develops into an entire evening of arm-waving, challenge-based nonsense.

The question I kept asking myself was: 'Why am I still playing this?' The mechanics are basically identical, in that you slice until you run out of time or run out of lives.

Somehow, though, prancing around like a sweating monkey makes the magic happen, and turns it into the craziest fitness game yet. Never mind UFC Trainer, I may yet get buff from repeatedly removing the stupid tufty hair of imaginary pineapples.

The fact that you can now also do this in multiplayer only serves to accentuate the silliness, and rather than just dismissing Fruit Ninja Kinect as a throwaway novelty, I find myself aching from playing it for too long. In my pants. There. I said it. Deal with it.

7/10