"Disneyland Adventures" and "Rush: A Disney Pixar Adventure" Remasters Review

Released and developed at the same time but available separately, two promising Xbox 360 Kinect-enabled Disney games that never quite caught fire get new life on the Xbox One as part of its PC-compatible Play Anywhere initiative.

Even better, both games -- "Disneyland Adventures" (2011) and "Rush: A Disney Pixar Adventure" are freed from the shackles of Kinect. Full controller support lets you play with standard stick and button controls rather that voice and motion gimmicks that were meant to make the games more intuitive to play but ended up turning them into slogs.

Purists who are still rocking a Kinect can use the peripheral to control the games. And because the Xbox One version was far superior to the Xbox 360 device, those gamers will find the experiences far more playable than they did on last-gen.

Both games looked excellent to begin with so whatever visuals were remastered are barely noticeable. Both games burst with fan service, even if "Disneyland Adventures" is little more than a glorified commercial for the theme park.

You choose to play as a boy or girl who runs through Disneyland alone, serving fetch quests for characters, gobbling up collectibles and taking on levels based on rides. Convincing scale and intricate detail that matches Disneyland's layout down to the churro stands is enough to help scratch the itch of Disneyland junkies who need a fix of the Happiest Place on Earth.

"Rush" is less a virtual brochure than it is a traditional platformer. The worlds of "Toy Story,: "The Incredibles," "Cars," "Up" and "Ratatouille" collide, with characters and settings from each game blending in a cohesive adventure that ties together the films' universes in far less complicated ways than the universal Pixar fan theories that abound. Like "Disneyland Adventures," the removal of Kinect is addition by subtraction, allowing players to take on the content as it was originally envisioned, if not executed.
Publisher provided review code.