Last week, Kinect Sports: Season Two made an appearance at GAMES11, a three-day consumer event which is fast becoming a major fixture in the Middle East’s gaming calendar.

Much like the recent GAMEfest shenanigans, there were no official Rare bodies on site, but thanks to a fortuitous alignment of the planets I happened to be on holiday in Dubai at the time. And so, in a shameless attempt to earn myself employee of the month (unlikely), I dragged myself away from my poolside sun lounger to seek out some blogworthy snaps.

The event took place at The Dubai Mall, the world’s largest shopping, leisure and entertainment ‘destination’ which contains over a thousand wallet-busting stores, and is (according to Wikipedia) the same size as more than 50 football pitches. Undeterred, I set off with my trusty map in hand, determined to track down the ice rink, which I’d been reliably informed was close to the event.

After a few wrong turns, a brief stop in Starbucks and a financially crippling thirty minutes in Bloomingdales, I finally arrived to discover that the event wasn’t near the ice rink… it was on the ice rink. Presumably the event organisers had set about the ice with hairdryers the night before or (more likely) had applied some terribly clever ice carpet that prevented everyone from sliding about.

Small but perfectly formed is probably the best way to describe GAMES11, with dozens of forthcoming titles on show from both Microsoft and *cough* Sony, it was predictably this year’s bullet-ridden threequels that drew the biggest crowds.

Despite the event’s small size, Kinect managed to make a big impact, with Dance Central 2 occupying a large stage and no end of seemingly fearless people willing to get up in front of hundreds of strangers and dance their socks off. Unfortunately my Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino hadn’t given me the Dutch courage to subject myself to that.

Fruit Ninja Kinect, Disneyland Adventures, Kinect Star Wars, Child of Eden and of course Kinect Sports: Season Two (Tennis if you were wondering) rounded out Microsoft’s motion gaming contingent, giving plenty of opportunity for Emiratis – and one slightly sun-frazzled tourist – to experience controller-free gaming for themselves.