It seems like everyone's been on pins and needles in anticipation of the Kinect launch. I get the impression that there are a lot of people waiting to see how it all turns out. Some of you are genuinely interested and hopeful. Some of you seem like you're just lining up to tear it apart. Me, well, I've had some good times with the Kinect so far, but it's always been in controlled situations. Tomorrow, the Kinects we ordered from Amazon will show up here and we'll get to find out for ourselves. And since we're all in this together, I figured hey... what better way to do this than to find out live, on the Internet, all damned day long?
So that's the plan. We're not 100 percent sure when the Kinect is going to show up, but once the mail gets here, we're going to crack it open, walk it over to the green screen, and start running through every game we can get our hands on. So far, that list includes...
- Sonic Free Riders (the first retail Kinect game that showed up at our office, incidentally)
- Dance Central (which isn't here yet, but I have faith in Harmonix's ability to put things in the mail)
- Kinect Adventures (dude, it comes with it!)
- Kinect Sports (sports!)
- Kinect Joy Ride (teensy cars!??!! LET'S GO)
- Kinectimals (Thinking about naming my Tiger "Kudo" over here, what say you?)
- DanceMasters (can I dance centrally and become a master of the dance at the same time?)
I expect that by the time tomorrow actually comes around, this list will have grown a bit bigger. Ubisoft has Your Shape, Motion Sports, and Fighters Uncaged, for example. Konami has Adrenalin Misfits, too. Either way, we're going to probably play this stuff almost all day. At 4PM (Pacific time!), we'll tag out of Kinectland and get into GoldenEye 007 on the Wii for our regularly scheduled Thursday Night Throwdown. Then, after that, if there's still more to see, we'll get back on the 360 and check out some more Kinect stuff. Hopefully, by the end of the day, we'll all have a clearer idea about what, exactly, the Kinect is capable of.
Personally, I'm still really interested in this stuff, even if some of it's clearly aimed at younger players. Dance Central's been fun, and the bowling in Kinect Sports felt totally functional. Faint praise, I know, but that's largely because we haven't been able to see this stuff in our own office yet, and it's been really tough to get a feel for the long-term appeal of the Kinect launch lineup during all of the little events and demos Microsoft has been doing since E3.
So, just to recap, we'll be doing this for HOURS tomorrow. We'll have the chat open and stuff, so come by and get educated about what this magic camera demon can do!
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