First Thoughts on Kinect.
By nukesniper 5 Comments
(Note: Please excuse the shoddy picture quality. I had to use my iPhone 3G to take these pictures. Motion and iPhones don't get along.)
I got to play the Kinect at the Mall of America today. They have a nice booth set up there with plenty of games to try and plenty of fun to be had. They have four Xbox Consoles set up each playing a different Kinect game. All in all, they have Kinect Advenures (namely just the Ricochet game from it), Kinect Sports (Bowling is all I saw, but the worker we talked to said Tennis as well), Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, and Harmonix's Dance Central. Here's a picture of Sharky, the Mall of America's Shark mascot for Underwater World, dancing along to Poker Face.
I only played Your Shape and Kinect Adventures, as I didn't feel stupid enough to dance around to Poker Face in front of so many people. Especially since some of the people doing it looked like they knew what was up. I didn't feel like I did, but I didn't get to try. Also, the longer songs lead to a longer wait and we were pressed for time.
Your Shape was pretty neat. All I did was some kickboxing. It popped up bricks for me to punch, and I punched them. Seriously that is it for what I played. Notably though, Your Shape doesn't hide what the camera is seeing. You show up as a sweet blob creature while you play. I grabbed my foot during this and the game didn't care at all. (Note: I grabbed my foot because Jeff mentioned Kinect didn't like that.) The Kickboxing was plenty fun, but I must be pretty stupid as I always kicked with the wrong foot, and never punched with the wrong hand. I don't know what that was, but whatever.
Your Shape kickboxing has you punch bricks at various positions. It only accepts cross body punches. For example, if the box is high and right, you punch with your left hand to your upper right. It worked really well. When a box is low and left, you kick with your right foot across your body. Same concept, but I couldn't do it right for the life of me. Whatever. There are pictures at the bottom of the thread.
Your Shape yoga looked simple enough. My girlfriend played it, so I don't have too much to tell you. It tells you the criteria that each pose or stance is looking for in the top right, then it outlines your skeletal structure or the points that Kinect perceives to be your joints and you can use that to see what you are doing wrong (if that is the case). Yoga was calm, but at the same time it seemed very responsive and interesting.
Kinect Adventures (Ricochet) was plenty of fun as well. My girlfriend and I stepped up and swatted some balls at imaginary bricks in the distance. We had some technical issues here, but that might have been because there were a lot of people behind us as Sharky had just finished his dance routine, which effectively doubled the crowd there. Ricochet was quite fun, for what it is worth. It is a simple game, but it is fun. However, the slight natural lag of Kinect becomes pretty apparent when you are starting to deliberately swing early so as to actually hit the ball that is flying at you.
To further my "must grab foot to make Kinect sad" adventure, I grabbed my ankle during Kinect Adventures. My avatar on screen freaked out when the hand got close to the foot. So my guy just jerked around as if Kinect was unsure if that one point it saw there was my foot, my hand, or both. That, among other things, is fun to do when you have a representation on the screen that is not just a blob version of you.
I didn't touch Kinect's Bowling game because, yo, it's bowling.
Dance Central was drawing the most people, for good reasons. It looks great and it looks fun. I'm going to wait to play that one some other time, when there aren't a ton of people wondering what the hell these people are dancing for. Most people there seem scared of the thought that you don't touch anything to play the games.
Overall, Kinect seems kind of cool. Yeah, you expected this, but I have to admit I am interested now. It seems half stupid and yet half awesome, all at the same time. The awesome part though is more of a "if they use this power for good" type thing. If they make crap for it for the next year, Kinect will be the thing that wasted out time and killed all controllerless gaming for the future. Alternatively, if they can put out a few interesting things, and promise more and more, Kinect might be the next big thing.
I am certainly excited to see a bit more of the Kinect. After playing it, it is about what I expected, but that doesn't mean that it isn't cool.
P.S. No, I didn't see Sharky play any other Kinect games. I would have loved to see Your Shape measure him and put his blob person on the screen. Some other day maybe.