Kinect FORE!
By RelentlessKnight 1 Comments
I forgot to write about my impressions about the Kinect, I brought it last month and been loving it since. However it took me awhile to find a Kinect in my area, going to Walmart, Bestbuy and EB since November and it has been sold out, and the fact that people wait in line before the Bestbuy opens and snatch all the Kinect and hearing that it isn't sold out their websites is irritating and annoying, wasting all my time to go there and expecting nothing in return.
Anyways I was fortunate on the second week of January to get a Kinect since they have restock the shelves, I didn't really buy any games and just wanted to play Kinect Adventures instead. At first I was quite reluctant to buy it because of the spacing/distance that needed to be required to play the Kinect, especially if you want to play with someone else aswell. But after buying the Kinect and looking at 3D TVs, I went back home and try the Kinect.
The installing process was easy and I was surprised that I have both the space for two players and the Kinect fits on top of my 46" inch TV with it being taped on it. When I booted up my 360 and have to update the patch for Kinect, it has a lot of warning notices and I guess, since the Wii, with idiots completely destroying their Plasma TVs and whacking someone's head. Though there are reports that more morons are doing that as well with the Kinect.. I cannot fathom how dumb people are, not distancing themselves while playing the Kinect, I mean, there are warning signs telling you to distance yourself from your partner to play and yet a bunch of Youtube videos say otherwise of whacking their kid in the head or Not moving enough furniture and getting into accidents. It's just pathetic.
But I digress, my friend came over for dinner and play Kinect Adventures with me - just like Wii Sports, it's like a tech demo but they added some kind of a story to it, albeit a stupid one. Anyways, I didn't play through the story part of it and decided to start the Freeplay Mode, me and my friend played all of the six activities from Rally Ball, Space Pop, River Rush to Reflex Ridge. And I was surprised that there's a "drop in/out" option where your friend could just drop into the game while I'm playing, something like Rally Ball.
In total, when I booted up Kinect Adventures, me and my friend played around three hours or so of getting Platinum/Gold Medals, taking dumb-ass pictures of ourselves and getting more achievements. Also the story mode, has those freakish looking blobs monsters that you could record and upload which is fun at the start but getting an achievement to record 20 and more of those motherfuckers is annoying and stupid as hell since recording twice is just obnoxious of you making a fool out of yourself.
A few weeks later, I got both Fighters Uncaged and Dance Central, I really didn't get Fighters Uncaged but someone brought that as a gift for me, a dumbass gift. I booted up Fighters Uncaged and thought everything was awful, the motion controls are awkward and poor as well as the overall structure of the game and the fact that the tutorial is a fucking pain in the neck to play. And the fact that there's no great fighting game on the Kinect nowadays..
But Dance Central was what redeemed for me with the Kinect, sure the game has a steep, steep learning curve of figuring out how to mimic the flashcards but when you get it, it's just fun. In fact that steep learning curve is in every single song, making it a challenge to first learn it in the Break it Down mode and then play it. But the huge problem is that the Break it Down mode isn't really helpful even if the instructor tells you what to do as well as the flashcards being hard to figure out which position of dance you're going to do.
I swear, it took me hours to figure out Galang's stupid song and eventually figured out that the dancer's movements are so wrong and one of the flashcards didn't want me to shake down to my knees as seen by the British dancer but bow down and up again.. it's just tedious that they should of added some kind of animation so I don't get fucking confused to it. The other song that I first got trouble with is Evacuate the Dance Floor by Cascade as one move put me off and took me a while to figure out and Soulja Boy's song also get me pissed out in spots as the hopping part in instances, made me trip and fall down.
Also a number of songs like Rihanna, Lady Gaga and so on, had made me feel uncomfortable, dancing like I'm a fag or something... the song choices and the movements if seen by other people is just terrifying if you're a dude, dancing on your hips and doing to cowgirl is painful to dance. But it's funny if you have a dude dancing to those songs. Speaking about choosing which dancer, I had unlocked all the costumes for all of the dancers (well expect that last locked character but the achievement counted it) and loved the acthentic dancer as well as that asian dude. I was surprised that Just Dance wasn't hard as it suspected, seeing that even earlier songs like Galang are just frustrating to play and the fact that it's the last song.
I was disappointed that there's no story/campaign to Dance Central like Rock Band, making it feel more like a rip-off for 50 dollars of having a number of songs, a calorie counter and mulitplayer mode, both online and offline called Dance Battle. I had turned out the Calorie counter and had lost a thousand calories as well as both of those achievements regarding that feature. That part is also fun as it encourages me to dance more foolishly in the Freestyle portion of every song.
Anyways, my favourite songs are Just Dance by Lady Gaga, Funkytown and Bust a Move by MC and had played it dozens of times and been loving it to dance. Overall the Kinect is a great workout device and been loving it since.
