However, it wasn’t all just about Kinect. Microsoft took the opportunity to show off some of their other technologies, such as how Foxtel will work through the Xbox, the Microsoft Surface, some of the new peripherals, some of the new applications of Microsoft Office 2010 and a bit of insight into the upcoming Windows 7 phone. Unfortunately, the latter was unavailable for actual demonstration. That, and there were two little games called Halo: Reach and Fable III, which we'll be covering in the very near future.
Ah, so that's when we'll get Kinect.
Aside from the usual media and PR that show up to these things, we also got a chance to play Kinect with Rugby dual International player, Lote Tuqiri. To his credit, he was polite, really got into the spirit of things and looked like he was having a bit of fun. Overall, there were six games on show, and the only one we didn’t get to was Kinectimals. Unfortunately, we ran out of time for that one… In any case, here are some impressions on the other five, as well as Ubisoft's Motion Sports:
Your Shape
Ubisoft’s fitness title, Your Shape was amongst the strongest of the titles shown. Only one of the exercises was on show, but we managed to get a hold of how to play it very quickly. Basically, we had to hit or kick the blocks with the opposite hand or foot as they appeared on screen. The menu selection was intuitive enough, and it was impressive that the camera managed to pick up my hat as well. Hopefully that didn’t stuff up my calorie measurements too much…
According to the attendants from Ubisoft, our score was quite a good one. Interestingly, it seems that the exercises do a good job of adapting for the person’s size, as you would expect. In terms of feedback, while it’s difficult to know what you’re hitting when you’re flailing at thin air, the fact that your actions were picked up as easily and lag-free as they were definitely helped. Couple this with the variety, options and feedback in the workouts, Your Shape definitely has potential to work very well as a genuine fitness game.
I seem to be getting both a fanbase and a workout...
Kinect Adventures
To our great delight, we got to jump in and play alongside Lote Tuqiri in this one. Literally. Even though Kinect Adventures only supports up to two players for the moment, players can literally jump in and out any given time. And you often switch on the fly playing co-operatively and competitively. As you may have seen in the videos, we got to play the rubber rafting course and it was one of the more responsive games.
Another game had us working co-operatively in a long corridor that had a series of crates and targets at the end. Here, we had to hit and kick dodgeballs at these crates and targets. It got quite hectic as the harder you hit the balls, the faster they shot out and sometimes we lost count of how many balls were on screen. The competitive mode that we played saw us travelling an obstacle course. While being transported on a platform, we had to move our bodies to dodge the various obstacles by jumping, ducking and weaving, while trying to pick up the scoring tokens on the way.
In a cute twist, the game takes your photo at various points and gives your poses a name. There was talk of the option of uploading these photos to Facebook. Aside from the lack of 'feel', particularly with being hit by dodgeballs or the obstacles that you’re supposed to dodge, something that was a little bit off-putting with Kinect Adventures, was a delayed response. We’d jump or duck, but the on-screen character wouldn’t jump or duck. Given our time with the other games, it seemed that this was a programming issue, rather than a cause for alarm. And of course, it wouldn’t have had anything to do with Lote being eight-feet tall and taking up most of the playing space…
My mate and I check out Kinect Adventures. A title for everyone?
Kinect Sports
Developed by Rare, there were six sports on offer from Kinect Sports, though we were assured that there will be more in the final build. First up, we played Soccer, where we were given arrows at our feet that would indicate which way we could pass, where you had to read the play as well as kick properly. Once there was no one else in front of us, we had shots at the goal. The game works very well in defence too, where you can move from side to side to block a pass. However, we felt that the opposition was being a bit lenient and slow. Soccer played very and responded very well, and there will be co-operative and competitive modes, as well as penalty kicks.
Bowling seems to be the cornerstone for motion gaming development, so we had to check out the Kinect Sports version as well. It works well for both left and right-handers, as two hand icons appear above the ball on your turn. For example, if you hold your right hand over the right icon, you will pick up the ball with your right hand. We didn’t get much spin, but we did find that technique certainly mattered, else left a hole in the alley or speared down a gutter ball. In short, it works well and you don’t have to worry about any loose-flying objects (though be careful of your jewellery).
A new event to the sports scene was Javelin. We envisage all the events that require players to run on the spot to be a little awkward to actually do (not to mention see), but if the Javelin is anything to go by, it will at least work. The setup is fairly intuitive as well, as your runway uses a colour indicator to let you know when to release the Javelin. However, it wasn’t until the booth attendant told us to aim our throw really high that we got some real distance. We don’t know if such support will be available in-game.
Once explained, Kinect Sports works really well.
Dance Central
Along with Your Shape, Kinect looks like it will be relying on these sorts of games that encourage full body movement as the main selling point. At E3 2010, the developers of Dance Central were keen to point out how easily the game allowed ‘non-dancers’ to get into it. Our results were mixed… But before we get to that, as silly as this may sound, Dance Central seemed to do the best job of picking up the motion-controlled menu commands.
This was our second experience with a Kinect dancing game, the first being Dance Masters. Music tastes aside (J-Pop vs. W-Pop), the titles work quite differently. Where as Dance Masters has the player miming the silhouettes that appear, Dance Central has you mimicking the on-screen dancer like a mirror. And you’ll get visual queues that tell you whether or not you’re doing it right. So for example, the parts of your body that you’re not moving correctly will flash red until you’re doing it right.
In the middle of the dances, there seems to be a section that allows you to go ‘freestyle’. Kinect will then record your little dance and play it back for you when you’re done. It's certainly going to make for some interesting party experiences. For now though, we’re not quite sure how the game will help us to become better dancers, but hopefully this will be clearer once we really get our groove on in November. Suffice to say, Kinect seems like the perfect device for dancing games, as both Dance Masters and Dance Central are just about as functional as you can get.
Yes, I'm trying to escape to make room for someone with more skill.
Kinect Joy Ride
E3 2009 brought about an odd publisher sub-battle – the competition for a customisable kart racer. While the PlayStation 3 received ModNation Racers earlier this year, Joyride originally supposed to come as a free Xbox Live Arcade download. Now, this title has evolved into Kinect Joy Ride, where your avatars will drive karts with no controller and nothing but motion controls.
Sure, you will look pretty dumb standing there with your arms out as if you’re holding a steering wheel. You’ll probably look even dumber as you lean from side to side to drift or lean back and forward to do back and forward flips when you have big air. And as you gain boost by drifting, you pull your arms in then push them out to use the boost. However, the racing had a good sense of speed, the karts handled extremely well and responses worked extremely well. This was definitely one of the more polished and functionally successful games on show.
Joy rides are all good and well until someone falls out of the car.
Motion Sports
This was Ubisoft’s take on Kinect Sports. There will be nine sports in all, including Soccer (penalties), Horse riding, Gliding but we only got to play Skiing and Football (or to us, Gridiron). One aspect of Motion Sports that obviously still required calibrating was the menu control. It required us to ‘clap’ but in such a specific way that without the attendant, we may not have gotten through it.
As someone who knows how to ski, it was remarkable how well Kinect managed to simulate the experience. Your movements were picked up very easily and accurately, where even an action as small as lifting your toe would be picked up. The gridiron was a bit simpler, where you only had to dodge oncoming defenders as you ran for a touchdown. As a defender came in, you would have a moment to orientate yourself, as the screen went black and white, and make a decision on how to dodge. This can be either through literally strafing or jumping.
Overall, Motion Sports worked very well too, but it was probably a little more obvious than the other games that it still needed some work.
The games themselves worked a treat, now if only the menu controls were the same...
So, does it work?
Short answer: yes. Had we only played one Kinect game, we may have been swayed by the flaws in that one title and had doubts over the technology. However, having sampled seven different games, we found that any flaws in the motion control are either down to programming, lack of polish or interference from people walking around behind us. The only areas that are still unanswered are how will the controls handle options such as menus, exiting, restarting and changing configurations, as well as how accessible it will be to non-gamers. Overall, we can see that Kinect does have the potential to work very well.
Any fears and concerns that we may have had previously regarding the functionality and use of Kinect are pretty much out the window now. In the context of the motion control war, Kinect is not only looking like it will bring something new and different, but something that could potentially change how we control our interfaces and how we play casual games. Given the reports coming in from the PlayStation Move launch line-up, Kinect in the very least is coming up with a hugely solid, functional and varied line-up. However, the burning question for most readers here is most likely: how will this affect my core games? While there haven’t been any applications shown, the best that we can probably hope for is that it will co-exist with current core titles such as Fable III and Halo: Reach.
Kinect for the Xbox 360 will be available in Australia on 18 November 2010. It will be available for AU$199 and will be packaged with Kinect Adventures. A separate console bundle will be available as well. PALGN would like to thank Microsoft and PPR for organising the Microsoft Open House and Green Carpet events, and giving us a chance to ‘Kinect’.
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