After forming initial impressions of Kinect whilst playing Dance Central, it was with a mild sense of excitement that I moved around to the rest of the Kinect offerings at the show. Microsoft were showing their three party game titles for the new controller; Joy Ride, Kinect Sports and Kinect Adventures, and there was again a reasonable crowd of Eurogamer Expo attendees. Kinect certainly knows how to draw a crowd.
Sadly I only got to try Joy Ride, I was alone and all of the games were set up for two player experiences; playing with the Microsoft rep on Joy Ride felt slightly like being paired with your teacher at school and wasn’t an experience I was keen to repeat.
If you remember back to last year’s E3, Joy Ride was announced as an XBLA title with no mention of motion controller support. Cut to this year’s E3 and the game has become a Kinect launch title. You steer by holding your hands straight out as if holding an invisible steering wheel, and then move your hands back to your chest or above your head to boost or perform tricks after a jump. There’s no need to worry about your speed as you have absolutely no control over it, you’re left to focus on navigating the course and using the available pick ups.
It takes a little while to get used to how Kinect and Joy Ride are interpreting your movements but once you do the game is pretty simple. It’s nowhere near as easy to pick up as Dance Central and you’ll almost certainly crash on your first lap or two. Once you realise you don’t seem to be able to turn particularly tightly, which will almost certainly limit the track design. However, it is reasonably responsive overall and once you’ve worked out where you need to be for Joy Ride to understand your turns the game works.
Sadly I can’t say the same from what I saw of people playing Kinect Sports and Adventures. Sports was being demoed with ping pong and it just didn’t seem to work. People were becoming frustrated with how their moves were being interpreted and it just didn’t look like they were having a lot of fun. Compared to Sports Champions it’s just not as easy to use or as intuitive.
Kinect Adventures actually looks the most like a traditional game and like it has the most potential for fun. Sadly it looks like it suffers from fairly significant lag issues, particularly whilst jumping but it does seem prevalent throughout the game. However, even with the lag people looked like they were enjoying themselves and I’m disappointed I didn’t try it out.
The main issue across all the Kinect games shown was menu navigation. As shown at E3 the first party games feature a system similar the Wii and PlayStation Move, an on-screen hand acts as a pointer, reacting to your movements. The hand seems to move at about half the speed of your actual hand, which is a little annoying, and you have to wait for a timer to complete when you hover over a button to select it. After watching a few dozen people try the system across the three first party titles most seemed to have issues, although personally it didn’t seem completely terrible.
Dance Central actually uses a very different system where you move your hand up and down to scroll through menu options and then swipe your hand across to select an option. This seemed a bit quicker and easier than Microsoft’s system, although a few people did still struggle with it.
Finally the actual technology itself. Basically it works, although not particularly well right now. People were able to switch in and out of games quickly and the camera quickly identified them, and seemed able to track multiple people at once. There was one issue where two people moved backwards instead of moving out of frame as new players stepped in. This seemed to confused the camera, although the audience behind them may have helped in the confusion.
You don’t need a huge amount of space to get it work but it’s not going to work in a small room. Whilst playing Dance Central it turned out I was too close to the camera, but I was maybe about two or three feet back. It looks like you need to be around five to six feet back solely because the camera need to get your whole body in frame. It’s hard to tell how well it will work in your living room, but with far less activity in the background some of the issues may lessen.
Overall Kinect has some potential but Microsoft don’t seem to be the ones capitalising on it. Dance Central was easily the best title on show, blowing the first party titles out of the water. The fitness games that are coming from Ubisoft and EA also look like they should be good, although they weren’t at the show. Right now I don’t see how it will slip into as many genres as the Wii or PlayStation Move but it still seems like fun. However, I won’t be buying it at release. Dance Central has shown me that the technology can be fun, but the price point is just to high for a few games that look interesting.
cc_star
Seems like it could be fun enough in a party/family situation, will have to wait for the second wave of games to see if it offers anything else for gamer’s games.
3shirts
I am just not seeing a lot of positivity about Kinect. It really seems like Microsoft have made a massive misstep with this one.
bajere
its utter crap imo, but i have a feeling it will sell well. lots of 360 ads of happy families playing, sales will come
jimmy-google
Nothing particularly suprising. MS have done nothing so far to suggest this is something I want.
I still have my eyeoy and about 10 games. Improved graphics isn’t enough. Kinect really needs a killer title that you can’t replicate elsewhere.
I was expecting MS to have pulled something out of the bag before release but with a month to go it doesn’t look likely.
djhsecondnature
Whilst playing JoyRide, the tech worked quite well, shame the game is boring as hell. Adventures had horrendous lag for jumping – something that is tried to be solved by telling you to jump earlier. But Sports was the worst, so many issues with either players not being able to hit anything as they had no idea where to move their body, or the avatars not responding to their movement and on plenty of occasions avatars just went berserk by shoving their arms through their body and refusing to move.
bunimomike
Very honest look at it, Kris. Great stuff. It really does appear that MS has failed to create solid technology to use as a springboard to something incredible. However, we’ve all learnt that it’s not about the tech and if MS can bring out a raft of decent/fun games then it’ll sell well in the long-term. Although I remain sceptical as to how much of a slice then can steal from Nintendo.
djdustb
Godd article, I always worry about fanboyism on this and move, but you had it just right.
Lymmusic
even if my 360 hadn’t died last year i doubt i would get kinect. i get the feeling this may hurt the gaming industry.. all it will do is show the mainstream general public that games consoles are silly toys like the wii.
Tuffcub
So reading between the lines.. it doesnt work very well?
djhsecondnature
No. It does not.
djhsecondnature
And where it does work well, it was quite frustrating, e.g. menus.
JesseDeya
You know there’s trouble a brewin’ when at least three of the article’s paragraphs make sympathetic excuses for Kinect’s performance.
I know Kris is trying to be fair, and I commend TSA for reserving judgement until release… but I think we can all read between the lines of “personally it didn’t seem completely terrible”.
I can see that on the back of the Kinect box now…. “TSA say: ‘Not completely terrible!'”
3shirts
From what I’ve seen on various sites, that might actually be the most positive quote they can hope for!
cc_star
Brilliant
I can just see it on the TV ads now
TheSixthAxis: “not completely terrible”
bunimomike
Wonderful idea! Also, maybe in smaller print:
You can also do a smash ‘n grab with it if you get bored with gaming. At least there’ll be no arm-waving lag. ;-)
shields_t
Yup, and Sony use “completely terrible”.
ico
I’m sad / lucky enough to own a wii, PS3 and 360 and have very little interest in Kinect. I think that from a core (for want of a better word) point of view while Kinect is no-doubt interesting and impressive tech, it just will not have the accuracy needed for the majority of games I want to play / buy. I find move much more tempting as it seems to offer much more for both casual party style games and FPSs and the like.
As said by 3shirts it seems like MS have made a mahoosive boo-boo with Kinect though I am of course prepared to be proved wrong. As has already been publicised in the press you could buy a wii for the price of Kinect. As I said I own a wii and if I only ever owned wii sports I’d still consider it a good purchase. Only time (and profits) will tell whether Kinect is a sound idea. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Apnomis
“Basically it works, although not particularly well right now” – That’s not what I want to read on a hands on of a product that is released in a month! Also the distance you have to stand from the camera is going to rule it out for a lot of Xbox owners…
If MS hadn’t have been so cheap and didn’t remove the onboard processor and downgraded the number of tracking points on the body etc it would have probably been possible to track more subtle movements in your hand so you could do something like control the cursor with a flat hand and then make a fist to select in a grabbing motion – hovering over buttons was the system used by the EyeToy, it’s a shame a £130 camera can’t do something a bit cleverer…
It’s also surprising that the best games are coming from 3rd parties, as 3rd parties are going to be much less likely to develop a 2nd wave of games for it unless it’s a big sales success.
I can see Kinect being successful as a peripheral in the game way Guitar Hero guitars are successful, or SingStar mics are successful – there will be one or two games like Dance Central that people will buy it for. But that does not make Kinect a successful controller or a successful platform.
PS Move and the Wii are attempting to build a motion gaming platform, and IMO will be much more successful than Kinect. However that is not to say Kinect won’t sell, in the same way people spent £100 on a DJ Hero turn table just to be used in one game. It depends how you judge success…
tonycawley
Move also requires quite a lot of space to play some games, such a Table Tennis in SC. My lounge is quite small and I struggle for room. Same with Wii. That’s not MS fault, it’s just natural for a device that detects movement, you have to move, therefore you need room to do that in.
cc_star
Move certainly does require a lot more space than is let on
To have the full range of movement in Sports champions you need to be standing quite far back and have a lot of lateral movement. It’s even harder trying to get 2 players of differing heights in on the action, like my daughter and I.
djhsecondnature
I manage quite fine with limited space in my room and a sloped roof. I am sitting down though, but at least it works sitting down… :-p
Apnomis
I manage quite fine using Move in a relatively small area – most games only need to see you sat in your seat which is doable in any room size. More energetic games like Sports Champions only reqire the top half of your body – you can see this quite clearly on the video feed of the calibration screen – so as long as you have the Eye in a suitably elevated position (mine is on top of my wall mounted TV) and set correctly to the wide-angle mode then you really don’t need to be that far from your TV to play without issue.
I don’t know how wide the angle is on the Kinect camera but presumably it’s a lot wider than the Eye’s wide-angle as I would find it virtually impossible to get a full-body capture in my current room layout…
TSBonyman
Kinect has a motor which allows it to follow the player so angle of view might not be such an issue.
I believe when setting up Kinect you have to clear the floor of clutter as Kinect pivots down to use your floor for calibration. That would never work in my livingroom :)