Hands On: Kinect

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.