Woo Kinect...
Woo...
I worked out that I don't think I genuinely have enough room for a running around Kinect-ic experience.
I'll have to look at the lifestyle videos and see if I am a suitable candidate. At the moment, the more contained Wii Remote is the better option for my living room dimensions.
XBOX!
I am intrigued by Dance Central, I thought that makes good use of the technology. It has motor built-in which allows it to rotate and scan what's in front, hopefully the interface will accomodate and do away with Rubik's Cube.
Yay! its only going to be £130! Bargain. Looking forward to it. Brilliant. Genius.
The guts of all the reviews are:
What, I have to let them out of the cellar?
No its fine, just put up a poster of outside like the guy above must've done.
http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/game-controllers/microsoft-xbox-360-kinect-review-50000560/
Ignoring the score. This is basically saying it's too imprecise and glitchy for 'proper' gaming and 2 player only, so basically pointless for party games. Sounds a bit Atari Jaguar. Now all it needs is a new version of Tempest and I'm sold.
The only thing that I can see useful is head tracking (if it can manage that). So a trad racing game, with a bit of head tracking would be awesome. I think they have this on the PC already with some webcam shenanigans.
So as an extension of the traditional controller setup, but as a standalone for over a tonne. Its not gonna fly. And if I'm not buying it, who is? I'm the centre of the GAMING UNIVERSE!!!!
Err no. Head tracking would be terrible. Unless you had a robot that could move your 46" plasma around the room too.
Since we're all supposed to be wearing 3D glasses now why don't they just stop dicking about and give me a full VR headset.
Come on, not one to one head tracking, nuanced analog head tracking. You can tilt your head and so forth without totally cocking your view up.
Still be rubbish though. Lets try making better games before enhancing them with flailtech.
Sneezing would be a problem, I do think the sneeze issue is a genuine one, with a controller in your hand, you can scratch yer balls, pick yer nose, fart, without too much impact on the game. This one to one idea, like you are Pinocchio to the xbox kinects Geppetto, tail is wagging the dog here.
However, no one is saying that all our controllers are going to be confiscated by the government or anything, I'm sure one or two titles will work out how to do something interesting down the line.
Nice, so it seems to be turning into an interesting hacking tool. Hell I'd buy it to do this:
I know someone who has this, and I will be able to have a play over chrimble with it.
He wasn't quite aware of the guns and death %age of games on the 360... not a back catalog entirely suitable for chidlers.
Cool, yeah, its alright. I mean the whole Kinect experience is a bit inconsistent across the whole platform. The interface isn't consistent and the xbox isn't that happy about having multiple people logged in and all that jam.
Kinect Adventures is a bit tech demo, Unreal engined, but generally fun, if a bit wooly.
Kinect Sports demo was fun and slick.
Then everything else I tried was 0.5 generation crappitude... I think it was only one game, but it made the pinball game that came with windows 98 seem upto date and innovative.
Still, lots of potential, alot of work to do with joining up old xbox land with new and making the whole user experience more glued together.
I'm sure it will shake itself out, Rare made the Kinect Sports which is typically overproduced but well designed...
I caved in and went and ordered one in the sales, with Dance Central.
... as if I'm ever really going to play that.
There is a huge glut of terrible looking fitness 'games', and a lot of dance games, but not much else atm. Huge lack of innovation so far.
Looking forward to Steel Battalion, and some of the second gen Kinect stuff tho...
I don't think the horse has bolted on the idea. It's different enough to the in hand motion things to be interesting enough.
The xbox slim is nice enough, tempted to do that switch since mine is auditioning for the Isle of Wight hovercraft route. I even saw HDD transfer kits in HMV!
But yeah, we popped into a Blocky to see what was out, it was just dirge, not so different to the swathes of mediocrity that the Wii got, but atleast then no one was sure what the "market" was then hey, this launch is a tiny bit more cynical with the Mii rip offs and loose gametypes.
Hmmm. HMMMMMM.
After an hour I was ready to throw this thing in the bin. Two hooge problems:
- you need at least 3 and ideally 5 meters clearance in front of your TV. I don't want to sit that far back, and I'd have to rearrange the entire room. What a load of balls! The solution is going to have to be wall mounting the bastard high up, what a palaver.
- most of the games are utter, utter wank. Kinect Adventures is fucking dreadful, and most of the demos are crap-mongus.
But THEN I put Dance Central on, which I don't really expect to play much, and some of my concerns were assuaged. Its a proper game, thats had some real thought put into it, and actually fun and stuff.
Technically a big improvement over the EyeToy, and more interesting than the redundant Move, but my god that initial lineup is arse.
The two best demos are on the Kinect Adventures disk and not available to download, and very few demos exist at all. Weak.
Kinect Sports needs an honourable mention based on the demo, which has had some attention paid to it, but space constraints made the running bit impossible. Ubisoft's Your Shape is also a good attempt at a Wii-Fit ish thing.
It needs way more crap like this though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCbURRDUUdI
I can't get my head around this thing. I was first thinking about how it would be great if you could have motion control in conjunction with a pad. Things like what Sega have got in the arcade now with Border Break and Shining Force, regular controls plus a touch screen.
I thought with something like this you could use a finger as a pointer to access on-screen hot-keys or something, like a virtual touch screen. But it doesn't track that accurately does it? It's all based around big exaggerated movements from what I've seen.
That Ultraman video wins on so many levels though!
If someone can properly pull something like that off as a decent game they deserve mad props. Especially if you had to pull off the full poses with a group of friends to summon your awsumrobot!
Another one I'd love to see is (if it can track the movement) is a version of the Fist of the North Star/Fighting Mania arcade game. If it could superimpose Kenshiro onto your frame as you do the moves I'd buy two of them! XD
I thought with something like this you could use a finger as a pointer to access on-screen hot-keys or something, like a virtual touch screen. But it doesn't track that accurately does it? It's all based around big exaggerated movements from what I've seen.
I don't think it can quite do that, but you don't need exaggerated hand movements - it is a bit like a wii motion plus for your whole body, including position and rotation.
It can easily track both hands separately as pointers, including to a degree what you're pointing at, so Child of Eden might actually end up being teh genius.
Another one I'd love to see is (if it can track the movement) is a version of the Fist of the North Star/Fighting Mania arcade game. If it could superimpose Kenshiro onto your frame as you do the moves I'd buy two of them! XD
This is definitely do-able - there is a punching mode in the Your Shape demo which is basically just Fighting Mania!
The fundamental problem with Kinect and Arcade style games is that there is an either unintentional or intentional latency... I think it takes a "while", say a 10th of a second?, to discombobulate what it sees and recombobulate it into something useful.
So for a fast action music game... aka JuBeat with button mashin I'm not sure it has the poke to just deal with one limb, the hand say, and perform the action live. Everything including the Kinect Hub has a bit of a lag or latency to it. The Kinect Hub has an EyeToy like wait for confirmation when over a button. In theory you could, hand up and punch to confirm maybe, but interpreting that gesture accurately enough would be a challenge... this is wot buttonz is 4.
Child of Eden.... Why are they doing this? If that game is even slightly awesome I'm going to have to buy one
- there's something vaguely Panzer Dragoon coming out too I've seen. That will definitely break my resistance.
Dance Central has a much more immediate and less annoying menu nav. mechanism.
No way you could JuBeat though, unless it was 9 giant buttons.
Child of Eden could sell me on this, but then I just think that game will probably be better with the pad?
OT, but the Dancing game for Playstation Move I thought was alright. Seemed to track motion OK and appeared to be tracking more than just the lightbulb. Harmonix though should have this tight on Kinect.
If I look at my playing habits, which mainly focus on arcade style games I just can't see a fit for Kinect.
Hopefully there will be some truly innovative titles coming along soon, rather than a swathe of me-too Wii knock-offs.
Well, the best thing that could be released is Samba hey, latency permitting.
That's it. The Kinect is officially awsum.
That is pretty much how Dance Central plays, but without the 3D model mapping.
This is really impressive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxSMefslOf0
Just think of all the possibilities this opens up for video games!
.... I got nothing.
Salvation?
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/07/nyko-shows-off-zoom-for-kinect-and-play-clock-for-3ds-at-e3/
Kinect Fun Labs is up on the marketplace apparently, which makes it even less likely I'll ever bother plugging Kinect into my PC.
I've mentioned elsewhere, but I am staggered by the implementation of Kinect. I have a healthy sized living room, and a totally normal ikeay TV table thing. Now the guide on starting up tells you you need the Kinect sensor between 2ft and 6ft off the ground... my issue is the TV table can't be more than a foot off the ground, so the only way to get the sensor in the right place is to levitate it.
Its kinda working on the Kinect Menu, but calibration doesn't work, as it doesn't seem to know what a sofa is, or that its there... so instead of telling you to maybe think about the sofa, it guides you through calibration asking you to walk into the sofa. Special.
Showing a tumbnail of what the kinect can see is a sort of cop out. I'm going to have to investigate mounting the sensor above the TV, creating some orwellian nightmare, but still there is no garuntee that it will work even then, I tried politely balancing it ontop of the Plasma, but it fell off with alarming weight.
The Nyko thing might help... I am resistant to purchasing more nonsense though, I am also wondering if the mount on the bottom is generic for a cheap camera stand, here's hoping... still rather dumb all round.
This Kinect nonsense came with my console, I had no choice either.
I tried to set it up but it says our room is too noisy and too small. So fuck it.
13 milliseconds of research (looking at the bottom of the base of the stupid thing) it has custome blippies for mounting to miniature minotaur head, I haven't bred any of those lately. I am seriously considering getting the crapmount from GAME and getting my drill on... but for a totally futile piece of gaming anachronism... I think the Forza usage involves face tracking which needs the device closer anywyas.
What
a
shambles.