Amber: Well, well, well, what a difference cutting out the nonsense does. First a message to everybody who heard about Microsoft's little gift to attendees. Yes, they're shipping me a free Xbox 360 latest iteration. No, it doesn't bear any weight on my opinion. I merely consider it an appropriate apology for last night's pain.
The conference was pretty good and Kinect's real debut was successful. The show started off with the usual choice of Shooter A, B, or C. Oh yeah, and Fable 3 which gets a shrug from me. I did think Metal Gear Solid: Rising looked pretty cool with its swordplay. I'm interested in seeing how the sword angle is controlled in game. Ultimately the show was what we expected, what we've seen before. Let's talk about Kinect.
The two titles that impressed me the most and showcased the device's capabilities the best were Dance Central and Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. Recognizing specific, broad body movements are likely to be where Kinect both shines and offers something not easily reproducible on, say, the Wii.
Dance Central recognizes and reproduces a large variety of dance moves (no, it's not 1:1, the game's dancers actually know what they're doing.) This is what fans of the old Dance Dance Revolution series always hoped it could be; even I'm intrigued. No dance pad to stomp on (or fall off of) is a very good thing. Your Shape: Fitness Evolved offered what you'd expect with aerobics and yoga, following body movement precisely. It was quite impressive.
From the types of performances demoed at the conference, Kinect has some real strengths in incorporating the specific twists and turns of the body into game play, but it's no controller strength is also its weakness; the Star Wars light saber game is case in point. Sure, you can swing around an imaginary sword, but you're stuck on rails because there's no real input option for freely guiding a character around an environment. As such, I see three general types of games benefiting from Kinect: games where the character is stationary and interacts with objects or virtual pets, games where the player's body gyrations are the game play, and games on rails.
The conference was pretty good and Kinect's real debut was successful. The show started off with the usual choice of Shooter A, B, or C. Oh yeah, and Fable 3 which gets a shrug from me. I did think Metal Gear Solid: Rising looked pretty cool with its swordplay. I'm interested in seeing how the sword angle is controlled in game. Ultimately the show was what we expected, what we've seen before. Let's talk about Kinect.
The two titles that impressed me the most and showcased the device's capabilities the best were Dance Central and Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. Recognizing specific, broad body movements are likely to be where Kinect both shines and offers something not easily reproducible on, say, the Wii.
Dance Central recognizes and reproduces a large variety of dance moves (no, it's not 1:1, the game's dancers actually know what they're doing.) This is what fans of the old Dance Dance Revolution series always hoped it could be; even I'm intrigued. No dance pad to stomp on (or fall off of) is a very good thing. Your Shape: Fitness Evolved offered what you'd expect with aerobics and yoga, following body movement precisely. It was quite impressive.
From the types of performances demoed at the conference, Kinect has some real strengths in incorporating the specific twists and turns of the body into game play, but it's no controller strength is also its weakness; the Star Wars light saber game is case in point. Sure, you can swing around an imaginary sword, but you're stuck on rails because there's no real input option for freely guiding a character around an environment. As such, I see three general types of games benefiting from Kinect: games where the character is stationary and interacts with objects or virtual pets, games where the player's body gyrations are the game play, and games on rails.