Last week, I got the chance to have around 40 minutes of game-time with Microsoft’s upcoming 3D motion camera Kinect. Here are my thoughts. I’ll spoil it here a little. I actually LIKED it.
During a family trip to Alton Towers in Staffordshire, England we heard that there was a Kinect demonstration going on in the park. After a short wait in line, my sister and I got a chance to play Kinect Adventures’ River Rush.
My first impressions using the hardware were very impressive. I’ve only used older camera based motion technology like the Eye-Toy once at a Museum so this method of interaction is totally new to me. One of the biggest arguments I’ve heard against Kinect is, “It’s like a big Eye-Toy and the Eye-Toy sucked.” It really is not just a big Eye-Toy. The level of accuracy in the 3D tracking is almost perfect, unless you put your hands behind your back, which let’s be honest, is understandable.
Not only was the hardware impressive, it was extremely fun. This was the biggest surprise for me. The game responded a split second after you actually moved, which started out slightly counterintuitive but in the long run, this made the game easier, which is a good thing considering the target audience they’re going for with this.
The graphics looked impressive, like most other Xbox 360 games and the sound was good. The entire package seems really well polished. My sister and I stepped aside to let my parents have a go at another Kinect Adventures game, Reflex Ridge. This game involved dodging, jumping and ducking obstacles along an on-rails track. I’ll go into more detail on this game slightly later. My parents came out of this game saying that it was good fun and seemed like it could be a good workout too. You need to use much more energy to play Kinect than you do to play a Wii or I assume a PlayStation Move game, considering that it’s a camera based ultra accurate clone of the Wii.
No really. It's like its black cousin. With a giant glowing ball on top.
After this session we had to leave. The Alton Towers demo booth gives couples a quick 5 minute game each and then move you on. We chatted to the Microsoft staff outside the booth, all wearing their Kinect t-shirts. They suggested we come back later and try out another game or two if we had the time in-between Roller-Coasters and food. After talking it over we decided it was enough fun to come back later on.
We showed up again around lunch time to avoid the queues and sudden rainstorm came out of no where. After another short queue, with umbrellas supplied by Microsoft, we got back in for our second play-through.
We’d seen Kinect Adventures so now we thought we’d ask for something new, Dance Central by Harmonix. My sister takes regular dance lessons of multiple styles and is also part of a local acting troupe so she was really up for giving this game a try.
My dad and I decided to sit this one out although were it not for the huge glass windows on either side of the booth, I might have given it a go myself. My Mom joined my sister in dancing to Funkytown… eventually. The UI on this game took a little while longer to get used to and involved sticking out your arm to select songs from a list then swiping across the screen to choose it. This was the biggest problem as when my sister tried to swipe, she raised her arm a little high, choosing Pokerface. To go back one screen from the confirmation page, my sister had to place her hand over the bottom left of the screen and swipe to the right. Something about this UI just wasn’t working as well as the hold-over to select we’ve seen from the other Kinect games. It looks like once you’re used to it, things will get easier though.
Eventually we got onto the dance. The game seems to track flat images rather than creating the skeletal model that the other games use. The in-song interface is simple although somewhat spaced out. The score is tracked off the left of the screen using the same Star system that the Rock Band series uses while the moves, poses and steps that you have to make is scrolling in a list on the right hand side. The tracking seemed to work well, picking up my sister as the main player and my Mum and one of the Kinect demo staff who was helping throughout the session. New dance moves were introduced throughout the song which made the game more difficult to just pick up and play. There is a step by step mode for each song which teaches you how to do each move individually but that was not demoed to us due to time restraints.
Insert generic image. (Didn't get a video or any pictures of this one. Sadface)
My Mom and Sister left after this saying they found it fun and a good workout. Dance Central seems to have a good selection of music which will no-doubt be added to with DLC.
This was the end of my first time using Kinect. We considered going back after doing more of the rides at Alton Towers but when we came back, the queue was huge, we were tired and there was a giant dark cloud of rain hovering over the park just minutes away from coating us in a thick downpoor.
However, we were set on trying this out again. Upon one of our visits to the booth we asked how long they’d be demoing here. They replied with, “We’re here from the 1st to the 30th of August and we’re also demoing up in London’s Covent Garden.” We were already planning on going to London later in the week so we decided that we would go to this event and see what it was like.
Cut to two days later, its 10:30, we’ve made a booking to try out Kinect for half an hour.
We got in a little early so before we went downstairs to our booth, we got a chance to play Joyride up on a stage which had a screen set up where the Kinect was and a projector showing what the game was going behind us too. While I’m not usually one who likes to be put on show, I managed to come third on my first try. Apparently this was quite rare as the guy running this demo seemed to think I’d done it before. I hadn’t.
Not my picture again. Phail at camera-ing.
There was a small problem tracking my hand in the lower right portion of the UI, probably caused by the strong lighting being channelled into the building through the open doors in front of us. Once I got into a race, everything seemed to be working fine.
I was expecting the lack of anything to hold to be an issue while playing Joyride. I compensated by holding my hands quite close to each other which seemed to be more accurate than holding your hands out as if holding a full sized steering wheel like my Dad was trying to do beside me. I worked out that you drifted by leaning into your turns on my second corner. You boost by pulling your arms in and then pushing out. This actually worked really well, which also surprised me. The game was really responsive as I was taking corners and drifting. There was no noticeable lag like there had been with the Kinect Adventures games. Quickly twisting my hands left and right repeatedly seemed to accurately recreate the F1 wiggle that warms up the tires before a race. Again, the graphics looked great, as with all of these games. The power of the Xbox 360 seems to be best used in a slightly oversaturated style. This is probably why I find Halo 3 looks far prettier than CoD: MW2 or Gears of War does. I’m an artist, I like colour.
We only got to try out the one race, but that was enough for me to know that this game was going to be worth the discounted price that all 1st party Kinect-only games are getting at launch.
This race used up enough time to get downstairs to the three demo-rooms that were set up, each like a different living room. We watched a couple of other small groups, one a family playing a bowling game in the Kinect Sports demo and another playing the same raft game we’d played back at Alton Towers. The best thing about all of these games is that people seem to just get straight into the games and understand what they’re doing. The intuitiveness of the Kinect seems more prominent than the Wii ever did to me.
We decided to start our half hour session with a game that would appeal to the younger crowd more than us as a family, Kinectimals. My sister chose to give this game a go, her being the youngest and most interested in small fuzzy animals.
The first thing I notice is that this game is visually stunning. The animal’s fur looks amazing and the background is very detailed. There are even small rabbits or hares darting around behind the African lion cub my sister chose to play with. There was also the option of a cheetah cub in the demo and we were told that there would be many more in the full game.
The first thing the lion cub did was come right up to the “camera” breathe heavily on it causing condensation to appear and then proceed to sneeze on the camera. You then have to wipe off the area of the camera that was clouded by condensation and droplets of water running realistically down it. My sister then started to teach the Lion Cub how to jump, by jumping herself. It took the cub three attempts to finally get it without falling flat on his face but on the last go, he pounced, the game went into bullet-time and the camera swivelled around the cub, Matrix-Style.
By leaning to the left and right you can rotate the camera slightly around the cub. The cub also mirrors your action and leans to the same side as you. If you raised up your arms, the cub would stand on its hind legs and by lying on the floor with your arms and legs up in the air, the Lion would play dead.
At this point my sister started swinging her arms around a little. This seemed to confuse the Lion Cub somewhat and it started to jump and land rather awkwardly. This could be a function mapped to swinging your arms that was not fully explained in the demo.
The Lion Cub then vanished off-screen for a second and brought back a toy. This started a UI event asking whether the player would like to do the Agility course. The UI worked the same way as most of the other games and my sister selected yes by hovering her hand over the Tick on the right of the screen.
This takes the player to a new area where a figure eight course set up. The camera flies you around the track then you have a two lap time-trial that the player has to Jog on the spot, balance with their arms, duck and jump to make the selected animal complete the course. It didn’t seem to detect ducking that well and both times a ducking obstacle came around, the cub just walked around it. Whether this was just due to the playful nature of the cub or the camera not quite working right, was quite hard to actually tell.
DAWWWWWWHHH!
This was the point where I learnt something new about the Kinect. It can read magnetic strips. We were shown a small toy animal. This was one of many types of cat that could be bought in doll form and came with a tag that the Kinect could scan and then download the same species of animal to Kinectimals. These toys will be avaliable in select stores and zoos on release. This opens up a totally new way of doing DLC. Imagine walking into your local games retailer and browsing little models of cars or weapons to buy for your game all stacked on a shelf, or even just bits of card that you can buy and scan in. Saves putting in a 25 character code each time.
After this quick run, the demo for Kinectimals was over. Talking it over as a group, we decided that this game was too young for our tastes as a family, however we knew several children in our extended family, such as my two-year-old cousin, who would absolutely love this game. It is clearly intended for a younger audience and would be well targeted at a gamer who has a young child between two and five and wants to see this new technology for themselves and still justify it to their other-half.
We then moved onto Kinect Sports. This demo had three parts, Hurdles, Bowling and Conducting the Audience. The last of the three was used to open the Kinect Demo at this year’s E3 event.
Running, running, running, running...
My parents tried the Hurdles first. You play by jogging on the spot and jumping at each hurdle when a sound plays. They both came off this game slightly tired out. We’re not the most active or healthiest of families. At first glance, it looked difficult but when my sister and I had a go, I managed first place and a new record of 19.1 seconds. Not the fastest I could have done, but not bad for a first try, right? My sister came third at about 22 seconds. The trick to this game is getting the jumps perfect. The sound and visual cues are more important than how far it seems like you are from the next hurdle.
We then moved on to the Bowling game. It was shortened to 6 turns rather than a full 10 game and we took it in turns to just play through once. My sister and I both managed to hit 9-0 pins. My Mum then had a go at this and put us both to shame, getting two Strikes. My dad then did even more and got another three strikes and extending the game by 4 balls and finally finishing on a 5 that had gone slightly off to the side. On every strike, a piece of licensed music played, such as Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen, on one of the strikes. There’s also a short animation in the background illustrating what type of ball you played, such as a Spare or Strike or Gutter ball animation that seems to be vanishing from some bowling alleys in the UK.
After this we moved onto talking about EA’s Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, a tagline that Microsoft has to use for every hardware launch by law. This game uses the camera to detect not only your shape, as the name would suggest, but also your clothing colour and type. It will also detect things being flung around such as scarves or ribbons. It seems to combine the skeletal detection technology with the standard camera. Unfortunately it was not available for demonstration so we didn’t get to see it in action.
Finally we moved onto Kinect Adventures yet again. This time my sister and I watched my parents do the Raft game and we did the Reflex Ridge game. Seeing as I’ve already covered the Raft one, I’ll focus on the on-rails obstacle course down here.
Out of all the games we’d seen over the week, this one came a close second favourite to Joyride. You jump to get speed boosts, step left and right, duck and jump to avoid oncoming barriers, which look nicely padded, while occasionally making shapes with your body to collect adventure tokens which add to your total score. The entire experience feels fluid, and the split-screen competition really helped me put all my effort into beating my sister’s score (That’s sibling rivalry for you.) The game lasted around four minutes as I was boosting a little too often, smacking my avatar’s head on a few beams when the game didn’t realise I’d ducked till too late. There is a slight time period between each motion the in-game avatar can make in a row which means you have to think about whether you want to boost, or make sure you miss that next high-bar before you do it, or you’ll lose some speed. This is a shame because sometimes you want to jump and duck when it looks like you have time to do it, and you can in real life, but the game doesn’t let you do two actions too close to each other.
I'm not surprised I hit my head, you can barely see the screen!
My sister and I jumping and ducking.
The last game we played was the Breakout/Arkanoid-with-your-body game, dubbed ‘Rally Ball’. This is one of the first demos that were shown at the Natal announcement in 2009. It’s not changed much, but is seems like it handles a little better than it used to and with slightly less lag. I say slightly because it’s still quite noticeable. You’d think that one of the oldest Kinect Games would be a little more polished. I was having trouble figuring out how far away oncoming balls were too, which made the game harder. If the Xbox was going to support 3D like the PS3, this would be a huge help for me in this game. It still responded to my movements almost perfectly and while I wasn’t doing great, my sister and I seemed to break another one of the highest records. It was still a fun game and allowed for great teamwork with the split-screen type feature this mini-game offered.
Overall my experience with Kinect was a very positive one. My entire family loved it and I also mentioned the chat feature that was being built into Windows Live Messenger for the Kinect as well. This seemed to interest them even more as I am (hopefully) going to be moving away to University in September and taking the Xbox with me. They are planning on a day one Xbox Bundle purchase it seems. I will probably grab a stand-alone unit at some point although it might have to be Christmas for me as I doubt I’ll be able to splash out the £129 on release. The device definitely works as it should in my opinion and I can’t wait to see it break into the more hardcore gaming scene. For example, hand motions or voice commands for squad control while still using you controller to play a standard FPS style game or a nice interface for an RTS style game on a console finally.
I recommend going to see Kinect for yourself if you get the opportunity. Microsoft is touring the United States and has multiple demo booths up in the UK and the rest of the world. You can find out where and when Here for the US. I can’t find news for anywhere else but I know that there are demos in Alton Towers and Convent Garden until the end of the month.
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@ Patrick
I can see an FPS where you pretend you’re holding a gun and pointing it at people being horribly hard work. However, if the Kinect could just pick up arm movements while you’re just using a controller to move around, maybe using the kinect to lean, which was an option in CoD4 on PC, there’s some nice videos demonstrating this being used with a camera. Could be interesting.
@Christopher
That’s very true, holding your hands like a gun would be rather awkward.
I still want to do it though :)
This story made me hope that there is hope out there for Kinect. I want to see some hardcore titles on it first, an FPS on Kinect as gimmicky as it might actually play, would be a great game.