Kinect – Why You Should Get It

 

Motion-controlled gaming is taking the world by storm. The Nintendo Wii brought it to the masses, and now Microsoft and Sony are jumping on the bandwagon with the Kinect and Move. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, and some players will want one over the other for various reasons. But I’m here to talk about Microsoft’s Kinect.

For the uninformed, the Kinect’s main marketing by-line is “You are the controller.” It tracks your body movement with two cameras; one is your typical RGB (colour-sensing) camera, while the other projects and records thousands of tiny beams of infrared light. By interpreting the data from the two, the Kinect is able to capture a three-dimensional representation of you for its various games. Those cameras, combined with a multidirectional microphone, let you interact with your Xbox 360 and games in a way that the Wii and Move cannot.  However, the lack of a controller (like the Wii and Move use,) means that you won’t be playing complex games. The chances of seeing a shooter game like Halo or Call of Duty using the Kinect are slim.

So who is the Kinect aimed at? Families will get the most enjoyment out of it, and the ease-of-use makes it a great party peripheral, much in the same way Guitar Hero and Rock Band became party favourites. Many of the games are aimed at kids and teens, especially ones like kitten-coddling Kinectimals. But with other entries such as Dance Central, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved and Kinect Adventures (which comes with the Kinect sensor,) they are definitely marketing to as broad an audience as they can.

So let’s get down to the details. The Kinect sensor works great, as long as you have the proper room setup for it. You need to have a decent amount of lighting in front of you – too much back lighting washes out the colour camera, making you look like a shadow against a bright white background - a fair amount of room between the sensor and where you plan to play, as well as a wide area to do your movement in. Being able to mount the sensor to the top of your TV or on the wall subtract some of the required distance, and moving coffee tables and couches may be required.

I won’t do any game reviews here, but in order to properly give an overview of the Kinect, some snippets of game action are required.

So first, let me dig into Kinectimals. The motion control works fairly well, capturing your movements and interpreting them into your animal’s actions pretty reliably. However, some of the throwing mini-games gave me a lot of difficulty. Often my throws would end up flying wildly off to the sides or just falling and bouncing at my invisible feet. Some of the pet commands gave me a lot of trouble, especially one that involved spinning my arm like a propeller. Luckily, the game has a very lenient goal system, so failing to give your pet the proper trick command or doing horribly at ball-throwing games isn’t an issue. You can skip those challenges in lieu of others.

On the other end of the spectrum is Dance Central by Harmonix, the makers of Rock Band. Much like Rock Band before it, Dance Central is a game that you drastically improve at over time and with practice. The motion control is awesome in this, letting me focus on my dance moves instead of trying to appease the motion-control gods constantly amidst cries of “That’s what I’m DOING!!!” like Kinectimals.

As well as playing games, the Kinect lets you interact with your 360’s Dashboard in a few new ways. First, there’s motion control built into some of the menus. With some hand-waving and/or vocal recognition, you can launch a game, movie, Facebook, etc without having to turn on a controller. This feature is lacking in some departments; you can’t navigate through the core Dashboard, it’s all done through a special Kinect section. So you won’t be browsing through your save files or the Marketplace with your hands. But being able to say “Xbox, play game” to start one up makes you giggle the first few times. My wife jokingly wonders how long until they patch in “Xbox, kill!”

It’s also worth nothing that some games will capture pictures or short videos of you while playing. If you’re feeling brave and/or shameless, you can share these on Facebook or copy them over to your computer. I haven’t tried this aspect out yet, as I’m not nearly that brave.

Summary, or TL;DR: The Kinect is a great family- and party-pleasing peripheral with a wide range of games. Unfortunately, it seems that there are a lot of bad games in the mix that are going to give the Kinect a bad name. Shoddy programming can lead to motion control issues, leading to frustrated gamers that assume something is wrong with the device, rather than the game itself. But the new way of gaming is great for kids or adults looking to get more exercise on a daily basis.

Look for some Kinect game reviews in the coming days!

Posted by: Wizminkey (Fancy picture coming soon)