Previewer	Platform	Publisher	Developer	Players	Release Date
Richard Pilot	Xbox 360	Microsoft	Microsoft	1-2	November 10th

Kinect Impressions Part 1 preview

When the Nintendo Wii was first announced, there were many doubters over whether the technology and vision they presented would actually work in the home. Several years on, both Sony and Microsoft announced their own motion based controllers. Since Sony announced the details regarding the Move back in March, we were wondering when Microsoft were going to reveal any more about their own motion offering. We were finally given an answer this May, when Natal was finally given its official name, Kinect, and a slew of details came pouring out. This week at Gamescom, allaboutgames.co.uk have finally gotten their hands on the tech; does it live up to the promises made at E3? We give our impressions below.

Dance Central

The first game we managed to snag some time with was Harmonix’s Dance Central. Four tracks were available to us and after much deliberation we decided upon “Hella Good” by No Doubt and “Funky Town” by Lipps Inc. The game felt right at home with other rhythm titles such as Rock Band. The familiar star system used to rate your progress is here. Once you picked your song, you’re given the option to practice some of the moves in the song or to just “Perform It”. The first time round, I went straight into the song and suffered as a result; it looks like practice makes perfect will be one of the core philosophy’s you’ll need to take with you to get full enjoyment out of the game. Once you think you’re ready for the big leagues, you can perform the whole song. In both practice and the full song, a dancer will be centre screen performing all the actions required, meaning you’re never lost as to how you should be posed. The core difference between this game and existing rhythm games out there is that you’re constantly in motion. Unlike the Rock Band games of the present, simply performing the actions at the right time isn’t enough. The only way you’ll be able to score the high points is if you’re already moving to the beat. This also highlights one of the issues I had, whereas in the other games you had the note highway to give you an indicator of the timings required for the next note. In Dance Central, there’s no such indication, meaning that the timing of the next action is down to you knowing the memorisation of the beat, something which will come from a few repeat performances.

Despite our lack of rhythm, we had a great deal of fun with Dance Central. Talking about Kinect specific features for a moment, a rendered overlay of what the camera is picking up appears in the corner of the screen and at specific portions of the song, the game plays back some of your recent moves in crazy high speed. Additionally, the game also attempts to help you when you completely fail the current dance move by highlighting specific body parts with a red outline. The user interface is also surprisingly helpful, with large up and down gestures for navigating menus and a simple swipe to accept or cancel an option. Overall, this was a fantastic introduction to Kinect, but didn’t quite capture our attention as much as it should, after all, this is simply dancing to music, something that is already intrinsically movement based. How would the system cope when trying to capture something that we take for granted when using a joypad, like moving a character around on screen?

Kinect Aventures

The search for these answers led us to the stand for Kinect Adventures, a game which will come bundled with every box of the Kinect hardware. We were presented to the final “adventure”, one in a series of adventures that other visitors had already been playing. Our orders were similar, we (myself and Editor Matt Bailey) had to control two avatars on screen; picking up groups of bubbles that would appearing on screen. Many of these would be floating in the air so in order to reach them, we had to fly ourselves to the top of room by holding our arms out and flapping them. To complicate matters, there were also two layers, a front and back position, meaning we had to move closer or further away from the console to collect certain bubbles. Overall, though it was a remarkably simple concept, but it was thoroughly entertaining and felt incredibly intuitive. Most importantly, it felt fun. There was no concept of failure, you just missed a few bubbles. Luckily, we missed relatively little and bubbles were plentiful, meaning our score meter quickly filled up, finally awarding us with a platinum score.

Finishing this suite of challenges awarded us a “live statue”, a humorous character model that you could control similar to the avatars. Using the Kinect’s microphone you could also provide an audio clip which caused the characters mouth to move. We were told by the rep that these could then be sent to other players or family members, providing an amusing way of sending them messages of Xbox Live. Additionally, we were informed that completing these adventures could unlock other items such as achievement points or avatar clothing and accessories. After we finished our session of the game, we eagerly watched the next group take part. This time it was the river rafting adventure that you may be familiar with from E3, where two players were tasked with navigating a raft down a series of rapids collecting points as they went. This time co-op regarding more co-ordination as the two players have to jump at the right time for the raft to reach alternative routes. Doted along the course were a series of camera points, much like what you’d see at your favourite theme park. These provided an opportunity for your to perform a special pose or action shot which would then appear at the end of the game. Although not shown, this was also integrated into social media, allowing you to upload them to Facebook and share with your friends. Judging by the menu system and talking to the rep, it certainly sounded like there were lots of variety in the challenge that would be available. The interface here was also pretty intuitive, something that should be expected of Microsoft’s first party line up.

By combining this with the avatar system, Microsoft have made it easier for you to get immersed with the game, using a system that players are already familiar with. Unlike Dance Central, which shows you what you should be doing, your avatar is performing an almost 1:1 movement based on your actions meaning that you can see exactly what the game thinks you’re doing and therefore how you should react. As we already discussed, every Kinect owner will be getting this game for free and we couldn’t think of a more perfect introduction to the world of Kinect. This covered two first party titles from Micrsoft’s November Kinect launch, but how are the third party developers getting to grips with this new tech?

Game Party: In Motion

Later on, we found an empty looking stand for Game Party: In Motion. We eagerly hustled the rep to allow us to play and we started to play a series of three mini-games. The game was themed around an amusement arcade, where each of the challenges was tied to a particularly machine or area inside this one massive zone. Up first, was a whack-a-mole esque game where both our hands and our feet had to stop on creatures that popped out of an on-screen arcade. This is pretty fun and very soon we were quickly competing for top score. Second, was a curious beer pouring game. A series of three long tables were presented to us, each with its own bar pump and glasses. Avatars would come into the room and walk along a particular table. It was our job to switch to the relevant tables and pour them a drink and slide it on down to them. The closer the avatar got to your, the less points you get, but failing to provide the avatar with a drink or even worse, letting the drink slide off the table would result in a loss of points. The issue with this game was that it was too sensitive, meaning that you often overshot the table you were looking for, going from the far left to the far right instead of stopping at the centre table which is what you originally wanted. The final game was essentially a themed game of bowling with a puck replacing the bowling ball. A quick swipe of the hand would sent the puck down the lane towards the pins.

Overall, we weren’t too impressed by the mini-games as they seemed to be slightly different takes on games that you’re already familiar with. Additionally, the interface seemed very unintuitive compared to the titles we had already seen. The menu system, rather than relying on a series swipes or wide expressions, required you to have your hand in a certain position for it to recognise that you wanted to accept or decline an option. Other minor interface issues were also present, although this may be due to Kinect itself. This was particularly noticeable during the bowling game, were we would often find the game pausing unexpectedly or being a little too sensitive in how you would sent the puck down the alley. Would any of the other third party titles be equally as unresponsive?

Motion Sports

At the Ubisoft stand, we got a chance to try out Motion Sports, this was their take on the sports party game and we got to play the boxing portion of the package. The fight took place in a busy stadium based boxing ring and our AI opponent got into his stance and the match begun. The visual interface was nice and slick; a minimal HUD appearing around our opponent, displaying both health bars and a match timer. Silhouetted gloves appeared on screen, roughly matching where they would be in relation to our body if the camera was placed where our head would be. Adopting the typical, closed in stance, we deflected most of the blows that were sent our way before responding a few heavy counters of our own. Within the first round, we had felled our opponent; it felt incredibly easy but also very satisfying. When the game finished we were presented with a full stats list of the round, included hit ratios, etc. It promised a lot of detail, something quite rare in the games collection/party genre. The menu system offered hints as to what would be provided in the full game. In addition to a varying selection of fighters to chose from, other events were promised from the mundane, skiing and horse riding to the more interesting, hand-gliding and American football.

This was the first game that we saw attempt to perform a true 1:1 mapping of your body movements to the game. Not surprisingly, this also led to the most noticeable lag that we’ve seen with Kinect so far. It certainty wasn’t much and when you’re actually playing the game, you too caught up in the action to really notice it happening, which is good news as this doesn’t cause it to detract from the game. This was the game’s only real downfall as otherwise it’s shaping up to be an interesting release; our main concern is whether it will set itself apart from Kinect adventures enough to warrant a purchase.

Thoughts so far:

The biggest problem that these games have is with the interface, whether this is due to the fact that Microsoft have been tinkering with the tech for longer or if it’s due to some deeper issue is too early to tell. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an impressive start from the third parties so far which seemed to be falling into the Wii trap of providing a selection of mini games for you to choose from.

This completes the first part of our Gamescom impressions of Kinect. Look out for part two coming soon to the site, covering Your Shape, and others.

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