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

Kinect Impressions Part 2 preview

Yesterday we gave an overview of some of the Kinect games that we’ve been playing at Gamescom. The results were a little mixed, with lots of praise for Kinect Adventures but a rather shocking performance from the third party offerings. As the first public day of Gamescom gets underway, allaboutgames.co.uk checks out some of the other Kinect games that are on show.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 the videogame

Microsoft’s stand were showcasing many of the Kinect titles that will be available at launch and it was here that we got invited to play Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 the videogame. In addition to winning the award for the longest name at the show, it also happens to feature Kinect support. Before going into the booth, my initial impression was that this would be one of the games that would cater for the more hardcore of us out there; potentially offering us a glimpse as to the possibilities that await us when other developers start to make their own titles for Kinect.

Upon entering the perspex booth, we were presented with a time trial challenge. Rogue wizards would be appearing on screen and Harry is taxed with neutralising them as quickly as possible. At our disposal were two spells, an offensive missile that would fire a bolt of energy from Harry’s wand and one defensive spell that raised a shield, to block incoming attacks. Both of these spells required a gesture to activate; a flick of the wrist towards the screen would shoot a bolt and raising both hands, palms up, in front of you, activates the shield. The gameplay itself was incredibly simple, almost too much so, as the actual movement of the character was handled for you. It was essentialy an on-rails shooter, albeit with some Kinect enhanced gimmickry.

The German journalist who went first, racked up a pretty decent score and before long it was my turn. At least I thought it was; Kinect had other ideas. Ideally the game is designed to be hot swappable, with Kinect identifying that a player has left its line of sight and when someone has stepped back in. When my turn came up, this sort of worked; the new player configuration appeared and it seemed to recognise my basic posture, but it failed to complete the setup required. The rep in the booth suggested that someone else should try, which we did and that appeared to solve that problem. It looked like I would have to wait a little longer to try the game which drew some sympathetic looks from members of the crowd.

When I finally got to give it a go the second time, it worked first time, so I quickly got into the spirit of the game. Casting the spell was simple enough, but due to the on-rails nature of the challenge it felt like there was very little variety to the mission. I’m not convinced that this was entirely the game’s fault, though. Throughout our playthrough, there were many signs that there were unexplored areas to the gameplay than what we were told by the rep. A few times during the challenge we casted a more powerful version of the basic attack spell, but we had no idea how to replicate the motion. Additionally, there were extra items on the HUD that weren’t used, which all seem to indicate that there unexplored depths to the challenge. Perhaps if we had been told about these options, then the brief demo we had may have appeared more varied than the limited impression we were left with.

Overall, this felt very much like an on rails shooter, and the fact the mode was labelled as a challenge level rather than some extract from the single-player experience reenforced this feeling. The demo felt extremely lacking and we were left wondering how the controls would transfer to the main game (if at all) and how would the game control work when you’re no longer “on rails”. If the game had let us turn around or had tighter aiming controllers then this may have alleviated our fears.

Your Shape

Oh no, not another Fitness Game, you protest! Ever since EA Sports Active, there have been a increasing number of fitness games coming to our consoles. Recently, Ubisoft launched Your Shape for the Nintendo Wii, which featured a camera that would scan your body in. With the impending release of Kinect and its built-in dual cameras, it seemed like the next logical step for the franchise, was to switch format.

Four modes from the game were available in our brief hands-on. The first section was very much an introduction to the game, but the basic interface is reflected in the other three modes. An orange outline of yourself appeared in the screen, with a grey box on the floor outlining where you should stand. Appear too close or too far away and your orange representation would disappear. This almost appeared to be raw sensor input and it even managed to pick up parts of my T-shirt. This outlined the core message that Ubisoft were trying to make with this game, which was itself reflected in the title. This is “your shape” on screen, there are no gimmicks like attaching your skeleton to another model. Perhaps primarily down to this reason, the game suffered no input lag what so ever. Movements were reflected on the screen as soon as they happened, the game felt incredibly responsive.

This introduction phase was simply a way for the game to scan your body into the game. This led to a large number of impressive statistics being displayed during this process. It calculated my height with ease and generated an impressive representation of my basic skeleton, highlighting various parts of my body. These highlights were attached to your input so that when you moved your arm, so did the attached popup on screen. Another gadget, showed the height at which your arm was above the ground. Again, these were all done in real time so if you quickly moved your hand up and down the number updated instantly. Yes, it was a little bit flashy for some fairly simple concepts but it did a good job at visualising just what sort of data you can pull from Kinect.

Calibration over, I quickly moved onto a sample gym exercise. This took the form of a boxing challenge; the aim was to punch a number coloured boxes that would light up in sequence. These are positioned to your left and right and at various heights, but you must use the alternate hand or foot for it to register as a hit. The final block of the sequence was in the centre, which caused an animation to play in the background. Again, this was a little bit flashy, but it felt felt great. Granted, it did take a few turns to get used to the rhythm, but once I got in the flow, the exercise was over fairly quickly. It didn’t take long to work into a sweat, but this section as a whole was enjoyable.

The third mode that we looked at was Yoga exercises. The tone of the game certainly changed for this section and the whole game became a lot more relaxed with more calming music and slower pace. This time an instructor appeared on screen to help you, which was a relief as I was initially confused as to what I needed to do. A quick prompt from the rep to just repeat the actions of my instructor got me going and I was soon stretching away. As you’re moving, the game highlights specific parts of your body which will turn green as you enter the correct pose. Additionally, the game awards you with a percentage score, indicating how much of the exercise you’ve achieved. The game was incredibly forgiving in the range of movement it allowed me to be in, but this was reflected in the lower percentage score it awarded me in the end. As the demo was only a brief introduction to the game’s features, I unfortunately, didn’t get to see how these points would be tied together, across all the different modes and exercises.

The final section of the game was with my Personal Trainer! This worked in a similar vein to the gym section but the main difference was that this section was aimed at performing very specific types of exercise, treating this as a physical challenge rather than an movement based minigame. Unlike the gym exercise, however, the skeleton overlay once again appeared on the screen, indicating whether you’ve adopted the correct position. This section will definitely appeal to fitness buffs who want work on specific exercises and as in most of the other modes, a timer and calorie count was display on screen at all times. This was nicely blended into the interface, such as along a wall in the mock gym.

This was the most technically impressive game that we’ve seen so far. It may not appeal to the majority of gamers out there but the interface was the most convincing demonstration we’ve seen that the Kinect technology is more than a gimmick.

This completes the second part of our Gamescom impressions of Kinect. Look out for the final part of our Kinect impressions where we discuss Joyride, Kinect Sports and overall tech impressions.

At a glance...

Kinect Impressions Part 2 preview

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 the videogame

Your Shape

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