Kinect Review & (Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, Fighters Uncaged & Motion Sports)

Controller free motion gaming, this is what Microsoft have offered us for this years festive season.  Released just before the Christmas holidays.

Is controller free gaming a step too far, and will it appeal to gamers.  I know a lot of people who when they want to play a game like to sit back and relax, and not jumping around.

In my opinion, the life span of the Kinect games are very short, and are party games at most, none of the games I have played offer any deep story, or noteable features that make me want to play it night after night.  It seems to me that the Kinect is more of a Party Piece, which is what Microsoft seemed to aim their commercials at.  Family / Party Fun.  Once the party has finished there seems to be very little reasons for wanting to play on your own.

I believe the Kinect has a lot more to offer though.  The Kinects ability to pick up player movements is pretty solid and has a face recognition that works every time.  This could be used in games along with the Xbox 360’s analogue controller, for example, in an FPS the Kinect could use its speech functions for giving an order, or with an arm movement throw a grenade freeing up an extra button on the controller for another action.

The game we had to look at for the Kinect are as follows;

Your Shape : Fitness Evolved

This is a “game” that works very well with the Kinect.  It doesn’t actually disguise itself as a game but promotes itself as a fitness application.  The question being….does it work….will it make me fit….well the answer….it depends!!

Myself I am an avid gym goer, I spend at least 3 days a week at the gym, doing some very high intensity training.   Therefore I do not feel this game will help with my goals, however, after playing the game for a while, I was sweating and you could feel the game working, the game is one for someone who is unable to get to the gym, or time dictates that they cannot go.

It is very good at picking up your joint movement and will mark you down if your squats are not low enough or your legs are not far apart enough making sure you are using good form, which is something a Wii Balance board is unable to do.

It features some games that make things a little more exciting, for example, some green bricks appear on your screen, and you have to quickly punch and kick them before they disappear or you have have a go at shaking your hips with an invisible hula hoop!

Overall Your Shape does what it is intended to do, it doesn’t pretend to be a game and is what it is, a fitness program.

Fighters Uncaged

Fighters Uncaged looks like it could have a lot of promise, using motion detection to follow your every move as you fight dirty to pummel so fat man in a vest head in.  However the game is very limited.

The game doesn’t actually give you much of a backstory, you just seem to get dropped into a tutorial, and then off you go to beat some random guys up.

The movements you make are not the exact movements your character will make on screen, you have to go through the very long tutorial and learn how to perform each move which can be very tedious.   Once you have learned them you realise that most of the time the motion detectors are off and you just end up swinging frantically just hoping that you pull off some moves.

Overall the game fails to deliver a knockout punch on what could of been a good idea.

Motion Sports

Motion Sports brings us, Soccer, American Football, Horse Riding, Gliding, and Boxing

The question is does this game deliver an experience that makes us feel like we are doing the real thing, in a nutshell no.

The Boxing is very unresponsive, the motion detector doesnt seem to pick up my punches very well, and the blocking system hardly works.  Even if you win a fight it doesn’t feel like you have out boxed your opponent, more than you have just swung like a caged nutter into thin air and got lucky.

Soccer, allows you to take penalties, at time this works well, the motion detectors usually pick up which way you are trying to kick it, but if you try and blast the ball as hard as you can, you get very annoyed when the game doesn’t pick this up and the ball is still sitting there on the penalty spot.  Goal keeping is too easy, as the penalty is take the game goes into slow mo and allows you to put your hands out and save with ease.

Skiing, whilst it seems a great idea to be pretending to be on a set of Ski’s while you slalom your way down the piste.  Before you play the game you might want to get down the gym and build up those upper legs because this game can be a killer, standing in the required crouched position puts a lot of stress on the upper leg and moving side to side is difficult, most of the time I sent my character crashing into the barriers and struggled to stay on course.

American Football

Like the soccer you don’t get to play a full on match, the American Football has you running from one end of the pitch to the other dodging opponents and barriers.  The game at time works but at other you duck and your football just runs directly into the barrier.

Hand Gliding and Horse Riding

Handgliding and Horse Riding seemed to be the best of a bad bunch, while the neither of them are very exciting they responded well to my movements.  The glider could tell when I was trying to move direction, although like the skiing standing in the required position was very tiring on the arms and made me look forward to the games end.  Horse Riding makes good use of the motion detectors simply by pulling your arms out to the side to control the direction and using little movements to make  sure you stay on course.  However at the start of one game it was like trying to start an old lawn mower, it took about 30 attempts as I flicked the reigns to get the horse going but to no avail.

Overall motion sports feels a little rushed, there is a lot of tweaking need doing to the motion detection for the game to work smoothly, and more modes are needed to improve the lifespan of the game.

Final Comments

The Kinect is very much a party piece, and outside of a family and friends gathering there isn’t a lot of willingness to want to play it.  Until the Kinect has its features put into a more hardcore game, for most gamers the hardware will not go missed.  However the system does have great potential and can see the features becoming part and parcel of a lot of future games, even if the Kinect is only used in certain parts of the game which I believe will be the best option for it.