Preview: Kinect Adventures
Kinect Adventures was the first thing to really seem to acknowledge the hardware it’s using, which it better because this is being bundled free with Kinect. Full body control is displayed throughout even when it isn’t being used directly in the mode being played. This makes it much more possible to get into when you realise its not just using a predefined set of movements that. There’s no half assed way to play this game, Kinect can tell if you’re cheating. (more…)
Continue →Preview: Kinect Joyride
Kinect Joyride was the first Kinect game I played, its aiming for the Mario Kart racing style of over the top drifts and cartoony graphics. You play as your Xbox Avatar in a selection of flashy sports car designs. It requires you to stand arms out as if you’re holding a steering wheel. You steer with your arms and can perform stunt moves if you lean your whole body in different directions while in the air. To boost you pull the “wheel” towards you and ram it forwards. Never once did a boost fail to go off or go off unintentionally and despite the controls being very sensitive after a lap or two I managed to pick them up pretty easily.
Though interesting to play the control system very quickly becomes a great argument for having a physical steering wheel to hold. The lack of a wheel means that you have to keep your own arms relative to each other and gives you the idea you’re piloting some kind of fighter jet rather than a car. (more…)
Continue →Preview: Microsoft Kinect Menu Control and Biosensor
The first thing Kinect affects is the Xbox’s menu system. Kinect can detect both your left and right hand at the same time and displays icons similar to the Wii’s to show you where you’re pointing. Although these icons don’t seem to directly line up with where you’re pointing on the screen controlling them becomes effortless after only a few minutes practice. Particularly impressive is the fast forward function during movies and songs, which allows you to switch into controlling the timeline by moving your hand up to an icon and then scrolling forward or back by moving your arm left and right. After only a few minutes I could easily select a specific time to jump to far faster than with a standard remote control. Unfortunately this can’t be said for the rest of the menus. Although with practice navigation becomes simply, it’s still far simpler and faster to use a control pad. This mainly comes down to having to hover over buttons to select them, a feature included to stop accidentally selecting things while navigating. Voice control wasn’t on display so i can’t tell whether the addition of saying XBOX SELECT will help this along. Over all I can see it being used if a film needs to be paused as it’s easier than doing so with a remote but actually navigation will probably remain the control pads job.
After a bit of pestering I was shown what I think is called the Biosensor Screen, or something to that effect. This was probably the most impressive thing I’ve seen from Kinect as its the closest we can get to seeing what it actually sees. On screen are three windows, the largest shows the players wireframe over a single colour representation of their body. Kinect also shows obstacles around the room and seemed to be able to identify people standing nearby as people, through it only paints a wireframe on the two most prominent. This wire frame shows Kinect off more than anything else I’ve seen, despite my attempts to break it Kinect was easily able to accurately display my wireframe 99% of the time and could even pick up subtle movements like shoulders moving up and down. The other windows display Xbox Avatars copying you movements and depth perception. The depth window shows your body in an infa-red style, standing in neutral you’re all red but move an arm forward and it paints it blue, and yes, the same applies to a crotch thrust. To me this screen proves how hugely capable the Kinect Hardware is and very little of the software on display really uses what this screen shows to its full potential.
Check back tomorrow when we’ll be talking about some of the games that use Kinect starting with Kinect Sports, Kinect Adventures and Kinect Joyride. Kinect will be available in Ireland this November and is caompatable with all Xbox 360s
Portal 2 E3 Floor Demo
So right about now I’m supposed to be writing about the 3DS but I ha to put that on hold for a bit so I could talk about this. Videos are emerging of live demonstarions of Portal 2 from the E3 show floor and they’re incredible. The full demo is embedded below. It introduces new characters in the form of AI cores and a whole heap of new gameplay options in the form of tractor beams, lasers, bouncy goo, speedy goo and more. Its great to to see the level of writting is only getting better. The British and friendly AI core is just as funny as GlaDOS in the first game, heres hoping that everything else is just as well developed. The ravaged by time jungle parts of the lab look stunning, surely this has to be the last treat the Source engine can offer us? If so its a pretty one, even the standard lab areas look better and the gloopy liquid is something we’ve never seen in a Source game.
The new gameplay elements have already got me thinking of ways to use them. You still have the standard Portal gun from the first game but several new features to interact with. Reflect lasers, realine tractor beams so that shey float you to higher areas, turn a huge vacuum into a black hole like vortex, it goes on. In fact stop reading this, watch the videos below.
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