HNIC973
R.I.P Bandana P
Chris's Kinect Highlight
I'm not a massive fan of Kinect. I owned the first one and enjoyed Kinect Sports and Dance Central but, like most Kinect users, those were really the only two games that completely nailed it for me. Over the past couple of years it became a pain that I needed to keep turning around when I watched Netflix in case my wife walks past and it thinks she's waving at it.
With this in mind, I approached Kinect Sports Rivals with a slight degree of trepidation. While I'm still not completely sold on Kinect, I'm happy to try it again if it's as improved as Microsoft claims, and I was confident a new Kinect Sports game would be the best example of how well it could work when it's done properly.
Although Kinect Sports Rivals isn't a launch game, there is a free demo of sorts called Kinect Sports Rivals Preseason, which is what I played. It features jet ski racing, and is played by holding your arms out and pulling them back to steer. You can also lean to the side to make sharper turns if need be.
I was impressed with two things - firstly, the accuracy is greatly improved. I was wearing a black t-shirt in a dark room with daft strobe lights shining all over the place and it still picked up my movements perfectly. My gestures also didn't need to be so exaggerated this time - I only needed to make subtle movements and they were picked up.
"My gestures didn't need to be exaggerated this time - I only needed to make subtle movements."
Secondly, I could stand much closer to Kinect. At one point I must have only been a couple of feet in front of it and it was still working like a charm. My living room is fairly small so I used to keep hitting my feet against my couch behind me when I played before. There's no way I'll have the same problem this time.
Kinect Sports Rivals Preseasons will be available for free from day one. It'll feature the jet ski sport and will give you regular goals to complete. Doing so will unlock one-off outfits and equipment for use in the main game once it's released. This is the one I'll be playing with the family over Christmas.
Tamoor's Kinect Highlight
I'm going to nominate D4 as the game with the best use of Kinect, despite the fact that players interact with the game primarily by flinging their arms from side to side and guiding an on-screen cursor with their hands.
What sets D4 apart from Kinect Sports Rivals is that your mundane gestures are used for the most outlandish things in the most bizzarre situations.
For those not in the know D4, or Dark Dreams Don't Die, is an episodic point-and-click adventure game from Hidetaka 'Swery' Suehiro, creator of acclaimed survival horror Deadly Premonition.
To draw comparisons, D4 has a lot in common with TellTale's Walking Dead series, except with all the quirky characters and utterly bizarre goings on of Deadly Premonition.
Players take control of David Young, an amnesiac private investigator who's remarkably chipper for a man trying to figure out who killed his wife and why he can suddenly dive into the past when coming into contact with certain items. Using Kinect, players can guide David around different environments, pointing out where to go and what to investigate, as well as swiping to reorient the character. In conversations players can say one of the on-screen dialogue prompts.
On its own, all of that sounds pretty ordinary, but D4 puts all those actions into weird and wonderful situations on-screen. One of those wild arm flail situations, for example, might be during a fist fight on an aeroplane where you're doing a front flip over a runaway foodcart.
During the same fight, you might pin down your enemy and grab a nearby megaphone, then shout a mixture of abuse and questions crucial to furthering your investigation right down his ear hole.
Or you might grab the severed leg of a mannequin, which is on the flight accompanying a Lady Gaga-esque fashon mogul who has a giant green beehive-like hairstyle. What do you with said leg? You use it like a baseball bat to smash stuff into the other guy's face.
All of that happened. And I controlled it all slumped on a seat in front of the television. That's my kind of Kinect experience.
As an added bonus for fans of Francis York Morgan, David is able to see different items he can interact with and points of investigation when players put their fingers up to their heads in a thinking pose.
I'm not a massive fan of Kinect. I owned the first one and enjoyed Kinect Sports and Dance Central but, like most Kinect users, those were really the only two games that completely nailed it for me. Over the past couple of years it became a pain that I needed to keep turning around when I watched Netflix in case my wife walks past and it thinks she's waving at it.
With this in mind, I approached Kinect Sports Rivals with a slight degree of trepidation. While I'm still not completely sold on Kinect, I'm happy to try it again if it's as improved as Microsoft claims, and I was confident a new Kinect Sports game would be the best example of how well it could work when it's done properly.
Although Kinect Sports Rivals isn't a launch game, there is a free demo of sorts called Kinect Sports Rivals Preseason, which is what I played. It features jet ski racing, and is played by holding your arms out and pulling them back to steer. You can also lean to the side to make sharper turns if need be.
I was impressed with two things - firstly, the accuracy is greatly improved. I was wearing a black t-shirt in a dark room with daft strobe lights shining all over the place and it still picked up my movements perfectly. My gestures also didn't need to be so exaggerated this time - I only needed to make subtle movements and they were picked up.
"My gestures didn't need to be exaggerated this time - I only needed to make subtle movements."
Secondly, I could stand much closer to Kinect. At one point I must have only been a couple of feet in front of it and it was still working like a charm. My living room is fairly small so I used to keep hitting my feet against my couch behind me when I played before. There's no way I'll have the same problem this time.
Kinect Sports Rivals Preseasons will be available for free from day one. It'll feature the jet ski sport and will give you regular goals to complete. Doing so will unlock one-off outfits and equipment for use in the main game once it's released. This is the one I'll be playing with the family over Christmas.
Tamoor's Kinect Highlight
I'm going to nominate D4 as the game with the best use of Kinect, despite the fact that players interact with the game primarily by flinging their arms from side to side and guiding an on-screen cursor with their hands.
What sets D4 apart from Kinect Sports Rivals is that your mundane gestures are used for the most outlandish things in the most bizzarre situations.
For those not in the know D4, or Dark Dreams Don't Die, is an episodic point-and-click adventure game from Hidetaka 'Swery' Suehiro, creator of acclaimed survival horror Deadly Premonition.
To draw comparisons, D4 has a lot in common with TellTale's Walking Dead series, except with all the quirky characters and utterly bizarre goings on of Deadly Premonition.
Players take control of David Young, an amnesiac private investigator who's remarkably chipper for a man trying to figure out who killed his wife and why he can suddenly dive into the past when coming into contact with certain items. Using Kinect, players can guide David around different environments, pointing out where to go and what to investigate, as well as swiping to reorient the character. In conversations players can say one of the on-screen dialogue prompts.
On its own, all of that sounds pretty ordinary, but D4 puts all those actions into weird and wonderful situations on-screen. One of those wild arm flail situations, for example, might be during a fist fight on an aeroplane where you're doing a front flip over a runaway foodcart.
During the same fight, you might pin down your enemy and grab a nearby megaphone, then shout a mixture of abuse and questions crucial to furthering your investigation right down his ear hole.
Or you might grab the severed leg of a mannequin, which is on the flight accompanying a Lady Gaga-esque fashon mogul who has a giant green beehive-like hairstyle. What do you with said leg? You use it like a baseball bat to smash stuff into the other guy's face.
All of that happened. And I controlled it all slumped on a seat in front of the television. That's my kind of Kinect experience.
As an added bonus for fans of Francis York Morgan, David is able to see different items he can interact with and points of investigation when players put their fingers up to their heads in a thinking pose.
I thought the accesories will only be available at launch @
