Been playing about with for a couple of hours and I'm more impressed than what I thought I was going to be. Had a quick shot on Adventures and Sports. They seem like they will be a laugh but I'm more interested now in what people will come up with for it.
*** Official Kinect Thread ***
- Thread starter Demon
- Start date
Soldato
Just in case people didn't realise, there is a Joy Ride demo on Marketplace.
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/Product/KinectTM-Joy-Ride/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024d53093b
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/Product/KinectTM-Joy-Ride/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024d53093b
Soldato
I like it ! Guess we'll see a lot more incoming
Anyway thought I'd give this Kinect a spin and boy is the xbox integration a bit lack lustre but I'm sure my kids will love it.
Associate
Yeah and there is the same demo on the Kinect Adventures disc along with Dance central and Your shape fitness
Associate
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Associate
Associate
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Permabanned
Sounds like fun, I may have to invest.
100% compatible, BUT, you do need an additional power outlet for the older model.
I let the kids/missus loose on it last night, and overall it's about what I expected, which is that it's not too bad at all...
Kinect Adventures - Not a bad bundle in family 'game', although it's a little lacking in depth, I love the fact that people can just jump in alongside and it seamlessly handles this, it'll be great for parties etc..
Kinect Sports - My daughter loved it (6), my son was struggling with it a little (4), although he managed to get 4 points against the AI in table tennis and he managed the bowling, which allowed him to just throw the ball, making it 'work' for him much better then having to use an exact bowling motion. My only comment would be for me and my dodgy back, I actually would have preferred more 'gentle' games then running and perhaps a mini-golf clone ala Wii Sports..
Your Shape Fitness Evolved - This was for the missus, and so just chucked her on it.. I have to say Kinect is really suited to this genre, you really have to match your trainers actions very closely, it even monitors how high you are raising your arms/knees etc and won't count half assed moves etc.
Lag
It's probably worth mentioning that Lag is a weird thing, if you bring up the Kinect Tuner in-game, you get a nice RGB image with your basic skeleton showing, using that, and setting the TV to 'game' mode (minimal image lag), you can see two things
1. There is noticeable lag - if you fling your arm out and back, it does appear to lag a little, doing the arm waggling up and down, you'd swear there was 300ms+ of lag.
2. There is very little lag - if you move your arms out and back in, clapping your hands every iteration, you do notice that the sound of your clap, and the moment the skeleton shows your arms meeting, it's pretty much spot on, maybe 150ms lag at worse.
I think it's true (Digital Foundry Article) that although even 150ms of lag would be deemed acceptable for an FPS game, the delay between brain thinking it, and your arms/legs moving to the desired position is inherently laggy, and the visual feedback makes this much more evident. This isn't excusing it, because I feel that 'twitch' gaming on Kinect is just not possible, and obviously developers won't do it, but it is more then sufficient for most motion based activities, and can be largely guarded against, it doesn't actually detract from the experience. But it does require a leap of faith and acceptance that lag will be noticeable at times, and it's partly Kinect, partly your own body being a bit slow.
Voice Control
It just works, it's very accurate etc, and no real complaints, other then design of Kinect Hub and 1 foible, which is, you can say "Xbox - Open Tray" if no game is in it, and it ejects the disk tray, and you can even say "Xbox - Close Tray" and it works fine. However if a game is already in, it doesn't respond to "Xbox - Open Tray" as this is no longer a valid command, which is silly. It's not a big deal, but when you are trying to control the whole thing seamlessly with voice, it kind of annoys you.
Space requirements
Good and bad, If space is a little limited, then you are probably going to have to work at placement. The issue for most people is, putting it infront of their TV gives you the worst space requirements, you can see Kinect Angle right up as it can't naturally see your feet/head with it's field of view, and I literally needed 6 foot before I was in the '2 player good' zone that Kinect Adventures shows you.
However, since my TV is in a corner, there is lots of room behind it to the wall, so I messed around holding it up at 6ft above and behind the TV, in the corner (Could put a small corner shelf up), and got the missus to see what effect it had. With careful placement of the TV as far back as it would go, and setting Kinect at about 6'0, it seems happy to then use the smaller space between TV and Settee for 2 players.
Even just a TV Mount and setting it at about 4.5' seems to reduce the space required.. As it stood, with Kinect in the default 'in front of the TV' positio, we just angled the TV/Kinect slightly and stood as we did for two player Wii gaming, more lengthways into the room.
I will probably put a small shelf up in the corner, and move the TV as far back as I can (46", so it's still a good 1.5' off the room corner), and I think I can get it to work in the room in the smaller widthways manner, which will be better for when games come out that work seated.
Overall
I'd say it hits the mark, it's great casual family fun, easily on par with the Wii in a lot of respects, but some nicer HD stuff, with the added element that you really do get more of a 'connection' and more immersion when your character is mimicking you 1:1, a solid 7/10 for us.. If it was just me, well I'm not into 'motion gaming' in a big way, I'd probably not bother at all, but that's not to say that it doesn't have it's place..
Surprising moments
- Preferering Table Tennis on Kinect Sports to Sports Champions with Move. I used to play table tennis when younger, and had come back from a family holiday where we played table tennis most days with all the kids, so when I got Move, I was quite hyped for it, but it never 'clicked', it felt clumsy and although the bat orientation/control is hyper accurate, the body movement and positioning is at odds, I thought it was just me, but when I watched the Gadget show where they had a Top table tennis player Vs one of the presenters, the presenter won, it was clear that SC Table Tennis is falling down in giving a real life presentation of the game. The Kinect Sports affair has much less accuracy, but captures the positional aspect much better, you feel like you are really stood by the table, and have a 1:1 correlation to your position and arms which allows a nice 'flow' and mirrors the real world experience quite well. Although it could do with more accuracy for the bat, it's like Wii Sports Tennis, you can still smash/lob/spin the ball with exaggerated movements and that makes it an overall much better experience for me.
- Seeing my 4 year old son have a high success rate with Bowling. He is just about OK on the Wii, but the amount of times he mistimes releasing the B button on Wii Sports bowling and not getting the right motion to get the game to start the swing is quite frustrating at times, in Kinect Sport Bowling, he was able to bowl a few using a normal bowling gesture, but he was also able to just throw the ball in numerous ways that was quite comical and also nice to see him laughing when he got a strike from an overarm throw..
Kinect Adventures - Not a bad bundle in family 'game', although it's a little lacking in depth, I love the fact that people can just jump in alongside and it seamlessly handles this, it'll be great for parties etc..
Kinect Sports - My daughter loved it (6), my son was struggling with it a little (4), although he managed to get 4 points against the AI in table tennis and he managed the bowling, which allowed him to just throw the ball, making it 'work' for him much better then having to use an exact bowling motion. My only comment would be for me and my dodgy back, I actually would have preferred more 'gentle' games then running and perhaps a mini-golf clone ala Wii Sports..
Your Shape Fitness Evolved - This was for the missus, and so just chucked her on it.. I have to say Kinect is really suited to this genre, you really have to match your trainers actions very closely, it even monitors how high you are raising your arms/knees etc and won't count half assed moves etc.
Lag
It's probably worth mentioning that Lag is a weird thing, if you bring up the Kinect Tuner in-game, you get a nice RGB image with your basic skeleton showing, using that, and setting the TV to 'game' mode (minimal image lag), you can see two things
1. There is noticeable lag - if you fling your arm out and back, it does appear to lag a little, doing the arm waggling up and down, you'd swear there was 300ms+ of lag.
2. There is very little lag - if you move your arms out and back in, clapping your hands every iteration, you do notice that the sound of your clap, and the moment the skeleton shows your arms meeting, it's pretty much spot on, maybe 150ms lag at worse.
I think it's true (Digital Foundry Article) that although even 150ms of lag would be deemed acceptable for an FPS game, the delay between brain thinking it, and your arms/legs moving to the desired position is inherently laggy, and the visual feedback makes this much more evident. This isn't excusing it, because I feel that 'twitch' gaming on Kinect is just not possible, and obviously developers won't do it, but it is more then sufficient for most motion based activities, and can be largely guarded against, it doesn't actually detract from the experience. But it does require a leap of faith and acceptance that lag will be noticeable at times, and it's partly Kinect, partly your own body being a bit slow.
Voice Control
It just works, it's very accurate etc, and no real complaints, other then design of Kinect Hub and 1 foible, which is, you can say "Xbox - Open Tray" if no game is in it, and it ejects the disk tray, and you can even say "Xbox - Close Tray" and it works fine. However if a game is already in, it doesn't respond to "Xbox - Open Tray" as this is no longer a valid command, which is silly. It's not a big deal, but when you are trying to control the whole thing seamlessly with voice, it kind of annoys you.
Space requirements
Good and bad, If space is a little limited, then you are probably going to have to work at placement. The issue for most people is, putting it infront of their TV gives you the worst space requirements, you can see Kinect Angle right up as it can't naturally see your feet/head with it's field of view, and I literally needed 6 foot before I was in the '2 player good' zone that Kinect Adventures shows you.
However, since my TV is in a corner, there is lots of room behind it to the wall, so I messed around holding it up at 6ft above and behind the TV, in the corner (Could put a small corner shelf up), and got the missus to see what effect it had. With careful placement of the TV as far back as it would go, and setting Kinect at about 6'0, it seems happy to then use the smaller space between TV and Settee for 2 players.
Even just a TV Mount and setting it at about 4.5' seems to reduce the space required.. As it stood, with Kinect in the default 'in front of the TV' positio, we just angled the TV/Kinect slightly and stood as we did for two player Wii gaming, more lengthways into the room.
I will probably put a small shelf up in the corner, and move the TV as far back as I can (46", so it's still a good 1.5' off the room corner), and I think I can get it to work in the room in the smaller widthways manner, which will be better for when games come out that work seated.
Overall
I'd say it hits the mark, it's great casual family fun, easily on par with the Wii in a lot of respects, but some nicer HD stuff, with the added element that you really do get more of a 'connection' and more immersion when your character is mimicking you 1:1, a solid 7/10 for us.. If it was just me, well I'm not into 'motion gaming' in a big way, I'd probably not bother at all, but that's not to say that it doesn't have it's place..
Surprising moments
- Preferering Table Tennis on Kinect Sports to Sports Champions with Move. I used to play table tennis when younger, and had come back from a family holiday where we played table tennis most days with all the kids, so when I got Move, I was quite hyped for it, but it never 'clicked', it felt clumsy and although the bat orientation/control is hyper accurate, the body movement and positioning is at odds, I thought it was just me, but when I watched the Gadget show where they had a Top table tennis player Vs one of the presenters, the presenter won, it was clear that SC Table Tennis is falling down in giving a real life presentation of the game. The Kinect Sports affair has much less accuracy, but captures the positional aspect much better, you feel like you are really stood by the table, and have a 1:1 correlation to your position and arms which allows a nice 'flow' and mirrors the real world experience quite well. Although it could do with more accuracy for the bat, it's like Wii Sports Tennis, you can still smash/lob/spin the ball with exaggerated movements and that makes it an overall much better experience for me.
- Seeing my 4 year old son have a high success rate with Bowling. He is just about OK on the Wii, but the amount of times he mistimes releasing the B button on Wii Sports bowling and not getting the right motion to get the game to start the swing is quite frustrating at times, in Kinect Sport Bowling, he was able to bowl a few using a normal bowling gesture, but he was also able to just throw the ball in numerous ways that was quite comical and also nice to see him laughing when he got a strike from an overarm throw..
Nice review Demon
Just to kinda give a reason to this though:
It does make sense if you think about it. The only probably reason why you'd open a tray (with a disc) in, is to swap discs and you'd be physically near the console to do this - so asking Kinect to open the tray (if you're not at the console) is a moot command really.
Just to kinda give a reason to this though:
It does make sense if you think about it. The only probably reason why you'd open a tray (with a disc) in, is to swap discs and you'd be physically near the console to do this - so asking Kinect to open the tray (if you're not at the console) is a moot command really.
Well you don't get a spare wall outlet no!
But seriously, the older model you'll need an additional plug socket to power the Kinect, the newer model powers it through one cable.
As for it coming in the pack. Can't be 100% certain, mine did but I've seen a few sites say some do, some don't and it's 'like' the HDD transfer kit where you may need to ask for it. Honestly can't answer that bit 100%
Well you don't get a spare wall outlet no!
But seriously, the older model you'll need an additional plug socket to power the Kinect, the newer model powers it through one cable.
As for it coming in the pack. Can't be 100% certain, mine did but I've seen a few sites say some do, some don't and it's 'like' the HDD transfer kit where you may need to ask for it. Honestly can't answer that bit 100%
damn these microsoft falk!
grrr
It isn't easy to get hold of this kinect atm
Nice review Demon
Just to kinda give a reason to this though:
It does make sense if you think about it. The only probably reason why you'd open a tray (with a disc) in, is to swap discs and you'd be physically near the console to do this - so asking Kinect to open the tray (if you're not at the console) is a moot command really.
For sure, I agree it makes little sense, but it does give the option when no-game is in the tray, it's just a small consistency thing, and my Daughter was literally amazed when I immediately said "Xbox-open tray" when I first went into Kinect Hub, I didn't even think it'd work, but it just did.. that was a 'wow' moment for such a stupid thing..
Yes, the normal £129 Kinect comes with a Power Adapter and everything you need for an 'old' 360 to work with Kinect, no problems what so-ever.
Associate
My god some of the moves you have to do on Dance Central evan on easy are way hard lol, Guess loads of practice does make perfect in the end
Soldato
For anyone sitting on the fence about buying one.. if you have the room then get one.