Kinect Hands On

[Hedon]

Sonic Riders:

Sonic Free Riders is all about the pelvic thrusts. Sega's hover board racing game has you controlling Sonic the Hedgehog, or one of his many friends or enemies, with the Xbox 360 Kinect controller, which means, you use your body to play. To play, you stand with your body almost sideways, as if standing atop a skateboard facing the television, and then you swipe your foot over the ground to start and speed up. To steer you lean forward, bending at the knees, or lean back. Kinect can also sense when you reach your arms out, allowing you to grab on screen items and pick up the lines of golden rings that litter the race track. The weapon items you pick up are used in different ways during a race. For instance, you swing your arm down in an arc toward the screen as if bowling to toss a giant bowling ball at enemies, but you swipe your arms sideways to throw missiles.

Initially I found the steering controls a bit difficult to use, with my poor Sonic riding his hover board nose into the side of the track for long stretches of time. But once I started stretching my arm out in the direction I was trying to turn, the game seemed to become a bit more responsive. I still had issues with making jumps, which seemed to require that I jump a bit too soon to launch properly off a ramp.

The game seems like it could be a fun diversion, but I'm not sure I'd want to invest the price of a full Kinect game to pick it up. The game also supports two-player split-screen mode and when I played it had six riders available, with more to be revealed down the line. There are also going to be "lots more weapons and tracks," the spokesperson told me.

Video at link: My link

Kinect Sports Soccer:

I finally got my first chance to go hands-on with Kinect today, and I wasn't allowed to use my hands.Microsoft was showing off the soccer potion of Kinect Sports at their gameplay event today in Cologne, Germany, and seeing as I spent at least a portion of one whole high school semester playing something close to soccer, I was obviously the most qualified to give it a go. But first, I had to get calibrated.

At six feet, six inches tall, most people have no problem seeing me. Kinect is not most people. I ended up having to stand pretty far back from the unit before it fully registered my form, though the crowd of folks milling about behind me certainly didn't help. Once it did register my bulk, things went pretty smoothly. After a few rounds of bowling, which plays a lot like Wii bowling without a Wii remote, a fellow member of the press joined me for a round of co-op football. It's like a regular soccer game, only without all of that pesky moving. Here's what happens:

Two players alternate controlling the active character. If the ball is in possession by your team, and you are the active kicker, you position your body in the direction you want to kick, and swing your foot. If your teammate is throwing the ball in, you might get a prompt urging you to slam your face forward at the right point in order to hit the ball towards the goalie. If it is your turn, and the enemy team is kicking, you get the opportunity to raise your hands and block. It's a turn-based game of soccer sans all of that pesky running up and down the field.

The lazy person in me approves. The more active in me is tied up in a corner with a gag over his mouth, so his opinion doesn't matter. Either way you look at it, Kinect Sports soccer is a lot of flailing about in front of your television, and that's what Kinect games are all about, isn't it?

Kinect Dance:

What starts out with what appears to be a guy recreating a scene from Bruno, ends with some fantastic two-man avant-garde dance moves. Here for your viewing pleasure is a video of a bunch of people playing different Kinect games... set to music. Can you guess which games they're playing?

Video at link: My link

This is how you play Kinectimals:

Many people played Kinectimals at Microsoft's gameplay day in Germany yesterday, but no one played it with as much skill or heart as our own Michael McWhertor. Look at how much fun he is having petting that dangerous animal. Don't you wish that was you? It was all I could do to stop myself from knocking him out of the way and taking over. But in the end, restraint proved the best course, as McWhertor finished the Kinectimals agility course with a score of 14 of 14 obstacles cleared, scoring number two in the leaderboards for the day. Behold the Lion King.

Video at link: My link

How multiplayer Kinect Dancing works:

Dance Central, the body-controlled dancing game from the makers of Rock Band, has multiplayer. It's no Kinect Adventures multiplayer where you'd be standing side-by-side, in a gesture vs. gesture frenzy. No. It does dance battles. You take turns.

I chickened out of participating in a two-player Dance Central dance battle last week at MTV's offices, but, hey, I get it. Dance Central multiplayer starts up a song, expects one player to dance along to it, matching moves to score points, and then switches to a silhouetted freestyle mode as one player steps off and the other steps in. Player two dances the next part, racking up points, and then they trade off again. You can't pick your character; the same on-screen character dances the whole song through. Only the people the Kinect is capturing changes.

So don't picture some sort of co-op multiplayer waltz or even team-scored line-dancing. If you want to play Dance Central with friends, you'll be stepping in and stepping off, like a breakdancing battle. Some may chicken out and stay on the couch. Like me!

I must say, the more and more I learn about Kinect, the more and more I am impressed.

[mad_onion]

That Sonic game looks pretty good. The best implementation of Kinetic so far apart from Dance Central which it was practically made for.

Kineticimals continues to look like one of the worst games ever made though. I expect lots of 2/3 out of 10 on it's release.

[spaceelf]

I'm wondering when we'll see a Kinect snowboarding game.

[Hedon]

I'm wondering when we'll see a Kinect snowboarding game.