Kinect .. Any Good ?

[Damien]

The wii doesn't work up close?

... No Wii for me then.

Get a Kinect and enjoy the power of it

I said I have seven games for the Wii, if you read my post Damien, no need to get personal in assumptions about me. In actual fact we have 119 games for all three consoles sitting on the shelf, and the Wii is the only one of them gathering dust.
So why aren't you playing a Wii right now?

The reason why I'm not playing the Wii is because it doesnt take my fancy but kinect does as the techonogly is amazing and I agreed that the games avaiable at this present time arent that great but wait until next year as some really good games are coming out just for the kinect.

I read your post Lexy and I wasnt getting personal. So if the Wii is the only one get dust then you do enjoy gaming but not montion control so then you already have a bad opinion on kinect because of your bad expierience with the Wii ... Try Kinect in a Game store and like I said to credo , hopefully you chance your mind.

 

[V]

If the Kinect really does have astounding ability and control, then that's one hurdle overcome from my perspective, but there are still others. I won't say that I will never buy a Kinect because of a bad experience with the Wii, and I am no console fanboy or against Microsoft in any way - I have all of the 'big consoles' to avoid missing out on the things I want to play, and for their own individual perks (PS3 is my Blu Ray player). But to be frank the Wii isn't the best experience, especially with the way you have to hold the standard nunchuck controller for long periods of time while gaming. I will wait to see if the Kinect doesn't force players to do anything similar in any way through having to make very particular kinds of movements so that it may detect. When a few hundred thousand people have begun to buy, we'll start to see if it has flaws or problems from their reports when they play it for long periods of time. Like with the Wii, it didn't get much mention at the launch but the discomfort from having to holding the controllers a particular with my wrist was evident pretty quick when I bought one.

I love the idea of motion-controlled gameplay for some things, but not for all things. To be honest the idea of having to move about to order the game around for everything doesn't appeal that much - a standard controller and just having to move my fingers on it is still fantastic. It's like this idea of the 'coffee table computer' where the screen would be horizontal and table-sized... and what good is having to move your arms about a lot on that when you can just use a mouse on a regular screen? The only thing that idea offers is novelty or a sense of something hyper-modern and new. It's not all that practical for someone sitting behind a desk eight hours a day at work. You know... it's like this:

http://dashboardspy.com/img/minority-report-dashboards.jpg

Looks great, very futuristic and all, but would you want to do that for three, four, five hours at a go? What's wrong with a mouse and monitor?

I don't think I will get a chance to see this thing in a store around here because of the terrible lack of games stores around here, but if I do, I will most certainly try it out.

 

[aka958]

Get a Kinect and enjoy the power of it

I'm trying to sound as nice as I can with this:
F*ck no! XD

I'm serious though.

1. I don't want to cuddle with animals and throw my arms around.

2. It's on the ever so failing Xbox360 console which cost me as much as the price of two Kinects to repair before I trashed it and bought an PS3. Xbox has cost me enough.

3. I see no future in jumping around my house to play. I like the feeling of buttons, that is how I've always played and that is how I always will play.

4. Playstation 2 had their "Eye toy" or whatever it was called. Kinect seems similar but with vast improvements and newer technology. I did not enjoy anything about eye toy. Just needing to reach out my arm in thin air to push a button.

5. I cannot see how any games of the genres I like being in there at all. RPGS? How? Should I fake run on the spot? Hack'n'Slash games like DMC? Should I pretend to hold a sword and swing in thin air + fake run as well?

6. The most important one to note. I'm poor. Buy a Kinect with right now worthless games for a huge amount of money when I could've bought good games for the NDS, PSP, PS2, PS3 and PC that I have?

These motions thingies are not for me. I won't buy it, I won't even consider buy it.

There, my six cents.

 

[Dark Drakan]

Until they can master the precision of motion control it will only be a fad and never used in any serious games to a serious extent. Waving your arms and legs around to do something is so imprecise. Only have to look at the games on the Wii and see how temperamental the Wii remote is and how waving it around randomly each time does the same moves etc. If a company could nail down the precision then and only then will serious games be considered for it to be used to its full potential. Until then we are stuck with silly party games which are fun when your drunk or under the age of 10.

 

[Damien]

I love the idea of motion-controlled gameplay for some things, but not for all things. To be honest the idea of having to move about to order the game around for everything doesn't appeal that much - a standard controller and just having to move my fingers on it is still fantastic. It's like this idea of the 'coffee table computer' where the screen would be horizontal and table-sized.

So you agree with motion control then , so thats nice to hear your not completely against the idea then. But the fact you have to move your body to make the character move is still amazing. take your example of the controller , you don't feel involved in the game because you aren't the one who is moving around , its the character that you are controlling via a controller.

I'm trying to sound as nice as I can with this:
F*ck no! XD
It's on the ever so failing Xbox360 console which cost me as much as the price of two Kinects to repair before I trashed it and bought an PS3. Xbox has cost me enough.

I see no future in jumping around my house to play. I like the feeling of buttons, that is how I've always played and that is how I always will play.

Playstation 2 had their "Eye toy" or whatever it was called. Kinect seems similar but with vast improvements and newer technology. I did not enjoy anything about eye toy. Just needing to reach out my arm in thin air to push a button.

Agreed playstation had the eyetoy which was crap but the Kinect is different because of the vast changes from the eye toy for example , did the eyetoy have face recognition and ID recognition .. NO ! The eyetoy had the original idea I agree but it was flawed in the design and the technology was outdated, its like me saying to someone "hey look , I made a laptop". You dont have to wave your arms about , move your body side to side and jump when your asked to jump ...
And your point about microsoft costing you so much ... Ever thought of a warranty??
Buttons are great indeed , but surly you should agree that pressing a button to run and pressing one to hit something doesnt have the connection from character and player when Kinect does as your the character and player .

Until they can master the precision of motion control it will only be a fad and never used in any serious games to a serious extent. Only have to look at the games on the Wii and see how temperamental the Wii remote is and how waving it around randomly each time does the same moves etc. Until then we are stuck with silly party games which are fun when your drunk or under the age of 10.

The precision changes from game to game which sounds lame but its works depending on which game your playing. the Wii remote isnt temperamental , its how steady your arm is . Everyone seems to be forgetting that things dont happened in less than a second on games , you press B to beat down on halo and you wait 2 seconds for the console to register that command.
As i mentioned earlier the Kinect line up is abit lame but you have to give developers a short time to make use of the technology and make a brilliant game.



Edit - copy and pasted from Chaos Master Playstation move vs Kinect
For me Kinect is the better out of the two for a number of reasons.

1) Completey hands free - No controller that gets your hand sweaty and no trouble in the controller losing power due to moving it up and down fast. Also the batteries dont need to be replace like they do in the Move and the Move isnt hands free . Ands whats with the glowing balls on the end of the controller ?

2) Techology - Kinect takes the crown off the wii's boring white head and places it on its cool carbon fibre looking design and then laughs in the wii's face for taking the p!ss (pardon the pun), the wii offers wireless techolgy like Kinect BUT you have hold the controller , and the wrist band so you dont fling the controller into the TV is just so silly. Kinect has speech recognition and ID recognition while the wii just sits there and says "But .. But .. " and the Move goes "Wait ... Wait..." Kinect beats the two rivals in this department.

3) Price - Although at £130 pound it may seem abit expensive but really for what your getting is great value for money. The Move is a controller with a giant glowing ball on the end of it for £40 .. I could make that at home for £10 although it may not work
The wii cost £150 on launch and people flooded the stores for it so I dont see why people are getting so up tight by the price. You could buy a x-box 4GB and kinect for £200 .. thats only £70 pounds more and your getting a console as well..

4) Fun - Its a delight to see kinect move up and down to get the best angle to capture your movement and seeing it move is fun on its own . And when you start playing the game and using your hand to pick which game type you want to play is a "OMG" moment and I defy anyone not to impressed with that ! .. The kinect adventures game is amazing to set you up with the basics on kinect , like moving your body to stop leaks in a fish cage , the game isnt meant to be a hard core gamer game but a introduction into the possibility of what this little black box can do and potential of things to come.

Hopefully I have made the case for why you should spent £130 for kinect and if I haven't then think of the economy and buying this will help it and create more jobs meaning people are spending more meaning that no more downturn

 

[aka958]

Agreed playstation had the eyetoy which was crap but the Kinect is different because of the vast changes from the eye toy for example , did the eyetoy have face recognition and ID recognition .. NO ! The eyetoy had the original idea I agree but it was flawed in the design and the technology was outdated, its like me saying to someone "hey look , I made a laptop". You dont have to wave your arms about , move your body side to side and jump when your asked to jump ...
And your point about microsoft costing you so much ... Ever thought of a warranty??
Buttons are great indeed , but surly you should agree that pressing a button to run and pressing one to hit something doesnt have the connection from character and player when Kinect does as your the character and player .

You gonna leave it at that? How about everything else I wrote?

I got a 2 year warranty. A few months after that my warranty expired the box decided to crap out. Then it did it once again and my hard drive "crashed" somehow. With my warranty expired it is nothing but a waste.

 

[V]

So you agree with motion control then , so thats nice to hear your not completely against the idea then. But the fact you have to move your body to make the character move is still amazing. take your example of the controller , you don't feel involved in the game because you aren't the one who is moving around , its the character that you are controlling via a controller.

I am open to the idea of motion control, but I don't agree with it being perfect for everything and everyone. And as DD says, the Wii's motion control had flaws and I would bet my life this one has flaws too because the technology is still young. Flaws can get old fast when you're gaming and trying to enjoy the experience. (OKAMI for instance, on the Wii, you had to be extremely precise to the game's idea of what a painting motion was, rather than your own general idea of what the painting movement and speed was, and I would call that open to flaws. Some parts of the game are hard where they shouldn't be, because the controller isn't that great a piece of equipment, I believe). So I will wait and see what people who have bought it say after playing with it for a substantial time.

Sure, the idea of hands-free motion-controlled gaming is in itself amazing. So is the idea of glow-in-the-dark pigs created by scientists, but it doesn't have much bearing on me or my life currently. When truly appealing applications come along for Kinect rather than just software to show off the fact it can detect motion, I may find myself buying.

I don't feel atm as though I'm 'uninvolved' in a game because I use a normal controller. If anything, the lack of having to distract myself with moving means that my concentration is fully on the screen in front of me, nor is it bobbing up and down and around in my vision because I'm having to move, which is I suppose why we sit down at the cinema so we can get the best experience. You have to weigh up here whether the experience is really worth it - you can have, say, a dance game where you stand on a pad and watch the TV screen to see a character move in exactly the way you do... but then, why not just go out to a club and actually dance? That's THE most immersive experience - actually doing something. And I'd plug paintballing over motion-controlled CoD or something - because it is always more immersive to be doing it for real.

Consider the size of my TV, which is a 32" flatscreen... and I'd be standing 6 ft away from it, the area I'm looking at is quite small - how immersive is that going to really be? If my TV was enormous or I have a wall projector making the picture the size of my entire wall, that's something else; but I don't have that. I'd be trying to look at an area representing about 5% of my field of vision whilst moving around. I'm going to guess that it won't feel all that immersive.

 

[cheezMcNASTY]

You gonna leave it at that? How about everything else I wrote?

I got a 2 year warranty. A few months after that my warranty expired the box decided to crap out. Then it did it once again and my hard drive "crashed" somehow. With my warranty expired it is nothing but a waste.

that's unfortunate. i've heard of that happening to a lot of people, unfortunately. did you still try registering it at xbox.com/support?
reason i ask is because when i did (even though it was past warranty) they extended my warranty and gave me free repairs.

 

[Damien]

Sure, the idea of hands-free motion-controlled gaming is in itself amazing. So is the idea of glow-in-the-dark pigs created by scientists, but it doesn't have much bearing on me or my life currently.

You have to weigh up here whether the experience is really worth it you can have, say, a dance game where you stand on a pad and watch the TV screen to see a character move in exactly the way you do... but then, why not just go out to a club and actually dance? That's THE most immersive experience - actually doing something. And I'd plug paintballing over motion-controlled CoD or something - because it is always more immersive to be doing it for real.

Hands Free motion control is indeed amazing , and it has come along way since the eyetoy and the Wii . Kinect is a masterpiece because what it does has ok been done before but makes it sooo much better , its like the a horror film that has a murderer in it comes out and then next year another horror film with a murderer comes out , people dont go "thats been done before , so I'm not going to see this " , they go and watch the film . The principle is the same and I still dont see how you cant be impressed by the kinect's power and possibility to change gaming for ever.

Of course nothing can beat real life but thats why people play games to escape the madness of real life and take on adventures in different planets and wars. Motion control gives you the feeling that you are in the game and for the next hour , you arent in your room sat in front of your tv , your in the game jumping over thing as they speed towards you. You feel like your in the game becuase what you do the character does which gives you the conenction that motion control is all about.

Take your paintball idea , so if a game was launched and it came with electric pads you had to place on your body and everytime you lost health in the game , you would get a shock .. would you play the game ? Piantballing hurts when you get hit so if the expierence is so amazing , surly getting hurt as a result of the game ,would that would be amazing as well ?

 

[Ebony]

Has anyone actually bought one then?

I've just had a go and......I dunno, I ended up just getting frustrated 'cuz it kept 'loosing' me and I didn't know what the hell I was doing - for example it I wanted to go back, you could only raise your right hand to go forward - therefore I screamed back back back!!!!! And got annoyed and stormed off!

My fella's liking the voice control though, apart from that meh, I'll wait to see if any good games come out.

 

[Damien]

Has anyone actually bought one then?

I have one , got one at the midnight launched

 

[Meg]

@Eb I have not. I don't have a 360 and am not buying one for Kinect. I'm not buying Move either. I just don't care about motion control. At all. Maybe it will be a hit and everyone will love it. That's great, but I'll take sitting on my butt with a controller in hand any day. I've got enough going on by the time I can get a break I don't want to jump around some more.

And that is my piece on Kinect and motion control. XD

 

[Dark Drakan]

The Wii remote isnt temperamental , its how steady your arm is . Everyone seems to be forgetting that things dont happened in less than a second on games , you press B to beat down on halo and you wait 2 seconds for the console to register that command.

Yeah when aiming but not when performing an action, you merely flail it around like its a hot knife stuck to your palm. Reviewers mentioned it when talking about Red Steel which was meant to simulate sword fighting. When infact it actually simulated someone having an epileptic fit while trying to flap away a wasp. There is no precision in it and you could hold it upside down and wave it and still have the same strike as a thought out swipe. I think Ben summed it up quite well in most his reviews:

Red Steel 2

Wii Sports Resort

 

[V]

I remember Red Steel and that was the problem. It never got finished.

The game doesn't really allow more 'freedom' by being motion-control, if anything it limits your experience by demanding that you make the movements in a very precise way. If you don't, you lose the swordfighting battles, and eventually become frustrated. As far as I can tell they could never really work this issue out with the Wii because they expect you to use the controller precisely/in a certain way, and that then throws this idea of "wow, you can sword fight, you can play tennis, etc." out of the window a bit because all the fun you imagine it would be as in real life, where your movements are absolutely free, isn't there. And I guess this is the way they expect people to use Kinect?

 

[aoshi]

Kinect,wii,move kinda consoles can be fun multi-players but as a single player i really doubt their potential.

Reason: Most single player games are asynchronous by nature ...ie... gotta think two or three steps before performing the move. Eg : Stinger is a 3 button move for a single animation which make single player games a real challenge. Since mentioned consoles are motion-controlled i expect them to be synchronous or one motion maps to a single or more animations which don't compliment single player games. I myself prefer synchronous games like resident evil where all i gotta do is know cover locations and fire which is why Resident evil has a wii port.But really doubt if kinect,move or wii have a lot of single player games that are challenging but definitely a fun multi-player.

Edit:Thogh wii has one of the best single player games i have known - No more heroes.

 

[Damien]

Kinect has the power all ready to be a brilliant and amazing machine and it would be great if and I agree with everyone hear a Good motion control game was released that used ALL the potentail off Kinect. Im not saying the games already released are crap becuase they arent , but they dont test kinect. The launch games are only there to get you used to the tech and tell you how to play it the best way. It tells you if you have enough space and when you are "in and out" and the required space . Some of the games like Sonic free riders are terrible , and thats not the fault of the Kinect .. its the people you make it that are to blame . They had years to make a good motion control game.
My point of this whole thread is to not sell Kinect to you but just saying it is amazing in what it can do and it does it well apart from sonic free riders. Its easy to blame the tech for not being good because we blame other things for the mistakes we make .. hell I could be using it wrong for all I know and thats why the game is so bad..

Kinect uses the motion control to add something a bit more in games and just because it wants you to stand up instead of sat down on your bed is the main reason why people dont like it and people dont like moving in funny ways in case someone sees you and laughs.

Kinect is the future of motion control and wait until next year and see all the big game releases for it

 

[LordOfDarkness]

Kinect has the power all ready to be a brilliant and amazing machine and it would be great if and I agree with everyone hear a Good motion control game was released that used ALL the potentail off Kinect. Im not saying the games already released are crap becuase they arent , but they dont test kinect. The launch games are only there to get you used to the tech and tell you how to play it the best way. It tells you if you have enough space and when you are "in and out" and the required space . Some of the games like Sonic free riders are terrible , and thats not the fault of the Kinect .. its the people you make it that are to blame . They had years to make a good motion control game.
My point of this whole thread is to not sell Kinect to you but just saying it is amazing in what it can do and it does it well apart from sonic free riders. Its easy to blame the tech for not being good because we blame other things for the mistakes we make .. hell I could be using it wrong for all I know and thats why the game is so bad..

Kinect uses the motion control to add something a bit more in games and just because it wants you to stand up instead of sat down on your bed is the main reason why people dont like it and people dont like moving in funny ways in case someone sees you and laughs.

Kinect is the future of motion control and wait until next year and see all the big game releases for it

Agreed.

The starting games for the console are just to get the player use to the machine and the technology, as Damien has already stated.

Adding to that point entirely, I would love to be playing a game like Halo on the Kinect console. Games such as Halo, CoD and Resident Evil would be awesome with motion control. You'd really experience your favourite game series like you've never experienced them before.

The problem is that people have this negativity due to the point of it being motion control. However, an easy way to overcome this would be the following idea I am about to put forward.

You are indeed the controller, meaning the game moves/flows the way you want it to. However, at times you may not wish to be jumping up and down. What they should be going with is a choice for the two types of gamers. Active gamers, wishing to move. And non-active gamers wishing to sit and play. If they designed a controller, or a mechanism that allowed you to pick which gamer you wanted to be at whatever moment of choice, it'd add more of an element of freedom to the game-play.

You could be running on the spot one minute, and jumping up and down. The next you could be taking a breather, and letting the controller/mechanism do the actions for you. You get the ability to use the Kinect's features, but you can choose whether to turn them on or off.

 

[Damien]

You get the ability to use the Kinect's features, but you can choose whether to turn them on or off.

But then why would you buy kinect if you would just turn it off .. people will love or hate kinect. I Agree with CoD on kinect etc etc , I would want to shoot , jump and run like hell at the same time and that for me would be the best expierence on a game ever. The point of turning it off would actaully lower that expiernece to nothing as if I turned it off then I would feel less involoved in the game and more like the normal player. And people would just turn it off for ever and not turn it back on again. I have found that peoplem are very lazy when it comes to videon games and the idea of getting up and moving isn't the best as thats the reason why they arent outside in the sunlight because they are lazy. But with motion control you get to EXCERCISE and have fun at the same time

Thanks for siding with me in this very ONE sided thread which is against me

 

[LordOfDarkness]

But then why would you buy kinect if you would just turn it off .. people will love or hate kinect. I Agree with CoD on kinect etc etc , I would want to shoot , jump and run like hell at the same time and that for me would be the best expierence on a game ever. The point of turning it off would actaully lower that expiernece to nothing as if I turned it off then I would feel less involoved in the game and more like the normal player. And people would just turn it off for ever and not turn it back on again. I have found that peoplem are very lazy when it comes to videon games and the idea of getting up and moving isn't the best as thats the reason why they arent outside in the sunlight because they are lazy. But with motion control you get to EXCERCISE and have fun at the same time

Thanks for siding with me in this very ONE sided thread which is against me

Sorry, I didn't make my point clear enough. I just meant allowed to turn it off for a breather. Make games that have periods of times when you don't have to use the motion control. I didn't mean to say that they should make it so you could turn it off forever. Just for them to make games for it that are challenging, but won't make you die whilst you're having a heartache in your living room.

I understand gamers may not want to run about. Therefore they would have to make the motions used to play the game not so challenging. It's hard to explain. But if they made a CoD game. Make it so you use the motion control. But then have breaks from actual intense game-play. Make larger missions to roam, and shoot. And then areas that don't involve much action, therefore they can use the controller/mechanism to do as they wish. There are loads of ways to approach this, but it is very complicated.

It seems difficult for them to be able to achieve what they want, which is making this go forward in a good way. It should hopefully go well. But I can see a cloud of negativity around it if no good games are released. And if the motion control totally dominates you to the point where you have to crawl on your living room/bedroom floor, to avoid enemies, and lie there for several minutes; then I'm afraid people's interests will go back to sitting in front of a console, and letting the controller do it for them.

I'm with you ^_^

 

[darkslayer13]

At the moment motion control has no real value beyond the novelty of moving your body to play a game. Kinect adds to this novelty by taking away the controller, but it has no real practical benifit. It is actually extremly limiting, you are limited by your own movements. For example imagine playing Devil May Cry on Kinect. Can you move like Dante. No, no one can. Simply running around the area, something most videogame charicters can do all day, is exausting.

the Wii is marketed to casual gamers with a few games for a more hardcore audience. the Move has Wii style casual games with improved graphics and motion based add-ons for hardcore games allowing you to play with the Move or stick with the traditional controller depending on your preference. The Kinect has only casual games because that is all you can really do with Kinect. Anything more would be basicly unplayable. Sure the technology can probably handle it but the player can't. with the Wii and Move things that the player can't do are done by pressing buttons. the Kinect dosen't have buttons. It's cool but not very practical.