But that’s not it, there are different mechanics at work for each stage and part of the joy was figuring them out. Hallucinatory shoot em up? Trance Shooter? There are shapes that pulse and move to the beat of a techno soundtrack and the player points towards the part of the screen that must be cleared. One of the most intriguing Kinect titles for me was Child of Eden. Yeah, you might not shell out the 20 bucks for a glossy print, but everyone likes to check out the stupid faces they make as they plummet 200 feet.

It’s akin to those pictures taken after you ride a roller coaster. Far from being embarrassing, these little snapshots give you the chance to laugh at yourself and with the audience. Taking advantage of the fact that people often like to see themselves being ridiculous, the games will display highlights or quick video shots of what you look like when you play.

This was actually a feature that I saw in a lot of the Kinect games. It was a neat way to keep the mood light and the party jumping. This is displayed onscreen in a trippy graphic, and then video from your awesome dance is shown to everyone. One of the coolest features is that during every song there is a 10-20 second “breakdown” where points are not counted and you can do whatever moves you want. I didn’t get a chance to dance any of the five tracks on the demo (ranging from Lady Gaga to Bell Biv Devoe’s Poison, “Never trust a big butt and a smile”) but, if the amount of people laughing, moving and grooving to the beat is any indication, everyone loved it. Like Rock Band and other rhythm games, it is a lot harder than it looks. On the other side of the room was the set up for Dance Central. The bowling game might just be Microsoft’s killer app on Kinect. Sure enough, the ball soared and bounced heavily on the lane just as if I had thrown it like a baseball. Just ot test it out, the dev next to me encouraged me to the thorw the ball a the pins overhand. By lunging forward and following through, I was spinning like crazy and knocked down strike after strike. Pulling back and releasing the ball is easy, but the thing that sold it for me was how much spin i could put on the ball. If you want to move a couple of boards to the left, Kingpin style, all you have to do is step that way. Taking the bowling bowl is as simple as reaching left or right (the game corrects if you are right or left handed). I consider the bowling game in Wii Sports to be a big reason that the console sold as many units as it did, but I can say that Microsoft has trumped Nintendo with their own version. It was a lot of fun, and I beat the guy from Big Park, so that was a bonus. Racing felt clear and intuitive, aiming for green boosters in order to gain speed over the opponent that can barrel into you and push you off to the side of the track. In fact, because I was playing with my real body, I felt more in control of the game than I have with any other input device. Kinect is responsive enough that you don’t have to exaggerate your movements, but that didn’t stop me doing so. Going over jumps, you do flips and tricks by flailing around.

To get a boost of speed, you pulled the “wheel” towards you and then pushed forward. Steering is accomplished by holding your hands up as if you were in fact holding a wheel. Despite all of the similarities to Wii, the game played much differently. The character in the vehicle is your Xbox Live Avatar. It’s a lot like Mario Kart, pitting you against another player in a souped up vehicle and racing in a cartoony, non-realistic world. The first game I got to play was Joy Ride, developed by Big Park Games. Yes, Kinect is fun, and in a way that’s either better or at least different than the Wii. Would it be worth the $150 price tag? Are the games for it any fun or are they just Wii retreads? While I still reserve my opinion on the first question, I think the second question is a lot easier to answer. After playing a bunch of titles using Microsoft’s Kinect, I can say that the gimmick works.Īfter all of the bruhaha of E3, I was still skeptical of Microsoft’s version of motion control, Kinect.

Bell biv devoe poison dance kinect