Kinecting In Atlanta, Wish I Had brought my Controller

This weekend at select Macy’s Dept. stores, Microsoft brought Kinect, their motion system for the Xbox 360 to the public.  On the floor to try out was Kinect Adventures, Joy Ride, Bowling and Kinectimals.   We here at the farm couldn’t let this opportunity pass us by, so we hopped on the tractor and took this beast to the market, er, mall.   So, what did we think about Kinect?  Read on to find out.

The first thing we noticed? No one seemed to notice Kinect at all.  We are talking about possibly the largest mall in Atlanta, with Kinect having front billing at Macy’s and no one was playing, or waiting to play, or anything.  I was expecting to at least wait in line, instead, I was able to walk right up and start playing with a little assistance from the guy in charge of the display. It probably didn’t help that there were clothing racks beside it and slightly in front of the display.  But that is not what you are here to read about.  You want to know if it works and that question is hard to answer.

In order to select a game that you wish to play, you have to select it by holding your arm in front of one of three blocks that almost fill the screen for a couple of seconds. This sounds fantastic in theory if it worked.  The problem with this was that before Kinect realized that I wanted to play it decided that my arm moved way up to the left side of the screen or would go straight left to the next game.  This glitch made the actual selecting of the game a pain in the ass.

The first game I played was Bowling.  I was able to choose from two sets of bowling balls on each side of me.  I simply reached out to my left arm and “picked” up the bowling ball.  I have only bowled twice in my life so needless to say, I really didn’t know what I was doing.  Trying to mimic everything I have ever seen on ESPN, I took my aim, stepped up and let it go.  Kinect disconnected.  My bowling ball jumped right out of my hand and cracked the floor before rolling right into the gutter.  A total WTF moment.  The attendant told me that I had gotten too close to Kinect and needed to back up.   After taking a step back I was able to get a few decent bowls after that.   Kinect and bowling worked out rather well together, while I wasn’t able to put any type of spin on the bowling ball, the attendant had no problem showing off what Kinect can do.

The one thing that I noticed while playing bowling and before making the ball selection, your in game hand was right in front of you.  I wiggled my fingers and the hand stayed the same on the screen.  I was hoping to see the much lauded finger movement but it was missing.  That’s not to say that Kinect can not read your fingers but I would think that this would be the title to show that feature if finger detection can be done. It was at this point my flailing around had drawn a small crowd so I moved off to the side and let a few others have a go of it.

After a few minutes the crowd again dispersed and I tried my hand at Kinect Adventures rafting game.  In order to start the game you had to pull a zipper on the screen from the left to the right.  After that your avatar was placed inside a raft and taking a jump, you and your raft leap off into the river.  In order to steer your raft you had to sidestep to the left or the right and you could make your raft jump by guess what?  Jumping.  There was a delay in the jumps and steps so you had to time them to make it work out in the game.  Once you got past that issue, the game was rather enjoyable.  That is until Kinect went spastic, requiring the attendant to stick his hand directly in front of the cameras.  Once done, I was able to finish the game and had a good time.

When I tried my hand at Joyride it was totally unplayable.  Once I start going around the track I turn my hands as I would in a car but that doesn’t work.  So I start turning my body only the car starts doing an unstoppable donut.  There was nothing I could do but throw my hands up as the attendant took over.  There was no stopping what was happening so reboot here we come.  After the reboot, I stepped back and asked someone else to try it out and see if they could do any better.  Nope, not happening.  No one was able to get Joyride to do anything other than bounce off of  both sides of the track and do donuts.  Joyride should not have been shown, I don’t see this demo selling Kinect at all. I watched four people try Joyride and no one was impressed with what was happening.

As I mentioned, I watched several people try their hands at Kinect and here are my thoughts on it.  Kinect is aimed at the casual gamers and children. The fact that it was on display at Macy’s and not Gamestop or Electronics Boutique only reiterates the argument for casual gaming. The problem with that, is that with small children, Kinect has a real problem seeing their movements; yet,  has no problem taking their picture in Kinect Adventures.  It did not work for a single small child out of the three that I saw playing.  One of the kids was with an adult and the other two played together.  I believe that the one playing with her mother was able to finish the demo by the Mothers actions alone and not the child’s.  The kids were doing everything right, Kinect was just flipping out.  Again.

So, does it work? Kinda. Is it fun? Kinda. Will we buy it? Probably not. It still needs a lot of  fine tuning that it most likely will not get.No matter how much enjoyment you might get out of playing Kinect, you will look stupid.  It’s inevitable.  You can try to pretend that you look cool, but are foolin’ no one.

So did any of y’all try out Kinect?  Let us know in the comment section.

Videos on the way!

**Update** Videos turned into Video, you can watch it here!