mrkbevan

Here are my first impressions with the Kinect. (I posted this in the Forum's as well, but in case it belongs on the Blog's here it is).

First off, I would rate it as a 4.5 out of a possible 5.

When I booted up the Kinect, it brought me up to the intro screen and walked me through some basic things to know and then went to the calibration screen (area, noise and voice). I have found the voice commands to work almost flawlessly, noticing the only delay being the confirmation time, where I have to say yes or no to confirm a command. If you have not been auto recognized by the Kinect, a simple back and forth of one of your hands is all that is needed to activate it, and if you see your hands glowing in the lower right hand corner box, you know that you’re good to go. I placed the Kinect on top of my DLP TV to keep it away from my center speaker that is below the TV, which places it on bout my eye level when I stand up. I have a 360 slim so the set up was very easy as I didn’t need to worry about another power connection. In case your confused, the ‘calibration disk is the Adventures disk’.

When I ordered the Kinect, I also purchased the following games: Kinect Adventures (which comes with the Kinect), Dance Central, Motion Sports, Kinect Joy Ride, Kinect Sports, Kinectimals, Your Shape Fitness Evolved, Sonic Free Riders – so I have had the chance to play a good sampling of various games. I would state that even without using the Fitness games you can get a good workout, because you will be moving around… a lot.

The first thing I tested out with the Kinect was the ESPN application, and after the update download, it came up and was able to scroll left and right to find the video that I wanted to watch. When I selected the video, the Kinect drew a circle to confirm my selection and then started. I was dying to try out the voice commands, so I said Xbox pause, and the microphone appeared on the bottom with a note asking me to confirm yes or no to which I responded and it worked. I said Xbox play and yes and the story started up again. I tried rewind and fast forward and confirmed that it worked (Note in order to speed up the rewind/fast forward you need to repeat the command again).

The next thing I tried was the Video Kinect and to my surprise the update started, and then the software crashed (hung). I’m not sure if it was because this feature wasn’t really available or if it was a just bad luck, but I restarted the Xbox and have not gone back to this feature. I will not cover up problems; I want this to be a honest review.

Then I started Adventures and played a few of the games where you were in Zero Grav and had to float and move back and forth to pop the bubbles, if you wanted to rise you had to flap your arms and to sink you had to lower them. I had a lot of fun doing this, and think that Adventures is a great party game.

Kinectimals was next and I was blown away by the graphics of this game. Wow is the first word that came to mind (at least in 1080P). I picked the young tiger as my pet and then went through some of the basic playing with it, and was floored with the response of the game to my actions. If you have young kids this game is going to be a big hit. They also made it clear that this is an adventure to find a lost treasure. Even if you don’t have kids, I think this is going to be fun to play and if you like cats (I have 4) you might really like this.

Next up was Kinect Sports and I only played a few of the various sports but I loved the beach volley ball, and I think I could spend hours playing this. I also found the boxing to be fun. The bowling was very responsive; however the ball kept tracking to the right even when I was attempting to put spin on the ball. When I stepped to the left, I was able to bowl from the left part of the lane and corrected the slight drift. I can’t say that the spin wasn’t working, because I was clearly able to put some spin on the ball when I went to pick up some spares. I might have just been pushing the ball right myself, I honestly wasn’t a 200+ bowler when I bowled, so my form might be wrong. This program will be a great party game, I would recommend purchasing it.

I only played 3 Motion Sports, the boxing which was fun (I thought it was better than Kinect Sports boxing, but I did have a problem of it not picking up my uppercuts, however I had no problem with jabs or hooks be it lefts or rights. The snow skiing was very responsive, if anything, it might have been too responsive, when I made left and right turns. I destroyed my right knee running a few years ago, so staying bent in a tuck for me was difficult and noticed if I stood up, so did my skier. There are no Live features, so this could be a problem for people who want to compete on line (I didn’t try this, but have read it from other reviews and wanted to comment on this).

Your Shape Fitness is crazy good, I was really impressed with this program, and the features, my only complaint is that this game requires more distance than the other games, so if you don’t have 8 feet or more, you might want to consider one of the other fitness games. I loved the calorie burning tracking and the scan of your body into the program, and the dissolving of your body if you step outside the area of game play.

Kinect Joy Ride is fun, but you can only steer and power up (pull back, push forward), and I can see someone getting bored with this. I wouldn’t spend more than $20 on this game, and I clearly paid too much. It is a fun game, but not worth the price.

Sonic Free Riders is impressive with it’s graphics and the game does a nice job teaching you how to play, but due to my right knee I have some problems jumping (I wasn’t a great jumper when I had a good knee and was 175 pounds, and I’m worse now), so I had problems once they jumps and stunts were added, but I would recommend this game to anyone who likes skateboarding/snowboarding.

Dance Central is probably going to get the best reviews of any of the original release games for the Kinect, and it will deserve them. They teach you how to do the various moves, and even have a slow down set up to help you if you’re still not getting it. The graphics are sharp, and clearly MTV and Harmonics know music. They have about 5 to 6 different male and female characters so you can get one to your liking. My only complaint is that I really didn’t know any of the music that came with the game with the single exception of “Funky Town”. I would have like some more Rock and Pop mixed in with the original list. I like this game, but I will have to admit, I just stink at dancing.

I really didn’t pick up on any lag, but then again I was playing and not watching. I would highly recommend this, and I think it will be a great party game. I’ve have Harry Potter, Game Party In Motion, and Decca Sports Freedom (I love Amazon pre-order credits, I’ve saved a ton of money with them on these Kinect games).

Other than running out of some space with Your Shape (until I move my couch), I did not have any tracking issues with the Kinect. The only complaint I have with Kinect, is after playing a game or if I stopped to get a drink I had to wave my hand to reactivate my dashboard control, I could understand if I was gone for a half hour, but 2-3 minutes shouldn’t have caused this. I’m assuming that patches will be coming in the future to fix this.

Anyway, I do own a PS3 and the PS3 move (I gave that a 3 out of 5 on Amazon), but I will state for the record, I like the Kinect a whole lot better.

Ken