Kinect Impressions

With Sony's Playstation Move already being released last month Veteran Gamer now turns its attention to the Microsoft version of the motion controlled video game experience. I had a chance to preview Kinect in August, and with its release price of $150, I believe that Microsoft marketing has its work cut out for it.

My preview experience was on the Kinect Tour, which is wrapping up shortly. There were two choices, Dance Central and Kinect Sports. Being a 6'4" slightly overweight guy, Dance Central in front of strangers was not an appealing options, so I went for the Kinect Sports option. The tour is held in small trailers, which have an optimal space set up for the Kinect experience. If you're a loser with no friends with you like I was, the Microsoft representative will played with you to complete the experience.

It's not Minority Report

One of the big features everyone is clamoring over is the "Minority Report" style interface that Kinect affords. If you've seen the movie, you know that this is a virtual interface that was extremely fluid and responsive to the person using it. This was not at all the case in my experience. The Microsoft rep lets you start the game from the main menu, and this was not as great an experience as I'd expected. The reaction to your motion is very laggy, and with no buttons to activate your choice, the way to select something is simply to hold your hand over it for a given amount of time.

100 meter glowing hurdles

After getting through the menu, you get to the game, which in this game, was the 100m hurdles. Before the game, the Microsoft rep informed me that the secret to running fast in the game was to run in place and bring your knees up as high as you can while running. Also, you have to pay attention to the hurdle to see when it glows green to make your jump. I ended up getting to play two games against the rep, as she forgot to activate the camera recording our play the first time so we would be posted to the website for the Kinect tour. The two game play sessions were physically intense. Kudos to the Microsoft rep, doing that all day had to be extremely draining. I ended up winning both matches, which I'm sure the reps were probably directed to do, but I also set the record in my second attempt. The biggest thing I noticed was the reason for the glowing hurdles. When I jumped, my character did not jump right away. Instead, the character jumped at the appropriate point when it reached the hurdle after I'd jumped well in advance of that point. This further lent to the overall feeling that the system lags behind your actual movements.

Of course, it is still pre-release

The one thing going for Kinect is that it is still pre-release. I'm holding out hope that because this is not final software that it was indeed the software that was the problem, and not the hardware. However, let's just say this gave me a less than stellar first impression of the system. I find it really hard to believe that Microsoft actually allowed the game to be played in this state, because I certainly wouldn't recommend to anyone to spend money on that experience. Yes, it's neat that I was able to control the whole game using only my body. However, the neat factor only goes so far. The rest of the experience was jarringly disjointed. What I did never truly reflected what was exactly happening on screen, completely taking me out of the experience. Even if everything had worked flawlessly, I had already determined in my own mind that I wouldn't be purchasing Kinect until the price dropped to at least $100. After my demo, I don't believe it's worth even that much. Only time and more games will determine if my experience will be the norm or if it was merely an aberration. For gaming's sake, let's hope for the latter.