Microsoft's upcoming Kinect accessory is the farthest you can get away from a controller and still have control of what's happening on the screen. Unlike Sony's and Nintendo's offerings--both of which can be had right now, Kinect, which becomes available at the beginning of next month, uses no controller. Instead, it tracks your body movements with its built-in camera and maps them to game controls.
Along with Microsoft's first-party efforts, there are a handful of third-party developers building games for Kinect's launch that will arrive in time for the holiday shopping season. Earlier today I got my hands on four of them from developer and publisher Ubisoft at a demo event in downtown San Francisco. The verdict? Based on my admittedly limited playtime of unfinished games, I still prefer controllers. But there were some hints of brilliance, that--if fleshed out--signal a very compelling reason to pick your body over a piece of plastic.
The first of those is a game called Your Shape Fitness Evolved. This game was featured in Microsoft's E3 keynote and is very much a competitor to Nintendo's Wii Fit series. It bundles a handful of exercise activities and minigames together and tracks your progress in each. The game then sets fitness goals and rewards so you can use it to get in shape.
What made the game incredibly enjoyable is a very solid sense of 1:1 motion with what you were doing with your body. Ubisoft is employing what it calls "player projection technology," which uses the Kinect's camera to process a 3D image of your body as it moves. This is as opposed to using a game avatar that may not mirror your body movements with as much visual believability. The end result in Your Shape is that you get almost instantaneous feedback of what your body is doing in the game's 3D space.
This factored well into a simple minigame that has you punching, kicking, and ducking. What made the experience so great is that the sequence of movements becomes quite natural and almost predictable, to the point where you forget that you're looking like a complete dork in your living room. The smoother and more connected your punches get, the bigger your score.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20018676-248.html#ixzz11t8g1O5v
whoah! this is so off the hook. totally cool! ---but i think this will need a little "need to get use to" moment, with those controllers off.
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