You’ll have to excuse me, but I simply cannot ignore the irony of the developer of Kinectimals trying to convince the world that Kinect is a viable platform for hardcore gaming. David Braben did just that today talking to Edge about Frontier the peripherals place in the future of gaming.
Are there any Kinect features that lend themselves to core gameplay?
One of the things that hasn’t got much coverage is that it’s got a decent array mic in it. I think that makes a big difference. It can listen to where you are in the room, it knows where you are speaking and what you are saying.You can name your animal and then call it over – that works. But think of the core gamer applications where, just sitting on the couch looking left causes you to look round a corner – that’s extremely powerful. It’s using head tracking basically.
Ok, a few things. First of all the head tracking. I’ve heard this touted in a few places over the past months as a viable feature of Kinect and people seem to forget one important factor. Simply that when you turn your head you are no longer looking at the screen. So it doesn’t matter what your character does on screen, you aren’t seeing it. Lara Croft’s tits could transform into two juggling midgets when you look up but guess what, you’re still just looking at the ceiling. Head tracking may only work with slightly minimal turns but anything beyond that is going to pull your vision away from the game.
Secondly. Though highly defined voice recognition is an interesting technology, is anyone really going to want to shout orders while playing a game? This has been done before, in Tom Clancy’s EndWar and though it has received some praise for the innovation it certainly did not blow the doors off of the RTS world because of it.
I understand that it is currently Frontier Development’s job to push the platform they are developing for but a lot of this seems like a stretch beyond reason.
Interview: David Braben (Edge)
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I’m gunna just stand by what I’ve said about the Kinect all along and say it’s only gunna be good for fighting games since you can punch AND kick. Maybe Adventure games might be fun but I can’t picture myself standing around for hours doing this. I just can’t stop cringing about all my Eye Toy memories and the amount of suck it produced…except for the cleaing windows game because I used my fat cat to play
Have you even played a fighting game lately?
Character move-lists have over 50+ moves on a regular basis when you’re trying to kick and punch at a camera.
Not to mention basically every game has inhuman moves like a hurricane kick.
Fighting games will limit you to probably 4 moves at best.
Same number as the copies people are gonna buy of next years Kinect Fight.
Oh kinect,
1. they should have left the name alone
2. what is with an obsession of animals and motion censored?! Is it all these companies can think of. Sony has the eyePet… and to be honest I dont know what wii has… and even if the wii dosent have a cute and cuddly motion censored animals game… they make up for it with some of there crazy ridiculous games.
I understand that these companies are trying to involve the entire family with gaming. But to be honest… My mother is 42 going on 43, she is going in for her second spine surgery… shes not going to want to be rolling around on the floor acting like a baby seal. Just sayin….
But im ranting on now… ima shut up lol
On another note, this motion technology isn’t new, it’s pretty old and hasn’t progressed much, people bring up, Eye Toy, but Namco actually released a Tekken (3?) Virtual Motion Capture Game, and let’s just say it isn’t used much. Natal doesn’t look new to me, but then again, what’s new in media these days.
imagine the XBLA games that will be Natal compatible, yes i will always call it Natal, furry pets and human pets >_>
i can sense it, I think some Punch Out will do…
Or some Tic Tac Toe you know.. that’s the hardcore games for Natal.
I just think that it has all be done before, and there is no reason why i would spend $150 when i have a wii to make me look like a crazy person jumping around the room. Also the move is alot cheaper but i still wont be getting this unless they can develope something different and innovative to this genre, until then i will stick to the wii.
AHAHAAHAA!
Yeah, your not gonna get me to buy this thing. Ever….
Seems like we’ve taken a step back. All these years i’ve been telling myself that moving the controller doesn’t turn the car any faster, and now they switch everything up! Kinect sounds cool, but it also sounds like if you don’t speak extremely clear and move perfectly then it will get extremely irritating extremely fast.
Maybe he means “leaning” not “turning” your head when he says “look left”. Whatever. Looking around corners probably isn’t going to be very cool/useful in Kinectimals.
Nothing says innovating and hardcore like voice controls…
I guess the concept of sitting down, having a drink and slashing the heads of demonic children off has been scrapped.
Developer of Kinectimals is a massive bleeding- finish this sentence.
Why do I still love 2D? SNES and arcade games are on my mind! just when 2D as about to go into photo / movie mode or cartoon mode, here comes 3D to step on the head of 2D. Now it’s all back to Atari again as 3D is still very early in it’s infancy in gaming. If 3D gaming was just like Peter jackson’s King Kong graphics (thanks to weta digital company) then yeah i would like 3D more. Now this motion sensing thing, I don’t know. I want a Nintendo 3Ds. At least it’s portable and button push based.
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