Kinect – Weev.Blog

I thought it would be fun to do a “roundup” sort of thing about what I saw/played/liked at PAX East this year. I’ll start with my favorite stuff, so you can quit reading or skip ahead if you get bored.

My Favorite Game: XCOM
I knew there was a strategy XCOM coming, but I haven’t been keeping up with game news, so I knew nothing about it. Seeing it at PAX (both on the show floor and in the XCOM panel) got me extremely excited about the game. I loved the style of the turn-based combat, with extra animations as things were going on. The “ant farm” base looked awesome, too. It was also great to see that they’re drawing so heavily from the original – I can’t wait to play it when it’s released later this year.

My Favorite Not-Game: “Day in the Life of an Indie Dev” Panel
I mainly liked this because it reinforced everything I’m already doing in the development of my game, which was mainly “Just make a game.” They even mentioned Unity several times, so I’m happy with my choice of tools. I only attended “part 1”, but it made me feel good about the path I’m taking with my game, so it’s all I needed.

What I Played
Monaco
I knew a bit about Monaco, but after playing it, I know it’s a day-one purchase. Even though we crashed the game, it was so much fun, even when I kept screwing up and alerting all the guards. My favorite moment: Matt saying “Don’t bring them toward me!” as an army of guards was chasing me.

Guacamelee
This was probably my biggest surprise at PAX this year. I had heard nothing about Guacamelee, but it’s a fun platformer that looks gorgeous, has good writing, and has a neat “dimension-shifting” trick.

Bloodforge
A God of War-like action game that’s pretty generic, but really fun to play. It has really nice graphics, which was apparently part of the goal of the game – to create an XBLA game that looks like a AAA game.

Trials: Evolution
If you’ve played Trials, you know how this plays. The multiplayer was really fun, though.

Star Wars Kinect
The more I see of this game, the more I want it, even though it’s just a collection of different game styles. I played the Rancor destruction game, and it was fun, mindless destruction.

Go Home Dinosaurs
This is a neat tower defense game for Chrome (NaCl), where you play as gophers who are trying to save their barbecue from dinosaurs. The “towers” are shaped like Tetris pieces, so you have to arrange them in the open area of the maps. It’s also got a kind of “deck building” feature, similar to Plants vs Zombies.

Raiderz
I got a free mug and bag for playing it. That was the best part.

What I Saw/Watched
Assassin’s Creed 3
Looks amazing. I’ve always loved the AC games, and I’ll likely buy this one right away.

Antichamber
I played this a while back as a UDK demo, but it’s come a ways since then. It still looks like a great FPS puzzler that encourages a lot of outside-the-box thinking.

AirMech
I wish I took the time to play this. It looks beautiful, has transforming jets, and looks really fun.

Mark of the Ninja
This looks like a cool Metal Gear Solid-style stealth action game. I wanted to play, but media badges got in the way and I was tired.

Crimson Dragon
A Panzer Dragoon clone that plays like Child of Eden. Child of Eden was hard to play with Kinect, but hopefully this is a bit better. It has dragons, so I think I am required to buy it.

Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor
This looks cool, and the Kinect controls seem to replace the need for the giant controller. I’ll have to play a demo before I buy it, though – the Kinect controls seemed to be having some issues, though that may have just been because of the crowd.

Novus Aeterno
An MMORTS that looks a bit like Homeworld and I’m a sucker for RTS games with space ships. According to the devs, it’s $30 with no subscription, so it might be worth it. I’ll at least play the beta coming up later this month.

That’s all I can think of for now. I might add more later.

So I’ve been playing a few new Kinect games lately and I’ve been pretty impressed with how far they’ve come. I’ve always been impressed with Kinect from a technical standpoint, but I’ve been a bit wary of the games for it – after all, how much can you do without a controller?

Fruit Ninja was the first Kinect game I played and thought, “Wow, this is perfect.” It’s a simple mechanic, but the game is really fun – usually the only thing that stops me is the extreme pain in my arms from flailing them about spastically for half an hour (if I last that long). I had played Kinect Adventures, Kinect Sports, Dance Central, and a few other games, but a $10 XBLA game put the $50-$60 Kinect games to shame – and I expect to see more of that as more Arcade and Indie Kinect games pop up. (Note that I still enjoy all those games) I’ve been playing Kinect Sports Season 2, and the football and baseball games are really impressive. They’re not as detailed or complex as a full-fledged sports game, but they’re perfect for the format and audience.

In Football, you only play offense (defense is handled automatically and you’re just presented with the results). You start the game by receiving the ball. Once you’ve returned the ball as far as you can, you switch to the quarterback. You have four downs to score a touchdown – there are no more first downs. First, you pick a play (or let an AI coach pick one), then you crouch (like a quarterback) and can say “Ready, hike!” to snap the ball. Once you have the ball, you can pass to one of three players by throwing forward or to the left or right. If the player catches the ball, you take control of them and have to run in place to run down the field. You can’t really dodge tackles – you will be tackled at some point – but how fast you run determines how many yards you gain. If you score a touchdown within the four downs, hooray. If not, you kick a field goal.

This is a lot more complex than the original Kinect Sports, where most sports really only had a single “action” it was tracking. Bowling used your arms, soccer used your legs, etc. With football, it incorporates your entire body – throwing, kicking, running, and crouching. The closest the original got to this were a few of the track & field games like javelin.

Another big improvement in Kinect Sports Season 2 is that everything can be controlled with your voice. You can activate every menu item with your voice, so you don’t have to use the “floating hand” to select buttons. You see this in the new dashboard, but it’s really nice in a Kinect game.

I’m looking forward to seeing some new games that are a bit more immersive. As fun as Kinect Sports is, you still feel like you’re playing a Kinect game, and the action comes in spurts – extremely brief periods of exertion. I’d prefer to see something that keeps a moderate pace up for a longer period of time. Child of Eden almost does this, but it’s just not very fun with Kinect controls.