I'm sure that no one really cares about my opinion but that is the beauty of a blog - I get to tell you anyway, and you have to sit there and take it. Or at least click away from this page.....
Anyway, while I have to agree that the Kinect is an impressive piece of kit it seems to fall foul of the same issues that plague the Wii. Mainly whether or not you have adequate space to play the damn thing, the quality of the games and the accuracy of the technology.
The space issue is the real killer, especially if you want to play with more than one player. We pretty much cleared out our living room (and it isn't that small) in order to play and still ended up with very little space to work with and were constantly getting in one anothers way, which is hardly ideal. The main issue is the one of depth, as you need to be stood at least six feet away from the Kinect camera in order for it to pick you up. This means that a lot of the space you need is acTually not going to get used as the second you start moving too far forward then the whole thing stops working properly.
The games themselves are also not at a very high level at the moment. Admittedly so far I've only played Dance Central, Kinect Adventures and Harry Potter, so perhaps I'm not giving it a chance. Though having seen some of the reviews for third party games then perhaps it is just as well if I do steer clear.
From what I HAVE played, it is fair to say that Dance Central is arguably the best of the bunch. Though if you have zero co-ordination like I do then perhaps you will not find it as much fun. For my sister (former dancer) it was a walk in the park and much enjoyment was had. Kinect Adventures is pretty much a bunch of mini games that show what the machine is capable of, it gets old pretty quickly and does not really have the long term appeal that Wii Sports did. Finally Harry Potter is just awful. The Kinect aspect of the game is just a bunch of on rails sections where you flail your arms furiously to cast a bunch of spells and defeat enemies. The main problem is the fact that the game does not recognise what you are doing most of the time which led to some hilarious moments - especially when my wife developed a move to cast a spell that looked as though she had dislocated her arm. We laughed hysterically but not really because the game was in any way good.
The problem here is that people without large empty rooms are going to get very little enjoyment out of their new purchase, and the games kicking around at the moment do not offer much in the way of long term entertainment. It reminds me very much of the early days of the Wii, especially when I took the Kinect out to meet my family and the in-laws over Xmas. Everyone loved it, loved playing the various games and then got a bit bored after a while.
Since then it has pretty much gathered dust in my house, with the only use being from my wife playing an exercise game every now and then (Biggest Loser, which is also a bit naff about picking up certain movements - but at least it was cheap). Until we played Potter last night so I could mop up some achievements it had sat unloved for for nearly two months, which leads me to believe that the lure of motion control is perhaps not as great as the Wii had made out.
The Wii phenomenon was a simple one, people would play on a friends console and be hooked by the wonder of it all. They would then rush out and buy their own Wii, play it religiously for a few weeks and then never touch it again. I think it is telling that the Wii has the lowest software attach rate of all the current consoles, as people never bothered to look beyond Wii Sports and the console would soon be gathering dust. Unfortunately, MS and Sony simply looked at the hardware numbers with more than a hint of envy and decided motion control was the way forward.
Whether it will pay off in the long term is another matter. Both companies are touting good sales figures, but will the software keep up or will it fall by the wayside as people get tired of shovelware and titles that are little more than a few dull minigames, as happened on the Wii. I think, as with Nintendo, the onus is on MS to produce some amazing first party titles to drive things forward and until that happens it could well be lean times for those people that enjoy virtual dancing, flailing and spellcasting.
No comments:
Post a Comment