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Kinect System & Game Review Thread [Update: Lots Of Reviews Post 223]

B

bloke

Member
First Dance Masters review: OXM 8.5 :D
Make no mistake: you won’t find the straightforward, dance-lesson approach of Dance Central here. DanceMasters may also be a dance game, but it’s first and foremost a game; you play it to succeed in it, not to learn new moves. It’ll give you a quick eight-step tutorial to review the basics, but after that, it’s all up to you to memorize each song’s choreography to rack up Perfects and earn those coveted AAA scores...

+ Flail-tastic embodiment of everything we love about Japanese dance games.
+ Fun choreography, crazy graphics, amusing opening image (watch carefully).
- Smaller song offering than we’d like; hypersensitive menu interface.
? Can we play this all day at work still? Please?
Click to expand...
Only 20 tracks? Boo...shame on you Naoki

edit: Other sources says it's actually 30 tracks, some of them are unlockable I guess then
 
L

luxarific

Nork unification denier
dark10x said:
a feature which has been present in many other devices for quite a few years now.
Click to expand...


But not consoles (to my knowledge). Not something I would be that excited about, personally (though I do think it is a feature worth mentioning), but whatever floats your boat.
 
B

BritBloke916

Member
Littleberu said:
It appears like they have been burnt on some of the bad games and make an article about it instead of making an article about KINECT.
Click to expand...

Surely Kinect will thrive or perish depending on the quality of its games? Just as with any other peripheral or console. You can only review what's in front of you, not what might happen in the future.
 
H

Hugbot

Member
BritBloke916 said:
Surely Kinect will thrive or perish depending on the quality of its games? Just as with any other peripheral or console. You can only review what's in front of you, not what might happen in the future.
Click to expand...
Yeah I'm kind of stumped at people expecting a straight hardware review here instead of how it interacts with the current lineup of games.
 
R

Rad-

Member
bloke said:
First Dance Masters review: OXM 8.5 :D
Only 20 tracks? Boo...shame on you Naoki
Click to expand...

Seems OXM got more Kinect games than most other reviewers:

Adrenalin Misfits: 5.0/10
The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout: 6.0/10
Dance Central: 9.0/10
DanceMasters: 8.5/10
Fighters Uncaged: 6.0/10
Kinect Adventures: 7.0/10
Kinect JoyRide: 4.0/10
Kinect Sports: 7.5/10
Kinectimals: 8.0/10
Motion Sports: 3.5/10
Sonic Free Riders: 7.5/10
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved: 8.5/10
 
Philthy

Philthy

Member
Mashing said:
Ugh... the fact that you have to have a lot of light is pretty much a deal breaker for me. I usually like to play my games in the dark (or with only a bit of lamp light). It's unnatural for me to play games with the room lights on.
Click to expand...

The reviews I'm seeing are stating the opposite, too much light blinds the camera.

Joe Shlabotnik said:
Yeah, I'm not understanding the surprise here. It's like being astonished that you can't play your handheld from across the room.

It's a camera tracking your entire body flailing around, people. Of course you have to stand far back from the TV.
Click to expand...

Complaints we've been seeing are that people are 4-5' from their TVs. This is still enough room to stand and flop around. Not for the Kinect, though.
 
L

Lambtron

Unconfirmed Member
bloke said:
Only 20 tracks? Boo...shame on you Naoki
Click to expand...
This is strange. The Konami website has 20 tracks they haven't announced yet, plus 10 tracks. I'd always heard there were 30 tracks. The lack of information on this game is sad since I'm super excited for it. Hoping I can snag it at lunch. If no one else has yet, I will provide impressions tonight. :)

Rawkus said:
Dance Masters actually has 31 tracks. Guess they didn't realize that there were unlocks...
Click to expand...
My Summer Love!? YESSSSSSSSS! This is like my favorite DDR song. This is an absolute killer song list. Hype going through the roof.
 
R

Ryan_IGN

Member
Rad- said:
Seems OXM got more Kinect games than most other reviewers:

Adrenalin Misfits: 5.0/10
The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout: 6.0/10
Dance Central: 9.0/10
DanceMasters: 8.5/10
Fighters Uncaged: 6.0/10
Kinect Adventures: 7.0/10
Kinect JoyRide: 4.0/10
Kinect Sports: 7.5/10
Kinectimals: 8.0/10
Motion Sports: 3.5/10
Sonic Free Riders: 7.5/10
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved: 8.5/10
Click to expand...

Yeah, we made it a point to hunt down every single launch title, because we knew everyone would be as curious about the launch lineup as we were. Maybe the thread-starter will be kind enough to edit our links into the OP at some point. :)

Personal note: Of the launch titles I personally reviewed, Kinect Sports was the most pleasant surprise. For those of you that have it, here's a nice little Easter egg: when you're about to start the Long Jump event, raise your arms up at the crowd and they'll cheer wildly for you. It's silly, but it makes you feel kinda awesome. :D
 
G

GarthVaderUK

Banned
OXM links and a few more:

OXM US:
Dance Central 9.0
DanceMasters 8.5
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 8.5
Kinectimals 8.0
Kinect Sports 7.5
Sonic Free Riders 7.5
Kinect Adventures 7.0
Fighters Uncaged 6.0
The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout 6.0
Adrenaline Misfits 5.0
Kinect Joy Ride 4.0
MotionSports 3.5

GameSpot:
Kinectimals 7.5
Kinect Sports 7.5

GamePro:
Dance Central 4.5/5

NowGamer:
Dance Central 8.4
Kinectimals 8.1
Kinect Adventures 7.0
Kinect Joy Ride 7.0
Kinect Sports 6.4
Fighters Uncaged 6.4

Added a couple to the other list too: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=24203751&postcount=223
 
I

Ihya

Member
The hardware reviews are by and large pretty damning. No wonder there were no reviews up before release date.
 
R

RustyNails

Member
Anyone read Joystiq's verdict on Kinect? Its scathing.
The Verdict

For all the talk of revolutionizing the Xbox 360 experience and making gaming more natural/ accessible, it's bordering on absurd how broken Kinect is when it comes to something as simple as working in your home. I find the technology itself fascinating, but the fact that I know a lot of people who simply won't get Kinect to work in their rooms beyond troubling. Given that Microsoft conducted a beta program with actual consumers, this issue is doubly surprising, but it could just be that Kinect just works that way (or doesn't, given your room) and there's no way short of redesigning the sensor to fix it.

If Kinect does work for you, congratulations: you have what amounts -- for now -- to a novelty peripheral that is in no way geared towards the day-one buyer or "core" gamer. Microsoft conceived a potential game-changer with Project Natal, it just seems like Kinect was born prematurely.
Click to expand...
 
N

Neuromancer

Member
Nothing beat's Eurogamer's Fighters Uncaged review (2/10):

...That enthusiasm will begin to dissipate right from the start of the intro movie which, with its static images of ugly men with stupid names rolling across the screen, looks like it has been stolen from 1994. The theme continues with the world's most rubbish sound effect, which is supposed to be breaking glass but sounds more like a fairy sneezing.

Before you can take part in an actual fight you must play through the most boring tutorial sequence in the history of the world. Because you couldn't work out for yourself that raising your right knee will make your on-screen avatar raise his right knee.

But here's the hilarious twist - it won't! Fighters Uncaged is so terrible at recognising your movements that any incidences of your avatar actually doing what you do are rare and precious moments to be treasured. When you raise your right knee, there is only a small chance your fighter will raise his. (Even if he does, the lag is so bad you will have either grown a beard or reached menopause by the time he gets round to it.) He is equally likely to do a kick, do nothing, perform a sweeping attack or, if he's feeling really creative, throw a punch.
Click to expand...
 
G

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
I read one review saying that Kinect 'garbles' fast movements and can underplay some motions and overplay others. True/false? Confusing one problem for another?
 
C

CrazedArabMan

Member
Well seeing as how my NDA is now officially up, I can actually talk about Kinect. I for one have never been a fan of motion control at all, I hate it with a passion and I pray that it is not the future of video games and a reason why I also hate the Wii so much (if you could look up some of my older posts you'll see that I really don't like motion control at all). With that being said, when I got accepted into the Kinect beta program, I was intrigued to say the least just to try it out. I also had no interest in buying it at all but hey, free is free, so I decided to try out the beta.

Truthfully, I have been very impressed with this piece of technology, while I didn't have as much time as I liked to try it out, I was able to try a lot of the features that it offered. My favorite has to be soccer in Kinect sports, it was very fun being able to use your legs as a part of the game and block shots and kick goals. I wasn't too happy with Joy Ride and I still think that would have made a much better xbox arcade game instead of a kinect game, but there is nothing I can do now. What I was really excited to try out though is the dashboard. I really like being able to move throughout the dashboard using motion controls, and yes, it does work if you are sitting down.

Voice command is also very nice as I can be listening to some music or a movie, and just say "Xbox Pause", and boom, I can get up, take a quick break, come back, and as I'm walking in the room, just say, "Xbox Play", and it plays again. Also being able to launch an application without clicking on it is pretty sweet also. It also is nice if you have connect plugged in but not that much room to use it, so it is nice for that reason also, which brings me to my next point.

Yeah, the space requirement does suck, you need a good amount of room, at least 6 to 8 feet or so. This is the one drawback which really does suck, but I can understand why it needs the space. Also it seems to work very nicely when you have 2 people using kinect at the same time, and it differentiates from both of them well enough. Though they do need to have about 1 to 2 feet separating them when playing or it can get messed up.

In conclusion, these are such a few things I found out while trying kinect, it isn't everything I discovered I'm in a bit of a hurry right now so I typed this up quick. I still don't think motion control is the future of gaming but the stuff that kinect brings is really cool, I am especially in love with the dashboard movement and the voice controls.

Also I did not notice much lag at all in the games I played nor with the dashboard so take that as you will.

So that is just some thoughts about kinect from a normal user, take it with a grain of salt or take it to heart, it doesn't matter, but I think some of the negative feedback that it is receiving is not a true representation of this product at all. Overall though I want to congratulate MS on doing something completely different and I am looking forward to seeing what they have in store for it for the future.
 
K

KAL2006

Banned
CrazedArabMan said:
Well seeing as how my NDA is now officially up, I can actually talk about Kinect. I for one have never been a fan of motion control at all, I hate it with a passion and I pray that it is not the future of video games and a reason why I also hate the Wii so much (if you could look up some of my older posts you'll see that I really don't like motion control at all). With that being said, when I got accepted into the Kinect beta program, I was intrigued to say the least just to try it out. I also had no interest in buying it at all but hey, free is free, so I decided to try out the beta.

Truthfully, I have been very impressed with this piece of technology, while I didn't have as much time as I liked to try it out, I was able to try a lot of the features that it offered. My favorite has to be soccer in Kinect sports, it was very fun being able to use your legs as a part of the game and block shots and kick goals. I wasn't too happy with Joy Ride and I still think that would have made a much better xbox arcade game instead of a kinect game, but there is nothing I can do now. What I was really excited to try out though is the dashboard. I really like being able to move throughout the dashboard using motion controls, and yes, it does work if you are sitting down.

Voice command is also very nice as I can be listening to some music or a movie, and just say "Xbox Pause", and boom, I can get up, take a quick break, come back, and as I'm walking in the room, just say, "Xbox Play", and it plays again. Also being able to launch an application without clicking on it is pretty sweet also. It also is nice if you have connect plugged in but not that much room to use it, so it is nice for that reason also, which brings me to my next point.

Yeah, the space requirement does suck, you need a good amount of room, at least 6 to 8 feet or so. This is the one drawback which really does suck, but I can understand why it needs the space. Also it seems to work very nicely when you have 2 people using kinect at the same time, and it differentiates from both of them well enough. Though they do need to have about 1 to 2 feet separating them when playing or it can get messed up.

In conclusion, these are such a few things I found out while trying kinect, it isn't everything I discovered I'm in a bit of a hurry right now so I typed this up quick. I still don't think motion control is the future of gaming but the stuff that kinect brings is really cool, I am especially in love with the dashboard movement and the voice controls.

Also I did not notice much lag at all in the games I played nor with the dashboard so take that as you will.

So that is just some thoughts about kinect from a normal user, take it with a grain of salt or take it to heart, it doesn't matter, but I think some of the negative feedback that it is receiving is not a true representation of this product at all. Overall though I want to congratulate MS on doing something completely different and I am looking forward to seeing what they have in store for it for the future.
Click to expand...

Is it true that there is lag, and are the Sports games as accurate as Sports Champion or Wii Sport Resort
 
C

CrazedArabMan

Member
KAL2006 said:
Is it true that there is lag, and are the Sports games as accurate as Sports Champion or Wii Sport Resort
Click to expand...

In some games you might encounter some lag but as I stated, I myself couldn't notice it that much or at all for the most part. Also I can't compare it to those 2 games as I have not played them.
 
G

Garjon

Member
Wow, reviews stretching right across the board. Though, I'm not all that surprised; going by previews it was obvious it was not for some. Also, :eek: at that Eurogamer Fighters Uncaged review, brutal.
On another note, in my local HMV today, they had taken away the demonstration unit in favour of 4 FIFA pods - I'm not sure why, since it seems logical that they would have the demonstration set up on launch day. In all related shops, the Kinect display's were quite muted, overwhelmed perhaps, by the soaring Black Ops displays: has anyone else found a similar situation? Of course, MS could simply be saving their marketing funds for later in the year, but this is rather surprising.
 
T

T Ghost

Member
Skiptastic said:
Stupid Costco needs to bring back the Kinect alone option. I don't want to rebuy an Xbox 360 just to get Kinect! >:O
Click to expand...

I didn't do a pre-order and I'm also trying to find a stand alone Kinect bundle here in Tampa Bay, FL and it's nowhere to be found.

I would love to get tips if anyone knows where to find one this weekend!
 
X

xBerserker

Member
room.for.kinect.110410-580px.png


lol, so who has a room that looks like this?
 
B

BruceLeeRoy

Banned
This is going to sound ridiculous but the mediocre reviews have taken a heavy burden off of me for now. My poor wallet can't afford another motion device splurge yet.
 
Alx

Alx

Member
Garjon said:
Wow, reviews stretching right across the board. Though, I'm not all that surprised
Click to expand...

I'm not surprised either, as a whole... reviews tell us that the device works, has some possibly annoying space requirements, and launch games range from bad to good. It confirms the feelings I've had since E3.
 
T

T Ghost

Member
I'm kinda glad with the reviews and although the reviews are very positive, I expected more enthusiasm from the mainstream midia reviews. Personally, space is not a problem. If I stand right in front of my sofa, facing the TV there will be 11~12 ft to the place where I'll put the Kinect, I can take 1 step forward and still have 10+ft from the Kinect. We decided to get rid of the coffee table arround 1 year go in order to have a more clutter free-space living room. Light also no problem, plenty of it, natural and not.
 
B

bigpumbaa

Member
I picked one up at midnight and it seems pretty easy to determine if this is for you:

1) Do you have enough room to "play" in where you're putting this? It's called a "play space" for a reason - because you should be thinking about it like an area kid's would play in.

2) Do you like the Wii and/or Move motion control experience? If those types of experiences appeal to you - then Kinect will make you giddy. It's similar in style to those, but feels even "purer."

It's really that simple. Do you have the space? Do you like motion controls?
 
S

ScrabbleBanshee

Member
Umm... remove all your furniture. Right. That's not going to happen. I live in an 800 square foot condo and my coffee table is a giant slab of solid wood and steel and probably weighs 400 lbs. :lol


Magnus said:
Who sits that far back from their television? :lol
Click to expand...

People with either massively huge TVs, projectors, or people that don't care about the difference between SD and HD.
 
A

acm2000

Member
ScrabbleBanshee said:
Umm... remove all your furniture. Right. That's not going to happen. I live in an 800 square foot condo and my coffee table is a giant slab of solid wood and steel and probably weighs 400 lbs. :lol




People with either massively huge TVs, projectors, or people that don't care about the difference between SD and HD.
Click to expand...

that table sounds strong enough, stand on it and play!
 
B

bloodforge

Member
The space requirements are really my only complaint. I have a good 7ish feet of space between my TV and my couch and due to me being tall it still has a hard time seeing me adequately enough. I'm going to have to rearrange my living room somehow to get an extra 2 or so feet or I just wasted my money on something I can barely use.
 
M

Mashing

Member
Magnus said:
Who sits that far back from their television? :lol
Click to expand...

Forget about that, I'd like to know how that lady in red can even see anything on that TV (viewing angles being what the are).
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
I gotta laugh at the fact that 100% of the JoyRide reviews say "What a great polished game with lots of cool ideas and good tracks and it looks fun.. pity the controls are garbage, what the hell were they thinking?"

Microsoft's equivalent to Lair :lol
 
Philthy

Philthy

Member
RustyNails said:
Anyone read Joystiq's verdict on Kinect? Its scathing.
Click to expand...

It's not just Joystiq, I can't go on a site without thumbs down on the thing. Ars tried to review Sonic Riders today and they said they gave up because the game wont do anything at all.
 
X

xBerserker

Member
Philthy said:
It's not just Joystiq, I can't go on a site without thumbs down on the thing. Ars tried to review Sonic Riders today and they said they gave up because the game wont do anything at all.
Click to expand...

Ouch, that's not good.
 
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