We won't lie,
Kinect
is a great idea, with a ton of potential. Although, as most of you know, we just can't wright a review based on the fact it has a "ton of potential". For now,
Kinect isn't great, nor ready to be hailed the best thing to man kind, but perhaps in the future when Microsoft releases better games, or features for
Kinect that'll change.
Surprisingly, something that we liked, was being able to navigate through the menus with it, wave your arm one direction, and the TV obeys your every command.
One thing we really liked though, was playing
sports games
. I personally found it a lot more fun to play games with
Kinect, rather than playing it with a controller. It's more human to kick a soccer ball, then to flick a joystick to get it moving. Finally playing games like
NHL 11
will finally make sense!
Besides that, this has goto be one of the most advanced pieces of hardware a gamer can get their hands on! (well until a gamer can buy a robot with artificial intelligence or a plane/rocket).
Something that boosts the
Kinect is that,
Kinect projects an infrared 3D box around you living room (or wherever you play your video games), and then tracks anything that moves, unlike the other leading motion controllers. It's so accurate it can sign you into your LIVE account, just by looking at your face! (Now even I goto admit that's pretty sweet!).
Although, on the downside, we did notice issues in certain lighting, but even that can be fixed with a simple calibration, and it also has pretty sweet voice recognition, allowing you to talk to your friends, even with static noises, like a near-by highway, or your friend breathing really heavily beside you.
But, like everything in life, there's a downside.
Kinect requires a lot of room (6-feet square area minimum, with no furniture or people. This will mean you'll probably have to move your furniture each time you play it, as the "Move furniture if you need to" message during some loading screens recommends.
Also, shown by
Kinects original line-up of games, and marketing tactics, this is clearly targeted towards family audiences (unlike
Xbox
's hardcore gamers), but then that leads to another problem, how could you play with your family if it only supports one person at a time? (Yes, some Kinect games are multi-player, provided you take turns).
Moving in connect is very accurate and all, but it most games which you would think should have very simple gestures, such as Kinect Adventures, requires you to bend your
whole body, just to turn/steer your avatar, and than there's just the plain lack of (no) feedback, respectively no controller either, which may or may not be a good thing, depending who you are.
Our biggest concern with
Kinect is, it's just plain laggy. Of course, not huge lag, but their's still enough lag to make games seem like
crap rubbish. For example in
Kinect Sports, try playing soccer, the lag forces you to anticipate every move ahead of time, which sort of wrecks the game, especially since it's a type of game you want to play by reacting rather then thinking.
So in summary, it's;
Pros are; it is genius, and will introduce a new breed of gamers, and is just amazing to watch, and play with.
Cons are; only one player at a time, laggy, requires a lot of room, often fails to match movement of players one-to-one, cost a lot, doesn't feel like it shows it's
true potential.
The Three States rating; 4/10
Now we know, Xbox Fanboys (no offense intended), are probable going to point out how these issues are just minor compared to what it could achieve, but I'm like I said before, I'm not reviewing what it
could achieve, but rather what it does achieve right now.
Feel free to comment bellow and give us your input! (please no abusive comments!)
's game cover was made/released, and, well, this is it... Carl on Duty: Black Cops.
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