Finally got my Xbox 360S with Kinect! What is with the quotation for the adventure? Read on and you will understand why. In this post, I will review two kinect exclusive titles namely Kinect Adventure and Dance Central.

Before that, let me start with the review on the new Kinect system.

Setting up

Personally, I find the set up of the Kinect relatively simple. This could be due to the optimal configuration of my furnitures in my living room. I have a rather good clearing of 2m x 3m in front of the Kinect. So the set-up is done through the ‘Kinect Tuner’ with relatively no hiccup. And I did the entire set-up without using the calibration card included with most Kinect Games.

Facial Recognition

You can log into your Xbox Live simply by facing the Kinect Sensor. This feature is kind of cool but given that I am the only one with account on my Xbox 360, such feature is actually redundant to me. But still, it is a neat feature to have.

Another point ot note is that when playing some titles that uses your Xbox Avatar, Kinect will identify you and the avatar in the game will change accordingly to your profile. I should also take the opportunity to praise the accuracy and speed of this recognition system. However, recognition only works well under good lighting condition. There was once Kinect fails to recognize me when I was playing the game in the evening.

Voice Command

My test with the voice command is that it isn’t very responsive. At times, I feel like a crazy person shouting ‘Xbox, Xbox, Xbox!’ when the machine is not responding. Probably because the guys at Microsoft tested it out with American testers and therefore cannot pick my my Singlish-like accent. But hey, I didn’t say ‘Xbox lah’ or anything of the sort. And the most weird thing is that voice command is only enables for certain locale. Selecting English (Singapore) will not enable this feature! But selecting English (US) will allow you to use voice command. Weird…So is Microsoft trying to say that we as Singaporeans don’t speak English that are good enough for Kinect to understand? Maybe the Ministers are right, time to speak good English…

Other than some hiccups, the voice recognition does deserve some credits as the user do not have to speak into the microphone but can simply give commands at where he or she is at. Another point to note is that Kinect comes with an array of four microphone instead of just one.

My Kinect ‘Adventure’

Ok, I am not going to review the game Kinect Adventure yet but will be relating my very own Kinect ‘Adventure’ here. After playing happily on the Kinect for 3 days, I invited my friends over and we all started prancing in front of the kinect sensor. Suddenly, the Kinect Sensor light turned from green to the red light of death and an error message pop out saying ‘Kinect Error’. We were just 20 minutes into playing Kinect Adventure so overheating shouldn’t be an issue. So I unplugged Kinect, restart my Xbox and plugged in Kinect again. Not working. I went online and got a suggestion to update my software and also found a ridiculous suggestionthat my Kinect is too cold (both on Kinect official site). So after the software update, my Kinect is still down! Microsoft! And the best part is, Xbox support line is only opened on weekdays and that means I have to wait two days (since it broke down on Saturady) before getting some help.

After some fruitless attempt at finding the problem online throughout the weekend, Monday finally arrived and I called to get the authorization code to exchange my Kinect. So I carry my Kinect and went all the way down to Funan’s Service Hub to get it replaced. Personally, I have no complain with the one-to-one exchange, I am just appalled by the fact that the set broke down within 3 days. Ok so much for my Kinect ‘Adventure’. So for those who experienced the Kinect ‘red light of death’, just called Microsoft and asked for a one-to-one exchange. Forget about trying to troubleshoot yourself.

Kinect Adventure

Finally the real review of Kinect Adventure. Kinect adventure is a game that comes with my Kinect sensor. It consist of 5 mini-games with various stages of difficulty. The games are a good starter to show players what Kinect is capable of. The mini-games includes:

 1) 20,000 Leaks

In 20,000 Leaks, players got to plug the leakage of their glass cube using their avatar’s head, legs and even head. You will find yourself in some awkward positions and before you know it, Kinect will take some hilarious pictures of you.

 

2) River Rush

In River Rush, one or two players steers a river raft down a river. You can jump to lift up your float to reach for height.  When playing with two players, do be careful as I bumped into my friends several times when I wanted to steer left and he wanted to steer right.

3) Rally Ball

Rally Ball’s objective is to destroy blocks down a hallway using balls which will bounce off your avatar. You can kick the ball, smack the ball and even hit the ball with your head.

 
4) Reflex Ridge

In Reflex Ridge, players stand on a platform that will move through an obstacle-laden wooden track. Players will have to duck, jump and move around to avoid beams that will come at you. To increase speed, you can jump on spot. One of the more physically strenous game in Kinect Adventure.

 
5) Space Pop

In Space Pop, the players have to pop bubbles that were appear from holes in the playing area. Players can hover in mid air and ‘fly’ by flapping their arms. This is the one of the mini-game that make full use of Kinect 3D capability. You will have to move back and forth in order to pop all bubbles.

While Kinect Adventure can provide some fun time for the family, the game is rather repetitive as there are only five fixed mini-games. I got bored after playing the games for two days.

GameTrader.SG rating: 6.4

Hurray for the good demonstration of Kinect’s Capabilities.

Boo for the lack of re-playability.

Dance Central

Dance Central is a new dance game by Harmonix, the team who brought you Rockband and Guitar Hero. Played this game with my mother and for once she was at some point of time coaching me some of the dance steps! I can’t believe I am saying this, but I actually needed help from my mum to play games!

In order for the player to learn the moves to a total of 32 songs, Harmonix includes a break-it-down mode. In this mode, you will learn each individual dance step of the particular song. You can choose to slow down the move if it gets too difficult for you. The entire dance is also splitted into a few segments. After learning the individual dance step in a segment, you will then chain them together.

I started with easy mode of Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’ and followed the dance moves with little problem. They are mostly simply dance steps such as side stepping and punching you arms in the air. Nothing my mum and I can’t handle. However, as we tried out the harder songs, some moves are really demanding considering my limited talent in dancing. I do get frustrated slightly when I keep failing in getting a certain move correctly.

At first, I thought a virtual ‘me’ will be dancing in the back drop mirroring my move, however, I was disappointed that there isn’t such a feature. Instead you get a tiny silhouette image of your body during the game. Also, the game does not really support two players dancing simultaneously together (as seen in earlier video demo of the game). In Dance Battle mode, which allows for two players, you take turns to dance in front of the Kinect. Hmmm…probably they want to avoid players hitting each other (see video below) as some of the moves required much spaces.

During the dance, there is also a free-style mode where you are free to dance to your heart content. Be warned though that the footage will be captured and stored!

GameTrader.SG rating: 8.4

Hurray for the accuracy of detecting players’ moves.

Boo for the lack of multi-player support.