Kinect launch titles review part 2
MotionSports
The other sports game available at launch on the Kinect is MotionSports, with its big draw being rather than events being represented by your Xbox 360 avatar, you control realistically looking and animated characters. While not photo realistic, they are still more appealing for some than cutesy avatars.
The problem is while it may look a lot better than Kinect Sports, MotionSports is hampered by poor movement recognition in parts, poor gameplay in others and the worse lag seen so far in an a Kinect title.
There are six sports on offer and they do provide a wide variety of sports experiences, including some that you would not expect in such a title such as hang gliding and horse riding.
The problems start before you actually try any of the challenges on offer, as there is absolutely no structure for the single player experience. The whole game seems built on the premise you always have another player with you. You can unlock more challenges but there is no explanation on how to do so. Logic dictates that it would be unlocked through a progression of the previous events, but there is no clear unlock path. It smacks of a title rushed to take advantage of the launch line up.
The sound bites from the host is also consistent with an unfinished product, too many repeated lines or lines spoken at the wrong time is a frequent occurrence and again, gives the feel of an untested product. As for the sports themselves, let’s look at them one by one:
Boxing
Disregarding the menu system entirely and concentrating purely on the controls of the boxing, one is let down by Motion Sports immediately. Punches are sporadically recognised by the sensor, and all too often you can only watch in despair as you are floored for the umpteenth time by an opponent getting a free ride. Compounded by the fact that when it does recognise your wild flings, the animated mitts swooshing on the screen is totally inconsistent with the games realistic graphics. Why they couldn’t show you as a boxer is a mystery. Granted it’s a good effect when your head bounces back after a stiff jab so for a brief time all you see is the ceiling, the problem is that is all you’ll see as it doesn’t recognise your defensive blocking, just as it disregards your offensive punching.
American Football
Let’s get this out of the way, you’re not going to be playing American Football, you’ll be doing essentially some practice drills. Running forty yards up a field ducking, jumping and dodging tackles. It’s as fun as it sounds and you have to exaggerate your moves so much you’ll be diving on the floor to duck or jump out of the play space when dodging. It’s not very fun with the broken controls and offers little replay value.
Soccer
Penalty Shot out and target game. It’s the best you’re going to get. No replication of Kinect sports effort at playing a real match only two shallow mini games within a mini game that while can offer fun for a brief five minutes, the fact that it doesn’t really matter where you aim your kicks swiftly diminishes any flames of hope that it may be fun.
Horse Riding
Surprisingly enjoyable, given the control issues, steering your horse around a gymkhana, you will look like a total prat hopping around on your virtual horse but at least it your movements are recognized more than the other games.
Hang Gliding
Serene. Hang Gliding was my second favourite event. You have to pass through arial gates while controlling your speed and altitude, it required such a delicate touch and showed the potential the rest of the games have in recognizing slight changes to your body stance. Why boxing couldn’t have the same recognition is a mystery.
Downhill Skiing.
Hands down my favourite and the second only to hang gliding in recognizing gestures with no lag or misinterpretation. Skiing downhill you alter your body stance to change direction, squat down to minimise air drag and on straights you can pump your arms to push with the poles. Excellent in single player, even better competing with a friend.
It’s almost as Ubisoft created the skiing minigame then realized they were short on time and just battered out the remaining games and slapped together an interface to play them. Even attempting to retry an event can be a chore. You progression is based on fan level, the better you do supposedly the more fans you gather. The over the top announcer screams at you after every event telling you how good you are (even if you just been floored in boxing) and demanding you to pose for a photo for a fake newspaper. After every game. Without fail. No skipping, no option to turn off. This just compounds how enjoyable an experience Motion Sports is. It had potential to be sure, the skiing is representative of that but unfortunately next to kinect sports, it doesn’t hold a candle.
4/10
Fighters Uncaged
Making MotionSports movement recognition problems seem like technological perfection, Fighters Uncaged is the worst title to come out of Kinect’s launch. The premise is that you are street fighter on the rise and have to fight your way to the top in the underground fighting scene.
After a half hour training tutorial that teaches every move the game has to offer, including repeating moves with both hands or feet, optimism is high, after all, such a complex combat system must give what could be perceived as a shallow flail-em-up some much needed depth? The problem is its not 1:1 mapping to do a high kick you just ‘make a circular motion with your foot’ – really in the middle of a brutal beating you want me to do a ‘circular motion’ with my foot? For the first few fights things seem ok. Not great but ok. You are given plenty of time to duck or weave out of the opponent’s few punches or kicks and your combo system slows time down slightly enabling you to rack up two or more hits in succession. If you block successive blows you charge a rage bar which you can unleash by shouting at the game and going a bit mental with your fists and/or feet.
Around the fourth fight or so the game stops holding your hand and begins to punish you repeatedly for your stupidity in purchasing it. The opponents don’t stop smacking you, if you duck they sweep you to the ground if you try and strike them they avoid it. The recognition when the speed of the game gets faster goes out of the window and you are left swinging wildly without anything being recognised. A dodge will turn out to be a head butt, a jab won’t be recognised and a sweep kick will turn into an attempt to uppercut.
Progression in the game is via a crown system, you gain crowns by beating the other fighters. The trouble is to reach the next level you have to re-fight the same fighters over and over, gaining just a few crowns in the process by beating your previous score against said fighter. It’s a frustrating experience against the first few fighters, an impossible task against the fifth opponent in. It’s a good job there is no controller, mine would have been thrown at the TV an hour in. As it was I had to throw myself out of the window instead.
What about Multiplayer you ask, surely that could offer a decent experience as both parties would be hampered by the same controls so at least there would be an even playing ground. But there is none, no local or online multiplayer. Why oh why has Ubisoft saw fit to blight the launch of Kinect with a title that just reflects on them in such a poor light. If I was its CEO I would fire the play testers, roast the development team at AMA Studios alive and demand that a hunter-killer team retrieve every copy of Fighters Uncaged sold and incinerate them, keeping one copy to demonstrate in training rooms how NOT to make a game. Utterly hideous.
2/10
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved
Ubisoft are responsible entirely for Your Shape and it shows. Fitness Evolved is a huge leap forward in home fitness. It has some shortcomings but its ability to give you real time feedback on how you are performing the exercises it dictates is nothing short of revolutionary.
From the outset Fitness Evolved feels like time has been spent making it look good. The menu system is clean and crisp with the voice over unobtrusively guiding you through. The way your gestures move through the menus is the closest to a minority report moment we’ve seen so far. You can also change the menu look to your liking, creating a personal feel.
The content of the disc can be broken down into three categories, personal training, gym games and fitness training. While the gym games are a fun take on personal fitness they are the only part of Your Shape that is in any way game-like. All exercises you perform are tracked overall into how many calories you burn off in each, in total. At the calibration screens, Kinect will measure the length of your arms and legs and your overall height. You input your weight and age and from that information Kinect has a rough idea of how many calories you are burning.
Personal training is just that, you have a personal trainer and he/she will perform the exercise on screen and you are projected behind them in 3D form. You have to stay in sync with your trainer and he/she will quickly correct your posture or improper form during the exercise. The use of dumbbells is encouraged throughout to add some resistance and recommend a 5kg set, unfortunately there is no setting to track if you are using weights never mind what size they are so calorie counting in this respect is going to be inaccurate.
Impressively, mainstream publications Men and Women’s Health and Nivea as well as reputable fitness trainers lend their input with specific training regimes, bolstering the reputation of the title as a serious fitness aid.
The gym games are fun but I’m glad they are only a few of them. While the hula hooping, brick breaking other games work out your abs and arms as much as the structured exercises, I prefer the serious approach the title has towards improving your fitness and health rather than attempt to make every exercise fun. They do however support up to four people so if you’re inclined you can try and beat each other’s scores, though it’s doubtful in a title of this type.
The last component is fitness and concentrates on such activities as Yoga, Tai Chi, Cardio Boxing and Zen Meditation. I hate circuit classes in the real world, I find myself too competitive and get frustrated with fitter people doing what I’m struggling with seemingly effortless ease. With the ability to do it in the privacy of your own home, it can be very liberating, I’m not ashamed to say that I meditated naked yesterday. It was awesome.
It’s not without some rough edges mind, sometimes Kinect gets confused and marks your movement down unfairly, usually because you are out of sync due to lag. The Yoga positions can be very daunting if you are not familiar with the moves and if you are wearing baggy clothing, your stance is easily misinterpreted.
Ubisoft have integrated their own achievement tracking system Uplay which will reward you with extra workouts if you sync it online. They have also promised DLC by the end of the year for small premiums, added dance routines and other workouts.
In summary while still having a few tracking issues and guilty of a small amount of lag in some routines, the fact that it brings a complete fitness and workout program into the home, tracking and correcting your exercises in real time makes Your Shape: Fitness evolved a great achievement, a sign of things to come and a strong title at launch.
8/10
