Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360 > Reviews (80)

Introduction

There is no doubt in my mind, that Microsoft’s ‘Kinect’ is technologically the most advanced hardware to be released for public consumption, probably ever, or at least the only one with a reasonable price tag! A bold claim, yes, but unlike other sophisticated hardware, the ability to provide ‘full-body 3D motion-capture, facial recognition and voice recognition’ along with many other things, can only be used to flail around a room…

Don’t get me wrong there is nothing funnier than watching my Mother verses my Grandmother in an intensely competitive game of ‘Reflex Ridge’ (which I will speak more of later!), but I can’t help but feel the millions of dollars invested could have been spent in a much more productive way! Regardless, I digress, the ‘Kinect’ is here and after playing it, it’s definitely here to say.

Set-Up

I have read a lot of reviews about the setting up of the Kinect and most of them complement how easy it is to do! I agree that the easy to navigate user-interface makes everything you need to do extremely obvious, but there’s no hiding that you do have to do things, and a lot of things, in order to set this up. Initially there are two different ways to plug the ‘Kinect’ into your Xbox 360, depending on whether you have the new ‘Slim 360’ or the old one. I will quickly run you through both of these:

Slim 360: This is by far the most simple of the two! There is just one cable that goes from the ‘Kinect’ to the ‘Xbox 360 Slim’ - this cable provides the power and everything else necessary. The cable just looks and feels like a regular USB cable.

Old 360: This method isn’t difficult, it’s just more of a hassle to do… You need to plug the power cable (provided with the ‘Kinect’) into the ‘Kinect’ from the wall, which means you now need three plug sockets (for the Television, the Kinect and the Xbox 360 - this is a pain if you don’t have an extension lead handy!) and then another cable from the Kinect to the Xbox.

So after the arduous process of plugging cables in left, right and centre, you can now switch the Kinect on! I won’t bore you with the details of the full Set-Up, but essentially you set up three different things (this is after agreeing to an update that takes a few minutes to install!):

Firstly, ‘Sensor Placement’, this just involves agreeing that you have placed the Sensor on a stable surface, that isn’t the floor…!

Secondly, ‘Speech Recognition & Chat’, there are several hoops Microsoft wants you to jump through here, but essentially you have to be quiet for a few minutes while the ‘Kinect’ checks the Noise Levels and Microphone Calibration are fine. This may seem incredibly inpatient of me, but being quiet when you have just unboxed something this cool is annoying! The final stage (of this stage!) is configuring if you want Chat or not, I choose ‘not’ as I have heard the things the online gaming community choose to share over their headsets while playing ‘Call of Duty’! If young children are going to be playing with the ‘Kinect’ I recommend disabling chat.

Finally the last stage is ‘Play Space’… If you thought the last two stages were tedious, you are about to be in for a shock! I am going to run you through exactly what the ‘Kinect’ asks you to do, word for word, so you can see my frustration:

“1. First, stand up (One person only, please)
2. Put down the controller
3. Make sure the area is clear
4. Move in front of the sensor (Only one person for now)
5. Move into the circle
6. Stay there
7. Wave to interact with the Kinect”

You then go onto choose an Avatar and scroll some menus, with only your hands! There is one stage from above that cannot be overlooked, that is ‘3. Make sure the area is clear’. The Kinect requires you to have a space completely clear, with the rough dimensions of six feet between you and the sensor and then a good clear space, of a few feet, either side of you! For me this involved moving a coffee table and some slight rearrangement of furniture. It also means I won’t be playing the ‘Kinect’ anywhere else in the house…

So now you are finally finished with the Set-Up process! Anyone that tells you it is ‘easy’ has failed to mention the tediousness and time consuming nature of the ease!

Menu Control

The ‘Kinect’ gives you the option of not using the Xbox 360 controller while navigating menus. This novelty seems fun, in the beginning… At first you will jump at the chance at actually doing something with the ‘Kinect’ after the set-up process, but holding your arm in the air for a few minutes begins to hurt! To navigate you move your arm left or right and then hold your arm up for a few seconds while a small circle fills, agreeing that you want to choose that option - the trouble is that it is just too easy to accidently move and then have to start filling the circle again!

You will probably persist with this method at the start, but after a while you will definitely have a yearning to return to the controller.

Voice Control

When friends come around the first thing I show them is the voice control! It’s so futuristic it may blow some peoples minds! There are a few words you can say to trigger actions, these include: ‘Play, stop, fast forward, etc’ and these all work brilliantly if you are watching a DVD. You have to say ‘Xbox’ before any command and saying ‘Xbox’ on its own brings up a menu screen.

There is nothing lazier (and therefore better!) than being slouched down watching a DVD, needing to refill the popcorn, and all you need to say is ‘Xbox… Pause’! No need to hunt around for the controller and then wait for it to turn on, it all just happens…

Obviously there are problems though… If you are in a room with a good number of people, let’s say four, there is an extremely high chance of one of them saying ‘Xbox’ in general conversation and bringing up the Menu! If this happens accidently once maybe your friends will restrain themselves from using the word in future, but if you have friends like mine, the opposite will happen and they will spend the next twenty minutes just shouting ‘Xbox’! There is no individual voice recognition and so this is a problem for the foreseeable future.

Playing Games

The game that comes with the ‘Kinect’ is called ‘Kinect Adventures’, and it is like ‘Sports Champion’ on the ‘Playstation Move’ and ‘Wii Sports’ on the ‘Wii’. It has five mini-games, all of which provide a variable amount of fun for different people. For example I love playing ‘Rally Ball’ because of the fast paced nature, my Nan enjoys ‘Reflex Ridge’ because it’s multiplayer and my sister enjoys ‘Space Pop’ because she’s good at it… I don’t want to get into all of the games but they all essentially want you to move your arms (and legs!) around to plug gaps or pop and block things.

The problem with most of the games is that there is a noticeable lag between you moving and your Avatar moving. This theoretically is more of a problem than it actually proves to be, but still, there will be times when you miss something because your Avatar didn’t move at the same time as you.

The games have support for up to two people playing them at once, and the console handles this extremely well. However if you are playing alone and somebody walks past, in my experience, there is quite a high chance that the ‘Kinect’ will start tracking the wrong person!

Cost

The ‘Kinect’ costs £130(ish); you will find it cheaper at some places and more expensive at others. My parents bought ours from ‘Amazon’ and it cost £127.99, at Game it costs £129.99 and at HMV it costs £129.99.

The cost is essentially too much when you consider that the Xbox 360 console costs £200, but the sheer amount of technology you are getting makes the price seem low. When you take into account that the ‘Playstation Move’ costs £40, I don’t think the £130 price tag of the ‘Kinect’ can be justified, especially when you have to add the cost of addition games on top (which cost around £40 each), however if you really want one it’s a burden you will have to bear…

Conclusion

The main idea behind the ‘Kinect’ was to play games in a new, interactive way. I have the ‘Playstation Move’ and a ‘Wii’ and I can happily say that the ‘Kinect’ is the most interactive. However could I say that it’s the best? No.

No, for two simple reasons: Firstly if you don’t already have an Xbox 360, the cost is far too high! And secondly all the games I have played work, and work fine, but they aren’t revolutionary in any way. The lag is annoying and I would much prefer playing with my ‘Playstation Move’ which itself has flaws!

The technology behind the ‘Kinect’ is incredible, but at this point in time, only on paper. I don’t really care that a ‘continuously-projected, infrared-structured light’ can formulate a 3D image, if it doesn’t make the console work in the way I want it too. Maybe I expected too much from the ‘Kinect’ and I’m sure that in months to come, software will become available that fully realizes the potential of the device, but at the moment that support is not there.

If you are getting a ‘Kinect’ for Christmas don’t let this review put you off in any way, you will have fun and you will think it’s amazing, but the longer you play with it, the more you will realize that it has flaws and that those flaws taint an otherwise revolutionary product…