Microsoft Kinect: The AnandTech Review
by Brian Klug on December 9, 2010 3:20 PM ESTKinect Sports
If there’s one area that Kinect really shines above the Wii, it’s Kinect Sports. At first I was expecting a relatively token knockoff of Wii Sports so that Kinect can have its own motion-dominated sports title, but I was happily surprised that wasn’t the case.
The Kinect Sports game layout itself is similar to Adventures - you can play by yourself, or with friends, and superficially you can just play single games instead of taking a tour through everything.
The problem with Wii Sports was always that most of the activities relied on just a few different accelerometer inputs. The same accelerometer input as swinging your arm in a complete arc for Wii bowling could be emulated with the flick of a wrist. As soon as you figured out you could create a much larger magnitude acceleration vector by flicking your wrist, all of the immersion was completely destroyed in the game. For me at least, the remainder of Wii titles involved a similar - search for the optimal flick move that emulated inputs, and repeat - type learning curve. With Kinect, you can’t cheat that way, and you can’t lie to the sensor. Move around, flail your arms, or you’re going to get destroyed.
I think Kinect Sports is probably the best example of how full body motion capture can finally be mapped 1:1 and leveraged in such a unique way. The games all work nearly flawlessly, and playing them I’m reminded of what I wanted Wii Sports to be like.
Track and field, boxing, and table tennis are probably my three favorite titles from the sports catalog. Track and field is set in a stadium which looks curiously similar to the Beijing Bird’s Nest (seriously) and involves olympic events such as javelin and discus toss, long jump, hurdles, and sprinting. I’m impressed with just how immersive these games are - when sprinting, wave your hands into another runner’s lane and you’ll solicit angry responses. Finish a sprint, and the crowd will cheer if you wave your hands above your head, or go silent if you drop them to your side. It’s the little things like these that really make Kinect engaging. Finish the whole event, and you get a video set to music of highlights taken on the color sensor. It’s surprisingly well put together.
You can set world records inside Kinect Sports, though they’re only locally-set records - unfortunately they aren’t synced up to the cloud in a *real* world record mode, but the music and animations when you set records is just perfect. I really feel like the game designers got everything perfect here.
The gestures and motions inside Kinect Sports are also nearly flawless. I’ve yet to have a motion misinterpreted, and there’s a surprising amount of technique and dynamic range of responses possible.
Where I was really blown away is - of all things - table tennis. I’ve enjoyed playing table tennis in real life, and though I enjoyed the Wii versions, there was always something missing. I’d either miss returns or serves, and again that seemed purely a function of whether the accelerometer data I was giving was what Wii wanted. The Kinect version of Sports seemed much better and way improved in comparison, never missing when it wasn’t my fault.
But what I found extremely interesting was how integration changed when playing over Xbox Live. Matchmaking took a while, no doubt because of how close to launch it was when I tried it, but after a short wait, I was paired with another two players in a doubles match (I was also playing with a second person on my side, hence the doubles).
What was immerse beyond imagine was how I found myself gesticulating whenever we scored a point, becoming increasingly expressive with each point. Other players see your avatar at the table - they can’t look away - and the result is a whole new world of motion-enabled trash talking. Win an entire game, and the other party is forced to watch you for an opportune five or so seconds where you can literally move your body just about any expressive manner. It’s a brave new world of motion augmented trash talk, and one thing’s for sure - I’m glad Kinect doesn’t have the resolution to pick out fingers.
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Noriaki - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Yeah, I just meant the 350 part. Referring to it as the 360 S to distinguish it from the 360 Pro makes sense to me.Noriaki - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
PS: Thanks for the in-depth coverage. This is the first time I feel like I got a good idea of what having a Kinect in my living room would mean for practical things like where my couch lives.Aikouka - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Brian, have you tried out DanceMasters (DM)? I noticed you commented on how your girlfriend compared Dance Central (DC) to DDR where DanceMasters is actually created by Konami.I own DM and have played the DC game, and I have to say... you'd probably be disappointed in the DM menu system as it is a tad bit harder to control. Way too often I found myself skipping past the option I wanted (as all options move left or right) and you then have to raise your (right) hand to select it. The problem comes when it might see you move your hand out to the right and actually shift your choice over one right before you raise your hand.
The part where I think DM beats DC is the actual dancing. In the demo for DC, I found it awkwardly difficult to pay attention to the way the dancer was moving (left or right, etc) and the upcoming movement that was shown on the right side of the screen. When my brother and his girlfriend played, I noticed one huge trend... we *all* would miss the first dance move after they changed from one move to another.
This is kind of better in DM, because it uses arrows that signify how your hand (or hands) should move in a second or two. There are also circles that will appear on the screen and you must hit them with either your hands or feet (obvious depending on the location). The last movement is the "pose silhouettes" that appear on the left and right side and are green in color. They move to the center of the screen and when the two silhouettes combine, you are supposed to be in that pose. The only problem is that it's not terribly picky on what you do in between these three types of inputs and another problem is that it loves to put circles beneath your feet (so you keep moving), but they're hard to notice. I found this easy to combat by simply always moving your feet.
Overall, there's a huge difference in the style of music between the two as well, which influenced my decision. I've never been a "Top 40s" kinda guy and I've played DDR quite a bit, so I went with the game that had the music style I was used to ( and also considering that I've heard quite a bit of Eurobeat, which DM also has ).
The one thing that was always fun about DC was the "freestyle" section where it shows you as this sort of glowing silhouette and you just do whatever dance you want. At the end, it will play this back to you in a sort of time-lapse video (which you can then save).
To talk about a different game, I noticed some problem with jumping in Kinect... mostly in the rail-based obstacle course. Maybe I was just doing little hops and Kinect didn't register it... maybe it was a problem with the cargo pants (khaki color, so they're fairly flesh-toned) that I was wearing. It was pretty crazy though... at one point I had to duck down, so I dropped to my knees and then needed to switch sides, so I pulled out the Starfox-esque barrel roll! Kinect did actually sense that correctly.
The one thing I did notice is that it is *very* common in Kinect Adventures for it to yell at me about getting too close or too far... especially in the bubble popping mini-game.
Brian Klug - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
I haven't checked out Dance Masters, but I'm starting to think that I definitely should. I think at the time when I originally put together this list of games, that wasn't available and I overlooked it. I'll grab it and maybe update with a page or two.It's interesting how dancing games are quickly becoming something Kinect is very well suited for. I definitely agree about jumping and the clothing choice, I have a pair of cargo shorts that just don't work with most of the titles, and Kinect Adventures does yell a lot about position, agreed.
-Brian
GSJ - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
If only i could use this with my p.c.....ExarKun333 - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
I purchased the Kinect soon after the launch and I came to pretty much the same conclusions are Brian. The lag is there, but acceptable. More importantly, the games are FUN. MS did a great job with this launch. The hardware is easy to install and configure, and the games are easy to pick up on. I agreed 100% that the menus in DC are superior to the method in the Dashboard. Maybe an update at some time? :)knowom - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
267ms on a DAW would be completely unthinkable in fact most people that play or record music try to stay below 10ms.I'm just using that example as a clear easy to demonstrate reason to why 267ms is a abysmal amount of input lag you can completely rule out music based kinect games as well as any twitch/quick reflex input games or applications.
SodaAnt - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
In the comment about the laser probably being 650-700 nm, that is wrong. 650nm is the wavelength of a normal red laser pointer. Normal IR diodes lase at either 780, 808 or 980nm.Brian Klug - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Hmm it's on the fringes of what I'd consider visible, but 780 probably is a much better choice. I'll update.-Brian
mcnabney - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Okay, I am probably the only prig to bring this up, but the distances required seem to be a problem for some not often thought of reasons.9-12 feet of clearance appears to be required, which means the sofa will need to be 15' back (unless you move it every time you fire up the Kinnect).
I would point out that you would need to have a 55"+ HDTV to fully benefit from the 1080p image from the Kinnect playing area, For regular game playing / movie watching on the sofa (behind the playing area) you would require a 100"!!!!! screen to fully resolve the 1080p image that the Xbox360 or a BluRay player is capable of displaying.
For this thing to really work in a robust media environment (and most living rooms) it should have been able to to work perfectly with the user standing 3-5' from the screen.