Microsoft Kinect: The AnandTech Review
by Brian Klug on December 9, 2010 3:20 PM ESTKinect Games
So, now that we’ve talked about just about everything you can do with Kinect except play games, how does it actually fare as an input paradigm for console gaming? Turns out that it isn’t half bad, in fact, on the whole the Kinect launch titles are actually pretty impressive. We’ve been playing with the launch titles for a while now and are ready to talk about impressions.
Dance Central
It probably makes sense to start with what I consider the most impressive Kinect title, which is far and away Dance Central. The rest of the games are entertaining as well, but something about Dance Central gives has that magical ability to dump you two hours after you started and make it feel like 15 minutes. Oh, and leave you physically sore and exhausted as well.
Dance Central isn’t a first party Microsoft Kinect title, rather it’s developed by Harmonix who unsurprisingly launched Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I’ve never been a big fan of either of those titles, but something about Dance Central appeals. First of all, the menus in Dance Central are actually pretty notable - it’s a different (and in my estimation) better navigation schema than what I’ve seen in the other Kinect titles and dashboard, and it’s shockingly simple. My girlfriend's impression was that the Dance Central menus had a striking similarity to the omnipresent arcade title Dance Dance Revolution.
You hold your hand out and angle it up to scroll up, down to scroll down, and swipe left to select. Swiping right with your left hand goes back. That’s really all there is to it, and it works so well I wish the main Xbox dashboard leveraged these gestures somehow. Supposedly Harmonix invested a lot of time into doing something different with their menu navigation scheme, and it really did pay off here.
There’s a selection of 32 titles that come with Dance Central, and a few more that you can buy for 240 Microsoft Points (which works out to $3) from the Xbox marketplace. The titles seem to be reasonably varied, ranging from some disco hits to Basement Jaxx and Snoop Dogg. I was surprised to actually find more than a few titles I was familiar with.
After you select a song, you can do a few different things - learn the dance, challenge a second person, use it as an exercise and track calories burned, or just dance it. The learning interface inside Dance Central itself is shockingly intuitive. Watch the avatar do a dance move from part of the dance, and then try your best to emulate it. Parts of the dance you’re doing wrong will be highlighted in red on the avatar on the appropriate part of your body. Fail to move your arm right, and it’ll show up in red. A circle under the avatar glows different colors depending on how close to emulating the dance move you come.
If you already know the move, you’ll get a perfect score and move to the next one. Most likely (unless you’re already some sort of dance wizard), you’ll get it wrong a few times. Three correct emulations moves you to the next move, and a few successive failures results in the move being skipped. What’s super useful, however, is the ability to “break it down” in slow motion. Swiping right with your left hand instantly slows the move down, and makes the commentator vocalize exactly the moves you should be making with the beat.
At the very end, you have to perform the song with the appropriate moves repeated and spliced in where they belong. Do well, and you’ll get transported to some kind of nightclub with cheering fans and flashing lights. Fail too many dance moves too hard, and you’ll be stuck on a boardwalk or the lunchroom. The commentator voice doesn’t really pull punches either - if you mess up or score low, you’re going to know about it.
On the whole, Dance Central is surprisingly entertaining and polished. Not only is the menu user interface and gesture choice extremely well done, but move recognition in dances themselves are very good. I only ran into problems with one particular dance move - the jazz square. This particular move requires moving your feet in a square, and although it doesn’t look particularly hard, Dance Central refused to recognize me doing it. I attributed this originally to a particular pair of cargo shorts (only this pair of shorts gave me problems), but ran into it later again at another location with different clothing. I had my family try the move and they too experienced some problems.
Certain moves are more picky than others, and most of the time they were a consequence of me not exaggerating my movements enough to really emulate the whole dance. But there are a few moves - particularly ones that involve specific depth-sensitive feet movements - that are a bit finicky. Again, having good depth contrast and making sure you’re in the field of view of the sensor is critical, and you’re luckily provided a small window with the depth image while playing so you can stay inside the optimal region.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
72 Comments
View All Comments
Aloonatic - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
I come from the UK, where we have very expensive homes that somehow still have average room sizes that are so small that Guantánamo Bay residents would think that their lodgings were spacious loft apartments in comparison, so I was wandering if anyone has tried tinkering with the placement of Kinect?As every inch counts (no sniggering at the back) has anyone tried placing this on a wall mounting above and behind a TV? I'm guessing that there might be issues with the TV itself obscuring the device's field of view, but it might just work if moved high enough?
Love the idea of Kinect, and could just about find the space as recommended on the box, but I am not sure that I have the room that Anand recommends. :(
Oh, and will Kinect be used on the next generation xBox too? Might have to wait for Kinect 2, which will hopefully work in smaller rooms, if there ever is such a device.
DesktopMan - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
Original release Wiimote only had a 3-axis accelerometer. Motion plus didn't add a three-axis gyro until 2009. Even calling it six-axis with the gyro is stretching the definition of six-axis as it can't detect motion with constant speed unless the IR camera is pointing towards the motion bar. (Same is true for the PS3 "6-axis" controller of course. It's not six axis, it's 3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis gyro.)DesktopMan - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
Motion bar should of course have been sensor bar. Why is there no edit button ;)gvaley - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
There are all in all 3 (three) axes in a three dimensional world and this is exactly what we are existing in. Everything else is marketing nonsense.DesktopMan - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
Quite. Though this is what they're actually somewhat referring to:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_freedo...
But neither wiimote with motion plus nor ps3 6-axis actually allows you to track all types of motion in 3 dimensions. So it's false either way :)
gvaley - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
Imagine if marketers actually respected the principals of the language, "do not use a random expression in lieu of another expression just because it's shorter" for one. "Degrees of freedom" is quite different from "axes." All robots boo.landerf - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
Is the lag due to processing or camera frame rate? As i understand it the 360 does the processing with a cap of 10% cpu usage. So I'd then assume on the pc it could have better response time. Also can it be powered by usb 3 and or 2 on the pc? Without the need for the power plug.brundleflyguy - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
I notice in the review it says "On the other hand, there's no possible way that Kinect would ever work in the average dorm room - you really do need 9' - 12' behind the TV to play with two people." Do you mean "in front of the TV"?I'm wondering because I'm using a projector. The projector is about five feet behind me on the ceiling, and the Xbox would be about four feet behind me. The wall on which I projected is about 10 feet in front of me. Would this setup work for the Kinect?
Thanks,
Jim
Gonemad - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
My guess is, if you are using a projector, you should put Kinect in front of you... if there is enough cable length.Those applications that take a picture of your face would be taking a picture of your... haircut?
Good point! Inquiring minds...
Now, from what I could understand... Kinect will fit right in places that have pool tables, basketball courts, large mess halls... places with plenty of room. My condo has a gym, it wouldn't be misplaced there. So much for enjoying private gaming at home. This thing would fit right in old style arcades!
On another note, kids jumping in apartments... think about that.
Well, the Wii had lanyards, to prevent damage to your TV. Can you attach lanyards to your limbs?
Trolling possibilities / funny ideas:
1- Your pedantic little brother rushes behind you, just to throw Kinetic off.
2- Your mom learns learns how to shutdown your Xbox by talking to it, if she ever reads this article.
3- Trash talking... with your hips. Girls know that pretty well. Do the chicken dance!
4- Not only air guitar and air drums... air orchestra. Air violin. FTW.
Scary thoughts:
1a. Hackers find a way into Kinect and can record you at home.
1b. You hack into your own Kinect and turn it into a full fledged PTZ surveillance camera.
1c. You find out that you can build your own Kinect with industrial cameras, and it will work 20 times better... at 200 times the cost.
1d. You find out that you can use Kinect outside a Xbox360, cutting costs in special cameras for industrial inspection (that cost above $20k easily).
1e. You find out you could have done everything Kinect does with a regular webcam, and a range finder pulled from a parking sensor, costing you just 10 bucks.
1f. Fighting games? Judo? Karate? Jiu-Jitsu? Tae-kwon-do? Be sure your boots are strapped tight. Roundhouse-kick your sofa's gotta hurt. Street Fighter 7?
SlyNine - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
"Your pedantic little brother " are you sure you know what that word means ? Seems to me little brothers would be less then pedantic, unless your little brother is an egg head.