The problem with existing dance games is that they don't read your entire body, so they really don't know if you're dancing correctly. But Adventures' mini-games are cleverly designed. It didn't feel like we were one and the same: I felt like I was working a marionette. There's a lot of lag and inaccuracy – my character was roughly mimicking my body's movements a second after I made them. Sort of a first-person version of the old Atari game Breakout.Īdventures was probably the most interesting and engaging use of the Kinect technology at the event, since it fulfills that promise of turning you into a videogame character. The basic idea is still the same – bounce balls toward the TV screen and smash bricks at the end of a long alleyway. Jumping up and down let us gain speed in our efforts to race each other to the finish line.įinally, we played the new version of the Ricochet game demoed at last year's E3. We both rode on moving platforms, and had to jump, duck and move from side to side to avoid obstacles, jumping up and contorting our bodies to collect tokens and earn more points. In the next segment, we raced in an obstacle course. If we jumped, we could propel the raft into the air to collect tokens and go on different paths through the river. As we stepped and leaned to the left and right, the movement's changed the direction in which our inflatable raft was moving. Kinect detected two of us standing in front of it at once, and knew how our individual bodies were moving. In our first outing in Kinect Adventures (pictured top), we whitewater-rafted down a river filled with ramps, jumps and tokens that we could collect for extra points. Kinect Adventuresĭeveloped internally at Microsoft, this collection of mini-games puts you into various adventurous situations.

Individual impressions of the games follow. So it should be no surprise that Microsoft and its third-party software partners are chasing casual-gaming dollars with their first batch of Kinect games.īut after playing them at a private loft party in Los Angeles Monday evening, I'd really like to see developers come up with some games you can play on the couch, too. The stereotype of the sedentary couch potato clutching a game controller doesn't hold water when you look at the record-breaking sales of Wii Fit and Just Dance. Active videogames that get you off the couch and moving around have been a big hit on Wii and have done a lot for gaming's image.

All xbox 360 kinect games