Kinecting with your Family

Kinecting with your family

One of the newest and more interesting forays into motion gaming is Microsoft’s Kinect. Eschewing controller’s altogether and instead putting your body and movement at the forefront of this new innovative product. Kinect is very similar to Sony’s eye toy in that it uses a sophisticated camera system to track your movements and place your body in the game world. Unlike the eye toy however instead of taking the video feed of yourself and your room behind you. Kinect takes your body movement and transfers it to your avatar on screen. So if you jump on screen your avatar will jump as well.

          Kinect in and of itself is not a very robust fitness coach or trainer. This can be easily remedied using 3^rd party software of course. The most substantial software offering for fitness purposes I feel is Ubisofts newest franchise your shape. While not only visually stylish as you can see from the embedded video it is also technically very strong when compared to a Wii offering. Your shape has many different modes and activities that one can pursue using the game such as kickboxing and Tai Chi or Yoga, along with mini games such as target practice.

    You'll burn calories while having fun, either with a personal trainer, taking classes or through family-friendly mini games. As you exercise, you'll receive specific feedback on your every move, so you know you're getting the most out of it. That's because your workouts are created for you based on your specific fitness level and the goals you're setting for yourself. And, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved responds to your moves with fun, surprising, interactive visuals that keep you motivated and engaged.

Your shape, while off hand is the main fitness focused game is not the only way for you or your family to use Kinect to stay in shape. Kinect, is still in and of itself a videogame device and peripheral, because of this games and entertainment is (hopefully will always be) the main focus of the system. As such there are many games that are coming out at launch for the system. Such as Kinect adventures, Kinectables, Star Wars Kinect, Kinect sports, such software is sure to be unrefined more caused by being launch titles for a new system then being poorly designed. However, they are also sure to be interesting in concept if nothing else along with being enjoyable and burning some calories while you wave your arms around and pretend to hold a light saber. Kinectables is a very interesting and wildly innovative game; it is very reminiscent of Peter Molyneux game concept of Milo. Milo was a game concept debuted at an earlier E3 and the game is made and centered on interacting with a game character. It was centered around using your voice to affect and interact with the character on screen. While it was never really shown past concept videos and mock interactions on-stage it left a veritable deep impression among gamers and journalists. While still existing in some form or another whether in development still or not focus has since been shifted to make Kinectables the new showcase game at least in many journalists’ eyes. Kinectables the new showcase game very rightfully so when considering the audience seems to be striving to enamor. A game in which you take care of and interact with an exotic pet such as a tiger is a more interesting pet game compared to Nintendogs. Assuming of course that face biting is not some unknown game element involved. Although, I personally would not be saddened by such a feature and would thus review the game with an automatic 10. The game was debuted to the public at this year’s E3 along of course with Kinect itself. As shown in the adorable presentation shown in the video the game requires someone, who may or may not be an adorable little girl, to speak to the pet and give it instructions. You can interact with the animal mock physically but moving your arms and hands. Also, according to the presentation the game will be able to sense whether or not you’re within the camera view and interacts on that level as well.

12 years of waiting, six years of development

Yes, that’s right twelve years after the debut title from Blizzard entertainment Starcraft 2: wings of liberty, has finally been released. It's been in development for six years now with months of beta testing and balancing under its belt, it's finally time for Blizzard to let loose their baby on the hungrily waiting PC gamer masses. While fans have been waiting twelve years for the sequel to the critically acclaimed RTS we are going to have to wait until the next two expansions to release in later years to fully experience this monumental game. Blizzard entertainment is famously known for not giving games a release date and instead only letting everyone know that it will be given a date of release when it is ready. Few game developers out there are able to afford such autonomy from their publishers; Blizzard however is far from your average developer however. Blizzard was known for their highly balanced RTS (Real Time Strategy) games in the 90’s, it has lately been known more for their breakout MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft has a remarkable 8 million+ players, while that might seem small to some you must take into account that each of these players pay a monthly fee to play this game online. This game not only makes their developer Blizzard a lot of money but they are also owned by the publisher Activision, this game makes the developer quite a lot of money every quarter. World of Warcraft would have to make them both a pretty penny considering that Blizzard early said that since the game launched they have spent over 100 million dollars just for maintaining the game for all these years. If this massive game that has been going for many years has cost Blizzard over 100 million dollars how much is this game that has been in development for six years cost them? Unfortunately Blizzard refuses to talk about such a figure, maybe after the game launches they will become less tight lipped about the amount.


Now if you remember earlier I said that this is not the full game, this is true in one sense but not entirely. The original Starcraft game had three campaigns which spanned three wholly different species each campaign had ten missions apiece and each mission lasted anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour or two depending on the way it’s played. Wings of Liberty however is one species campaign but the campaign has around thirty missions inside of it along with various ways to play through it. In total all missions together can put you over twenty hours of gameplay once through depending on how you play. Like I said this is only one species the Terrans or Humans as such the others will come out later down the line and require you to purchase an expansion pack. Each one of the Expansion packs will be as long as the base starcraft 2 game Wings of Liberty. This game has been awaited ravenously by the hungry PC gaming masses waiting for Blizzards newest game, of which they have only released a few with three different franchises. Blizzards game quality stands for itself each game is rigorously tested for issues and bugs, it’s scoured for balance issues and when they think it’s nearing completion they open it up for closed Beta testing. In this phase they basically scour through their database of gamers with certain PC specs and allow them to play through this game and try and break it any way they can think of. Blizzards fanbase is such that when a bug or issue is found it’s immediately reported in detail on their forum or through email and to Blizzards credit, it’s fixed rather quickly and patched. In fact Blizzard is such a stickler for making their games as close to perfect as possible they still issue game fixing patches for Starcraft 11 years after it’s released. Whether this is because of their inherent love for their games and perfectionism, or because Starcraft is still so entrenched in South Korea I don’t know.

Here is hoping that this game will be almost as big of a hit as the original Starcraft was and that launched PC gaming tournaments and tv shows in South Korea that is still on to this day.