Kinect Sensor with Kinect Adventures!
by Microsoft Games
List Price:
Our Price: $129.99
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Category: Video Games
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Product Summary
Brand: MicrosoftAudio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: CD-ROM
Release Date: 2010-11-04
Platform: Xbox 360
Model: LPF-00004
Color: Black
Publisher: Microsoft Games
Product features:
- Easily hook up with friends with Video Kinect, no headset required.
- Sign into your profile by just stepping in front of the sensor
- Kinect games give you the freedom to jump, duck, and spin your way through a unique adventure.
- Kinect uses cutting-edge technology to provide a whole new way to play
- Kinect Adventures game
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Video Game Reviews of Kinect Sensor with Kinect Adventures!
Customer Review: awesome device!
Summary: 5 Stars
Super easy to set up. Game calibration is a cinch compared to the wii and move. all you do is stand there and it autocalibrates. You don't have to stand in a specific spot. You don't have to hold any controller in a specific position. You don't have to aim a reticle to calibrate. Unless you have little kids, the best placement for the Kinect is higher up. Go closer to the 6 feet than the 2 feet height. You'll get better results. Also, the higher the Kinect, the closer you can play to the Kinect. The kinect has an auto-tilting mechanism to get the right angle no matter who plays. it's a very smart device.
There's a lot the Kinect offers. Controlling the Xbox with only your voice and/or hand gestures is pretty amazing. Right now, not everything can be controlled by voice/hand so that's where the disappointment is. But once you start navigating ESPN with only your voice, you won't go back to the controller. It's just that cool.
Another great use of the Kinect is video chat. Right now, you can talk to other Xbox people or you can talk to people with Windows Live Messenger (MSN messenger). We did chatting with family across the country and the experience was fabulous. Even though we were sitting about 10 feet away from the Kinect, we sounded crystal clear to our family who were using a laptop on the other side. They also sounded loud and clear on our side as well. The Kinect will autofocus and autozoom and will automatically track you as you move around the room. You can literally walk around the room and the camera follows you. If other people step in front of the Kinect, the cam will zoom out to accommodate them. If there's only one person in front of the cam, the Kinect will zoom in so that the person takes up the frame properly. There are 4 positional mics inside the Kinect and they will aim at the person speaking in order to eliminate background noise. In fact, you can be playing a movie but still give voice commands and the Kinect can hear you. That's how good it is. Note that my dad is approaching 70 and he hates sitting in front of a webcam. He finds the whole setup finicky and would rather talk on the phone. But after using the Kinect, now he wants to just chill on the couch and talk. He hates the computer but sitting on the couch was just so inviting to him. Now he's trying to get his friends to get Kinect just to do video chat!
But a couple tips. While the voice cancellation is excellent, there are some things that can help out. It's not necessarily volume of voice that makes the voice commands work better or not. It is enunciation and making sure the Kinect knows who is talking and making sure you hold your face toward the camera so that it can see your lips. I noticed that when I was facing downward, the Kinect sometimes didn't recognize my voice. But even when I whispered, it could hear me as long as I properly face the camera. Of course, if you don't face the camera, you can compensate by speaking up. However, voice recognition was spotless when the room was quiet. But when I was blasting a sporting event, music, or a movie, I tried to be very conscious of looking at the Kinect when I was speaking a voice command. Also note that right now, Video Kinect doesn't seem to support multiway chat but they promised 8-way video chat in the future. That just sounds mindblowing. I could video chat with my brother in San Francisco and my other brother in New York at the same time and all of us could see each other at the same time!
The Kinect also has a great feature called Kinect ID. This allows you to just stand in front of the Kinect and it scans your face and body to identify you and then logs you automatically into your account. So whenever you want to hop into a game or some Xbox feature, the Xbox will instantly recognize you. And if you jump into the middle of a game that your brother, for example, is playing, the Kinect is smart enough to make the game multiplayer and you can play together each with their own account. Note that since Kinect ID depends on reading your face, this feature does depend on good lighting. So while the games play fine if you're playing in the dark, if you use Kinect ID or if you like the pictures the Kinect takes of you, or if you plan on using the video kinect video chat program, you need good lighting.
Note that the Kinect tracks your body through an infrared sensor that functions like sonar to create a 3D map of your room. So it doesn't depend on the light in your room at all. In fact, you can play totally in the dark if you like. That was something that couldn't be done previously with other camera setups (if you had a Playstation Eyetoy, you know what I'm talking about).
As for the games, it comes with Kinect Adventures. This is a fun game and shows you some of the things the Kinect can do. Having a lot of experience with the Wii, the Kinect is a whole new world. With the Wii, you can just sit there or stand there and wave the Wiimote to play. When I first started playing Kinect, I was just moving my arms like with my Wii. But nearly all the games make you move your whole body! You literally have to walk around the room to do things. For example, they have a leaks game in Kinect Adventures where killer fish are punching holes into your glass cage so water is spilling in. You have to plug the holes with the your hands, your legs, and your body. But you can't just reach out with your hands. Sometimes the holes are a couple of feet in front of you so you have to walk forward to reach the hole to plug. Or in the space event where you pop bubbles, you have to walk forward or backward to reach the bubbles you have to pop. So you're moving in all 3 dimensions. It's very cool once you get away from the Wii/Move paradigm. And trust me, you will sweat with the Kinect. I was in puddles of sweat after a short time with the Kinect. I never sweated with the Wii except for EA Sports Active and a few other games.
And cheating with the Kinect is much harder. You know if you play with Wii games like Wii sports that you can cheat a lot of moves to play better. For example, wrist flicking is much more effective than actual real life motions in events like tennis. If you swing like a real tennis swing, you'll lose. But with the Kinect, most of the events require real movement. I have Just Dance and the Michael Jackson game for the Wii. But Dance Central on the Kinect is so much more realistic. It can tell if you're stepping forward with your right foot when you're supposed to step forward with your left foot and score you negatively because you're doing the dance wrong. That's the brilliance! Your feet actually matter. It can tell if you're not dropping your shoulder properly in a dance step or if you're not swinging your arm correctly or if you're not moving your legs properly. For the Wii dancing games, the games were fun but it never tracked you like Dance Central on the Kinect tracks you.
And if you're looking for a modern version of Wii Sports, Kinect Sports is just awesome. You can't cheat in events like bowling on the Kinect like you can in Wii. All the games have plenty of nuance. If you like Wii bowling, you'll love the Kinect version. Everyone can bring in their own bowling swing and once you get the feel for how you want to bowl, everything just feels great. I bowl with spin and finesse. My brother bowls straight with power (you can see little flames around the ball when he bowls). It just feels awesome. Volleyball is great especially if you have experience with volleyball. In fact, it helps that you know the rules of volleyball. Because for those that don't know volleyball, there are prompts to do things like jump to spike the ball. I grew up in California so volleyball is just as natural to us as football. But if you depend on the on-screen prompts, you won't have long term success because the prompts are a little slow. But if you play as if there are no prompts and play just as if it's real volleyball, you'll be super successful. And since the game tracks your whole body, you literally have to move! To reach some balls, you have to really go toward the ball! You can't just stick your arm out there. And to spike you actually have to jump! And you can do jump serves as well. Table tennis is just plain awesome! You can direct shots toward any part of the table. It's actually important where you stand in relation to the table. You can't just swing your arm. If the person hits a ball wide, you actually have to step or jump to the side to reach the ball. There are some many great events in Kinect Sports and this is supposed to be a review of the Kinect itself so I won't go much further.
Some activities are just so much better without holding something in your hands. Like when you're dancing or exercising. Like with the Wii EA Sports Active, I had to have the nunchuk strapped to my leg! And who wants to hold a remote in your hand when you're dancing? And forget about batteries! Since there's no controllers, there's no batteries!
But one more thing about Kinect games. Just like all Xbox games, there is plenty of online multiplayer! As great as the Wii games were, most of them depended on people coming to your house to play. But with the Xbox, you can play any of the games online against real people. Nothing better than 2 on 2 in volleyball or table tennis!
One last thing about the Kinect. It is a very social system. Not only can you play games online against real people, the Kinect takes pictures and videos of you while you play! And once it takes these pictures/videos, you can send them to your private account or directly to Facebook from within the game. You're completely in control of which pictures/videos to save and which to upload.
If there's a negative, you can't use the Kinect is a small space like the bedroom. You need 6-10 feet of space between you and the TV. It's not a hard number. Some games let you keep playing if you're standing 4-5 feet away but other games will pause and tell you to step back. Remember, the higher the Kinect is, the closer you can stand to the TV (since the higher the Kinect, the easier it is for the Kinect to see your whole body and the floor). And since Kinect is multiplayer, you do have to be aware of the person next to you. We all remember Wii videos of people hitting each other in the head. Well, now, you can also kick them. I knocked my brother's glasses off once. And if you have low ceilings and/or ceiling fans above you, you do need to be aware that a lot of Kinect games want you to jump. There are already videos of peoples arms hitting their ceiling fans.
I can't recommend the Kinect highly enough. The proof is in the pudding. Go try out the Kinect and try to forget your Wii/Move tendencies (such as just moving your arms), and you'll see how magical it feels to move your whole body. If you've seen all the hacking videos with Kinect, you know the possibilities with Kinect are endless. They're already talking about hybrid Kinect games where you use a game controller to control the game but can use hand motions to throw grenades or issue hand signals or control a virtual HUD in a cockpit. If you lost that magic you had when you and your family first started playing Wii, the magic will come back when you try the Kinect. It did for me. I still really like my Wii. But after awhile, the low-end graphics, the limited gameplay, and the lack of online multiplayer wore on us. We still use the Wii sometimes but more often then not, it's just for parties. But now everyone is excited again about the Kinect.
Description of Kinect Sensor with Kinect Adventures!
Kinect for Xbox 360 brings games and entertainment to life in extraordinary new ways with no controller required. Simply step in front of the sensor and Kinect recognizes you and responds to your gestures. Connecting in a whole new way is as easy as a wave of your hand. Kinect removes the last barrier between you and the experiences you love. Best of all, Kinect works with every Xbox 360 console.Adventure Games
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