Review: Microsoft Kinect

Last week X-Cite sent me a Kinect to review for the blog. I had been reading a lot about it online (mostly all the cool hacks people were doing) and was interested to try it out. The Kinect is Microsoft’s answer to the Wii and the Sony Move except unlike either of those two, the Kinect doesn’t use a physical controller, you become a controller. When I first opened the box I was surprised by the size, I was expecting it to be smaller but the Kinect is pretty big. I struggled to find a place to put it (you’re supposed to have it either on top of your tv or below). The second issue I ran into was space, the Kinect requires you to be standing at least 1.8 meters away from it. My living room is pretty small so it was having trouble detecting me. Finally I moved the Kinect to my other TV where I had more space in front of it and managed to get it working there.

The Kinect is freaky, it recognizes you, your hands, your head, your legs… your whole body. With the Wii and PS3 you need to actually hold a controller in your hand and move that around but with the Kinect you don’t need any of that. It’s like a much more advanced version of the PlayStation Eye. In the games I was playing, if I put my hand on my head so would my character in the game, if I clapped my hands or started stomping my feet so would my character. It felt like I was inside the game.

The Kinect comes with a game called Kinect Adventures. Inside it there are five different games that show off the Kinect’s abilities. The games are:

20,000 Leaks – In this game you’re basically standing in a glass room under the sea and fish and sharks come and bang the glass to create leaks. You need to try and cover the leaks as they happen. In some cases you get 5 leaks at the same time so you have a hand on every leak, your head covering another leak and each foot on a leak as well. It’s fun for a few minutes but gets boring quickly. In two player mode it’s slightly more fun.

River Rush – You’re on a raft going down the river and you should avoid obstacles by either shifting your weight to one side of the raft or by jumping. I didn’t find this fun even when playing it two players.

Rally Ball – This was my favorite game, it’s a mixture between the classic breakout game and dodge ball. You have to throw a ball towards objects down a hallway and try to get rid of them. Sometimes you hit objects that doubles or triples the amount of balls so you have to start moving quickly trying to throw them all back at the objects. Me and my brother enjoyed playing this the most.

Reflex Ridge – The most physically exhausting game of the bunch since it’s kinda like a track and field game. You’re standing on a moving railway cart and you need to avoid objects by other jumping, ducking, moving left or moving right. Video games shouldn’t be this physically active and after one round I was all sweaty and out of breath.

Space Pop – The most boring game of the bunch, you’re in space and you need to float up and pop balloons all around. Not fun, didn’t even bother playing it two players.

Playing the games two players is more fun than alone. You only need one Kinect to play games two players but you need to stand at least 2.2meters away from the Kinect device. The games that come with the Kinect aren’t that great but since they’re free you can’t complain that much. There are more games you can buy that work with Kinect but I didn’t have a chance to try them. The PlayStation Move is more advanced than the Wii and sometimes like in a first person shooter it would be cool to physically hold an assault riffle, but the Microsoft Kinect is a more advanced system than the Move and because your whole body becomes a controller it really opens up a lot of doors. I’m giving it a 4.5 out of 5. I just wish the games that came with it were more fun.

The Kinect is available at X-Cite as either a standalone for KD54.9 or with the Xbox Slim 4GB for KD126 or with an Xbox Slim 250GB for KD148.