Treehouse Hands On (Off?) : Kinect

I was lucky enough, thanks to avid reader Puressence, to get a chance to take Kinect for a proper test drive in Microsoft’s central London lair, the Kinect galleries. At no doubt meteoric expense, they have hired out a labyrinthine exhibition space in Covent Garden as part of their UK tour, and filled it with screens and toys. The top level, the galleries themselves, comprise several looping video screens and installations, as well as a stage area where the bold and the small can try the games out for an extended period in full view of often baffled members of the public. Downstairs however, in the bowels of the building, lies the heart of the affair – 3 (only 3?) living room setups where you can finally try Kinect out properly. For the briefest of brief 30 minutes, I got hands on (we need new terminology, no hands required) with some of Kinect’s launch line up. Read on for the verdict.

Our guide asks us if we’re aware of Kinect? Yes we’re aware of Kinect sonny, stop wasting our precious 30 minutes and get the screen on! Kinect adventures is up first, and is a suitable title to get that precious first Kinect moment. As I stand in front of the screen, up pops my avatar, and the instinct to pull all kinds of shapes is natural and irresistible, so I do. To my squealing delight, the avatar mimics my moves perfectly, with no noticeable lag. Amaaazing. But, much as I just want to screw around with the avatar, there’s a game to play, and moments later, I’m flying off downstream in the raft adventure. Puressence leaps up to join in, and his avatar appears next to mine almost instantly, true drop-in drop out gameplay. Now we’re jostling down the river side by side, physically leaping to hit the jumps, timing between us to get double jump style airs, and swerving back and forth across the wild rapids. Motion sickness, palpable. But it’s hard to take in as I’m marvelling at how my avatar moves back and forth within the dinghy as I move towards and away from the camera, it hadn't occurred to me that 3d movement would allow this.

Next up, we’re no longer cooperating, time for a little mono a mono shape throwing, a la hole in the wall. As our avatars progress along an on-rails, well, rail, collectible tokens appear in groups ahead of us, and we must pull a shape to maximise our collection. Puressence proves more flexible, beating my score by a mere handful. This is war. And so onto bubble popping – this sees our avatars flying around a chamber like Charlie and grandpa on Fizzy lifting drinks. We flap our arms out here in the real world, and there onscreen, up float our little avatars. What follows is an orgy of looking extremely silly as we try to grab the most bubbles. I forget who won that one..ahem.

Next up, a sit down, I’m bleedin’ knackered! So we sit back to watch our lovely assistant, who lacking a suitable internet moniker, I shall dub “Nicky”, takes Kinectimals for a test drive. A fuzzy little tiger cub is selected and out it trots, to much cooing from all concerned. Voice control isn’t implemented yet, we’re told, and despite a rather self conscious trainer, we did witness the cat stand on one leg, get firmly stroked, play dead (most amusing) and lick the screen a bit (ew scrabbles!). A quick trot around the assault course looked rather dis-kinected as the cat charged through everything without attempting them, but our organiser assured us, much to our relief, that it was simply because Nicky was being rubbish.

So we kicked her off, and got Puressence back in charge, with a little Lady Gaga action on Dance Central. I tell you what, rather him than me, this looked shattering. I have my doubts that I’m going to be able to play this game, it looked very hard, although he did foolishly select “hard”. Now that’s ambitious. Anyway, the dancer’s limbs onscreen were almost permanently red, indicating that some degree of fail was occurring, and Puressence scraped a couple of stars, and narrowly missed a coronary. The report was in; fun! The game looked as slick and stylish as the videos suggest and is going to be a ton of fun in the privacy of your own home. Expect some very silly parties in the near future.

Next, a few minutes to squeeze in a quick “Sports”, the assistant selects 100m vs, much to Puressence’s horror, as I step up fresh from my rest and ready for action. Again, the moments between the games provide the most entertaining parts for me, as I limber up, my avatar does exactly the same onscreen, a small thing we will all get over pretty quickly I’m sure, but it’s hard to convey how odd it is to witness, and how cool it’s going to be. I mime adjusting my shorts, he’s up there doing it! Brilliant! But again, the moments passing and we’re here to race. Knees up is the key comes the word, so we’re off – knees up on the spot puffing to the finish, and I’m in by a nose, I cross the line my arms raised, whooping. It’s all happening out here, and in there. Round 2, another victory. I pull a few Hussein Bolt poses, but now our time is up.

Sooo, verdict? It’s fun. It’s a lot of fun. I was very much a Kinect Adventure’s cynic, but it was probably the highlight of the session, although I would have liked to have had a bowl, and I still get the feeling sports would have been a wiser choice for the hardware bundle. Oh well. The responsiveness of the avatar was amazing, as in, like really quite impressively good, but it’s telling that the real highlight was the in between moments – I remain largely indifferent to the line up – these games are for mum, gran and the brats and will be wheeled out at Christmas never to be seen again. The technology itself though seems, in our brief moments together, to be a genuine leap forward. To have it mimic you so accurately, so smoothly was a little unnerving, and this is just with a cartoony avatar, the concepts being dreamed up by talented game designers, I simply can't imagine (that’s why im not a game designer). For this reason alone I hope Kinect gets embraced by gamers – the internet h8torade continues to flow freely most places you look, but the technology represents such a potential shift away from the status quo I can’t help but be excited. Combining play with the existing controller(s) and any number of as yet unannounced peripherals and functions, the possibilities are mind boggling. So if not a day one buy, pretty soon after. My biggest fear for the system, is that if gamers don’t embrace it, and it becomes the new wii, Puressence will have to toil through mountains of awful and potentially life-threatening shovelware to keep up with his gamerscore whoring. I guess that’s inevitable, and pretty funny.

Also quite funny, some grainy footage of us looking ridiculous. This thing is win.

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Review: Perfect Dark

The year 2000 was a splendid time for a happy go-lucky Nintendo fan. For that summer, they were blessed with the long awaited spiritual successor to the legendary Goldeneye, indubitably the finest console FPS of all time. What they got didn’t disappoint; a deep single player campaign with bond-esque objectives and gadgetry as well as a multiplayer mode that once again pushed the envelope and rekindled the sweaty 4-way fisticuffs typical of a marathon Goldeneye session. To revisit it now on its native N64 is an exercise in disappointment. Sure the look, feel and sounds are all present and correct, but the framerate and murky textures are not what you recall. No, back then all was laser sharp, tangy neon and inky blacks and you certainly didn’t have any framerate issues when you set off 20 remote mines at once. So the rebirth of Perfect Dark onto Xbox Live has been even longer awaited by those who know, promising as it did, the genuine article with HD graphics and, well, that’ll do actually. And now it’s finally here, available at a surprisingly restrained 800 points, has it survived the transition from our sepia toned memories..?

argh, she got me..

Short answer, yes. Its back, it’s looking better than ever and it hasn’t been mucked about with. Forget the ropey sequel spawned of a wholly different era and ethos, and look back to this lovingly crafted original which in many ways remains surprisingly advanced and more forward thinking than most fps' churned out these days. Here, mission structures are difficulty level dependent; meaning the difficulty you select from the menu directly affects the tasks and mission content you’ll see in the mission. (why isn't that a more common concept?) The fully worthwhile cooperative mode returns, now playable over Xbox live, as well as the way-ahead of it's time Matrix style "player 2 plays all the bad guys" mode, again reminding us just how much of a progressive title this was. The familiar blocky headed scanned faces of the old Rare team adorning the henchmen and characters have sadly been replaced by more contemporary fizzogs, and the textures updated, but the overal look remains firmly intact, and the synthy soundtrack and terrible voice acting is better than ever.

I- I haven't seen you before..?

The story is pure sci fi hokum- you are agent Dark, the sassy Victoria Beckham-alike protégé of the mysterious Carrington, a fat beardy Scottish bloke with piles of cash and a secret militarised organisation. Set in the not-too distant future of flying cars and blade-runner style city scapes (as much as that was possible in 2000, this is no Mass Effect 2), your mission is to uncover the conspiracy of a shady industrial organisation that may or may not (may) have something to do with aliens, the US president, and the intervention in an intergalactic war between 2 alien races (maybe). What you bring to the table are an assortment of smashing weapons and gadgets that were an improvement on Goldeneye’s Herculean inventory. Pistols, rifles, laser beams, bombs, mines, launchers, knives, crossbows, heat-scoped rail guns (oh yes) they’re all here, and each one featuring a secondary fire mode that often changes their dynamics in unexpected ways. The legendary laptop gun for example transforms your rifle into a deadly turret, gunning down enemies for you on sight, while you flick through the latest copy of FHM, (ok you’re Victoria Beckham, Cosmo then). And yes you can have it in multiplayer.

..my gun!

The levels are sprawling, meandering mazes, difficult to navigate in comparison to today’s subtly signposted worlds. The opening mission sees us join Agent Dark on top of the Datadyne building which we must infiltrate to retrieve a defecting doctor in distress. For part one of the mission, you descend down through the tower taking out security as you go. Part 2 is the infiltration of the secret basement laboratory, while the final section has you working your way back up the tower. This clever approach to the use of space, revisited a couple of times in later levels, never feels like recycling so different is the challenge for the remix sections. They can feel aimless at times however, and it is only due to the careful training veterans had back in 2000 that we can easily find our way – a newbie gamer today might be tempted to cry in frustration on learning the mission has failed because they didn’t plant that bug on a random console back at the start of the map. We've all been there agent.

But.. I cant throw a bug that high..

Where it was neither progressive nor very successful was in it’s enemy AI. These goons are fresh from an Austin Powers super villain lair; spot you and they’ll either start shooting in 4 second bursts (unless you get one of the buggers that just walks at you firing continually) and then they may leap to the side in a bid to dodge where you’re most likely firing. Half the time their gun may jam, much to their astonishment, before uttering a brilliant soundbyte as you finally off them. No there are no flanking tactics here, no retreat and regrouping – they will run at you until they get shot. What they lack in nouse, they make up for in deadliness, certainly on the fiendishly difficult Perfect Dark agent level, where if they sneak in a hit you will find half your health gone.

Any questions? No, good!

For all the leaps and bounds in the FPS genre over the last ten years, you’d be forgiven for assuming Perfect Dark is a pointless addition to your heaving collection, but you’d be sorely mistaken. The little touches remain as brilliant today as they were then. The way Joanna tilts her pistols sideways, gansta style if you get close enough to a bad-guy. The way you can disarm and knock- out every henchman if you so choose, some of them throwing down their guns pleading for you not to kill them. The ever entertaining shooting gallery, the spy-cam, and the spectacular return to what you thought was just a pretty hub world. No, Perfect Dark remains a quite brilliant and relevant shooter; never less than fun and full of invention, and with quibbles only worthy of mention because the overall standard remains so high, this is an essential purchase.

Treehouse Rating: 4/5

Ah, our star agent..

Perfect Dark is available on Xbox Live for 800 of your Earth points

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