First Hands on Kinect Adventures!

Yesterday was the first day of the GamesCom 2010, or to put it more precisely, the get together of press and publishers.
I got the chance to play Microsoft's Kinect Adventures developed by Good Science Studio for Microsofts new Kinect Sensor.
First of i have to say that i was really pleased what Good Science Studio accomplished with Kinect.
It really feels as if you're in the game. But more to that later.

The demo version i got to play togeter with a fellow journalist, had 3 mini games available, all of which are known from the E3 showcase.


1. A game with a rubber boat going down the river

2. An obstacle course
3. collecting bubbles in a space station like screen


The first game really is all that, what we've already seen at e3 this year. You are together with someone in coop, going down a river, escaping rocks and trying to
collect as many coins as possible.

Game two, was my favorite one, putting you up against an obstacle course while competing
to the other player.
You can increse speed by jumping (which you can see in our Kinect Adventure Gameplay Video), besides collecting coins as well.

The way kinect works here, is specifically interesteing as it also tracks your horizontal position (where you're standing).
Obstacles confront you on either side (left or right) and you have to evade it.
I did just that and turned my body to the site as well, to decrease the space needed on my platform.
The game reacts to that and your character turns as well... truely amazing.

The last game was again a competition game, where you have to collect bubbles that can appear on different positions in the screen.
Therefore you have to fly upwards (by moving your arms like a crazy chicken), or move forward to collect those bubbles in front of you.


The gameplay with kinect really feels naturally and puts the gamer even more inside the game, than Nintendo's Wiimote / Nunchuck combination can do.
But the same problem Wii had with it's mainly mini game lineup for months and years is something that kinect will probably face as well.

It's up to Microsoft to get the 3rd publishers as well as their first- and second party developers to create games that are not only appealing to casual- but also to hardcore gamers.
We have an interview coming up with Michael Johnson Director of Microsoft Global Marketing on this topic, stay tuned.

Check out what Kinects capable of in our hands on videos for Kinect Adventures.


Edit: Check out our exlusive Kinect interview with Microsofts Michael Johnson on Kinect Adventures.