PixlBit

I call it the Wii effect. It worked for them, why not us at Microsoft. Not so much. I was, however, very excited about Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, which primarily used the Kinect. But, it apparently didn't work very well according to reviews so I never bought it. I absolutely loved the trailers for it though. 

Later, I got a Kinect cheap and a few games to try out with it. I played the Mars Lander game for free, and a few others. I didn't have much space in my friend's apartment though and it didn't always read my movements correctly. You need a nice size living room. But it did get tiring waving your arms around like that like in Disneyland Adventures. Couldn't play anything for long that way. 

I do still have one though and a few games for it like The Gunstringer, which is supposed to be one of the best Kinect games. I want to wield a light saber in that Star Wars game too. 

yeah I remember hearing about that Steel Battalion game. Kinect was a lotta hype, not much substance. 

It's a great piece of tech, if you look into it, but it's not that great for gaming. I was going to use it for voice control of my system and face recognition (it'll turn on your system when you enter a room) but I never got to that. I don't really need such fancy stuff. I love to hack the thing and figure out some new weird use for it. 

I never had a Kinect.  Mainly because I didn't have space for it.  Where I had my 360, it was in a small room, and if I moved it to the bigger living room, there were skylights in there that would mess with the lighting.  So it just wasn't a good fit, unfortunately.  You could really tell the Kinect was just a knee jerk reaction to the Wii's popularity.

I did review a lot of Kinect games, though. Luckily I had a couple of friends who had a Kinect, so I would just go over to their houses to play the games I needed to review.  Most of the Kinect games were pretty awful, but there were a couple of standouts. 

One was The Gunstringer, a shooter where you controlled a cowboy puppet.  It was made by Twisted Pixel, so it had that irrevelant humor they were known for.  Man I miss that company!  The other good Kinect game I played was a Sesame Street game.  Don't laugh.  it was actually made by Double Fine so it was very high quality.  They even encouraged adults to play with the kids, and would make it fun for adults, too.  Just a very charming kids game.

One cool side note: one of my guilty pleasures is watching those ghost shows on TV where people try to investigate haunted locations to find proof of ghosts.  Yeah, I know those shows are dumb, but we all have our guilty pleasures, so don't judge me!  Anyway, one of the tools ghost hunters use now are Kinect cameras to detect slight bits of movement in a room, so that's interesting.

ha ha, that's funny about the ghost show. Good to know the Kinect is good for something!

I have heard of Gunstringer, but I didn't have that game. Sounds cool though. 

I never had Kinect, in part because I had abandoned the 360 for the PS3 in 2009. Plus the Wii gave me my fill of motion controls, and even Nintendo had mostly moved on from motion controls after Skyward Sword.  Pandora's Tower used them, but neither Xenoblade Chronicles nor The Last Story used them at all. Neither did Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn for that matter.

yeah, I really don't like motion controls. That's why I didn't get far in Skyward Sword.