• by ryan.y , November 29, 2010

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I visited my father and his family in California for the majority of the break. Normally it would have been a relaxing weekend, enjoying the small comforts of family and food. However when I arrived, I discovered that my father had recently purchased a Kinect for my little brother. Being the natural tech/game junkie that I am, I had to check it out.

First, I would like to say that it’s an impressive piece of technology. We turned the Kinect on and went through the process of syncing the sensor to our body movements and voices. The amazing part is that Kinect does a great job of recognizing a user's face, but my favorite feature by far was the voice commands.

What I don’t understand is why this fantastic feature is hardly ever mentioned. It’s hardly covered on the product box or in the user guide, but it happens to be, in my opinion, one of the coolest feature Kinect has to offer. What it does is allows the user to voice control the numerous features on the Xbox’s home page.

For example, If I happened to have a DVD in my xbox I could play it simply by saying the words “Xbox, Play". Or if I wanted to browse Netflix on my Xbox guide I would say “Xbox, Netflix”. I think you get the idea, but the fact that it can register these commands so effortlessly is an achievement in its own right.

After getting the sensor to sync we were finally able to start playing Kinect only titles. We had both the Kinect sports and Dance Central and I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed. Once the gimmick wore off, and you were able to focus on the gameplay it becomes readily apparent that there is a noticeable delay to the motion of your body being transmitted to the motions of your character on screen. It's not enough to ruin the entire experience, but enough to ruin a competitive game in which reflexes need to be echoed exactly as the user does them.

In reality the delay is not that big of an issue; I recognize that I am probably being overly critical and a pessimistic “core” gamer. The system is still in its baby stages, and its titles are sure to improve over the course of the year. Regardless, it hasn’t won over my $150...but the voice commands make it tempting.