November 04, 2010, 11:19 AM — "You are the controller." It sounds so simple, so friendly, so patently cool. Take an Xbox 360, plug in the new $150 Kinect motion-sensing camera, devote a few minutes to waving your arms around like a traffic controller, and you're gaming without a gamepad. It's a little disorienting at first, like stepping onto a balance beam for the first time, and Kinect's imprecise, casual approach won't be for everyone, least of all Wii and PlayStation Move fans used to tactile wands and accurate controls. But as a second shot at bringing full body interactivity to the masses (the first was Sony's EyeToy, unless we're counting The Clapper) Kinect gets more right than wrong.
Salute, Duck, Jump
Even if you've fiddled with Nintendo's Wii or Sony's PlayStation Move, Kinect tends to throw you. Instead of wielding gamepads and remotes or wands and gun props you use your entire body as a kind of semaphore, a limb-and-torso command center scanned and translated courtesy Kinect's high-resolution cameras. Extend your arms one way to conjure the pause menu. Hold your hand out as if giving a Roman salute, then move it around to manipulate an onscreen pointer. Actually duck to duck, turn around to turn around, and jump to jump. Speak a couple words to bring up a navigational hub and access games and Kinect-enhanced applications. Act naturally, in other words, and for the most part, Kinect can tell what you're up to.
The trouble is, sometimes it can't. Kinect tends to process slow or exaggerated gestures without a problem, but badly garbles fast or subtle ones. Whether the problem's caused by lag, an algorithmic limitation, or insufficient processing power, it translates as moments where Kinect seems to misread or outright ignore you in ways Nintendo and Sony's systems don't. Sometimes you'll pull off a move in a game when it's clear you goofed, or fail when you should have succeeded, and the sensor often overplays a small gesture or underplays an exaggerated one. Perhaps because of these problems, Kinect's games tend to be forgiving by design, which has its demographic flip side: Gaming with Kinect is pretty much "casual" or bust.
Out of the Box
Setting up Kinect couldn't be simpler. The cameras reside in a tube of glossy black plastic about the size of a paper towel tube, attached to a motorized stand that you position facing you two to six feet off the floor above or below your TV screen. Kinect draws power directly from newer slimline Xbox 360s by plugging into a special orange-colored USB port. If you have an older model, you'll plug the sensor into one of the Xbox 360's standard USB ports and power it using a wall adapter included in the box.
From here, you'll run through a few exercises to fine tune sensor placement, speech recognition, and determine your play space's dimensions. Speaking of, prepare to move tables, couches, and chairs around, because Kinect's a room hog, requiring more square footage than either the Wii or PlayStation Move. You'll need to stand at least six feet from the sensor for solo play or eight for two-player, and that's not counting side-to-side space. Player height matters as well, and you have to be at least a meter tall for the sensor to function properly.
But once that's done, you're in business, and your Xbox 360 starts to make a groovy Wii-like sound.
Talk To the Hand
At this point you're still using the gamepad to navigate the Xbox 360's standard menus, but you'll notice a black and white picture-in-picture window in the screen's lower-right corner. That's the sensor's depiction of your play-space along with a shimmering, avatar-like version of you. When Kinect "sees" you, your avatar's hands glow, as if preparing to cast a spell.
Waving one hand back and forth in front of the sensor and you'll bring up Kinect Hub, the interface control center for the sensor. Once you do, the Hub slides into view and assumes command. You can alternatively bring up the Hub with a voice command by saying "XBOX," which slips a black bar up from the screen bottom and presents a list of command options. Say "KINECT" from here and the hub springs to life.
From here, your hand operates like the tip of wand, and moving it over a selectable button, panel, or icon causes a ring to appear and slowly fill like a clock. Hold your hand still and once the timer ring completes, your selection launches. Move it away and the timer ring stops. Arrow buttons at either side of the screen let you navigate left or right, and as the pointer nears one, the interface performs a magnetic "snap-to" trick facilitating faster selection. Once selected, you simply flick your hand in the desired direction to flip the screen left or right. You'll sometimes snag on these "snap-to" buttons, however, and unintentionally flip the screen when you jerk your hand away.
