Archive for February 7, 2011
Move Your Kinect
3For Christmas, I received the PS3 Move: the camera, one controller and the accompanying game (Something Sports, of course). It was pretty fun, and a lot better then the Wii. For a “copycat” experience, I prefer it to what came before. The Wii is now a dedicated Netflix machine on the upstairs TV.
For my birthday, I received the Kinect (and another Move controller!) and Kinect Adventures. The Kinect is scary; all that rampant speculation about Microsoft spying on you is made so much more real when you see that damn thing tilting and gyrating to follow you as you move around the room. The game that came with it is pretty fun; Kinect Adventures has more activities, but doesn’t track as well as the included game.
I’ve been checking on what’s out there for both systems, and have been horribly disappointed. Kinect is all about the casual market: Kinectimals and a bazillion exercise games. Move is only slightly better, with a Move-enabled version of MAG (horrible community included in every box!) and most recently Little Big Planet 2 (haven’t completed LBP1, so I can buy this one in good conscience). Where’s the love?
The Move controllers are sold out. I had a hell of a time finding them. Kinect claims to have seen runs on inventory over the holiday, but I still see shelves of them all over the place. I don’t really care about adoption rates as they stand; I’d like to see what developers are making available in the next few months because I’m really not impressed with the roadmap as I see it now. I’ve heard a lot of developers talking about thinking that they might consider possibly making a Move or Kinect enabled game someday if the planets align, but none of it has any time frame, or if it does, it’s not any time soon.
I want to use these peripherals, badly. I think they’re both very well done, but there’s only so many times I can do variations on archery, or wave my arms around like a Mountain Dew-fueled baboon. I thought about picking up some kind of fitness title, but they’re all getting such piss poor reviews that I think I’d be better off just walking up and down stairs all day, and save my $50.
I just remembered, though. Killzone 3 is supposedly Move enabled. I guess I’ve got a date with Best Buy (I have a GC /eyeroll) on the 22nd, then.
Back To You, Ted
0I’ve been recently overcome by the urge to produce some kind of video stream for the site. It’s pretty easy to do, these days. There’s a new page here which contains an embedded player from Livestream, a chat box to chat when the stream is live, and an on-demand library selection for when there’s actual videos in the library. I’m going to try to remember to start up the Procaster app whenever playing (and be sure to adjust the audio beforehand).
I’m trying to figure a way to take decent video of our trip to PAX East this year. We had limited video of the event last year, taken with my Kodak tiny-cam, but the damn thing crews through batteries like nobody’s business, and I don’t want to have to carry around a 24 pack of AAs. It’s always my luck that I need to swap the batteries in the middle of whatever event I’m recording.
I’m going to see if I can borrow my father-in-law’s hard-drive HD video camera, but barring that, I may have to resort to the old mag-tape workhorse that I have. It’ll be more difficult to transfer for editing, but I guess it’ll be better then nothing.
