If there’s one thing I don’t like doing after 8 hours of solid work, it’s coming home and waving my arms around like I’m on invisible fire. As anyone who has even read the smallest of articles about Kinect – the shelf name for Project Natal – it seems that is exactly what they expect you to do.
Let me be frank here: I like my controllers. I like the sticks and the buttons and I like how moving those sticks and pushing those buttons makes my little on-screen self do things and play games for me. When I’m playing Street Fighter, for instance, the last thing I want to attempt is a Spinning Bird Kick in my living room.
This is where Kinect falls horribly short. It’s just an expensive Wii without the wii-mote.
Just like the Wii, it’s almost doomed before it’s even become a household item. Games will need to be made specially for it, and will need to make good use of the arm and leg waggling at all times. Not only will this make alot of games unavailable (I really can’t envisage Prince of Persia making it onto Kinect unless they are wholly expecting people to wall-run in order to make the Prince wall-run) but it will also make the games that are designed for it very limited in playability and to the market they must be aimed at.
Sure, kids love to jump around and will like nothing more than to see their XBL Avatar jump around and move as they move, but I have to raise an eyebrow as to whether parents will fork out £300 for a better version of the Nintendo Wii, especially considering most may already have one.
Certain things come to mind with a controller-free gaming experience. How do you skip cutscenes? Do they have a clap-on effect? How sensitive is the motion capture? For example, if you’re driving in a racing game and have to sneeze will you go hurtling off the track? Menu navigation is obvious as it’ll be a ‘point at it’ job, but how do you pause your games?
Plenty was shown at E3 regarding Kinetic, like making your Avatar move like you, and games like Dance Central, where you’ll obviously need to show your moves, Kinectimals, which sounds like Nintendogs but with animals you can scratch behind the ears, Kinect Sport (but of course), which includes lots of ball and track games and Joyride, a racing game where players steer with an imaginary steering wheel.
I hate to be a Naysayer here but… is that it? I must say, none of these games are making me want to run out and spend my hard-earned cash on Natal so I can scoop up these games.
Don’t get me wrong; I think Kinetic is very brave and I think with the right games and the right tweaking, it could work and it could sell. However, I am also of the opinion that it’s just like Guitar Hero or Buzz; it’s a peripheral gimmick. Kinetic looks to cost around £300, but from what I’ve been reading, this is separate to the £200 XBox 360 you’ll also need (it plugs in, as it’s a peripheral and not a ‘separate console’ as was initially rumoured back in 2009), which is going to stack up on the wallet and probably take more flack than the original price tag for the PS3.
To conclude, I can’t say I’ll be buying one myself, I like my arms where they should be: connected to my hands that are moving my controller sticks.
When Rachel's not killing zombies or pratting about on Portal, she can be found sipping fine Hock with her friends, or kicking giant tubs of popcorn over at the cinema. 
