edgecrusher said:

I'm halfway through the game. The 1st 5 chapters you play as the Decepticons, then the last 5 as the Autobots. I just finished a boss fight that was one of the best I've experienced in awhile. Like Metroid level badass.

Tried some FPSs today. Killzone 3's 3D effect is really cool. There is something really awesome about the gun sort of popping out of the screen and everything else being deeper in the level. The 3D effects are really sweet but damn the visuals take a nasty hit. It looks jaggy and all around messy, normally this is a really smooth beautiful game. Overall unless you played through it already and looking for a reason to play it again I wouldnt play KZ3 on 3D.

I then switched to the 360 and tried Halo Anniversary, neat effect doesnt add much except its Halo in 3D. The game has simple graphics so the image stays clean always. I tried Gears 3 this makes good use of 3D because the entire game is about getting behind stuff and shooting enemies farther away so the 3D enhances that hide behind something in the foreground and shot at stuff deep into the screen. But I still wouldnt play the game in 3D the first time, I think it takes a visual hit.

Then there is Crysis 2, my first time playing it, WHAT KIND OF VOODOO SHIT IS THIS?! I have never seen a game look so good, holy shit!!! And the 3D works PERFECT. It is rather subtle compared to Killzone 3 but it has none of that jaggie ugly effect going on, the game is super smooth and beautiful, the 3D only serves to enhance the mind blowing visuals. I love how the hud sits in front such a cool effect. This shoots up my list as one if not the best 3D games out there. I hear Crysis 1 on 360 also supports it.

I got a few more games that use it like Ass Creed Revelations but I will try that another day.

I'm bored.

Skimming Kinect editorial nao.

Digital Foundry said:

In the wake of this week's release of the genuinely disappointing Steel Battalion, one thing is clear: Kinect categorically does not offer "extra fidelity for core gamers" and, these days, Tsunoda would be laughed out of the room for suggesting it.


Tsunoda himself would surely have been well aware of Kinect's limitations, even back then. Speaking to developers who absorbed everything Microsoft had to offer about the new technology, it's safe to say that the platform holder had quantified the camera's performance on every conceivable level at around the same time that kits were sent out to developers. It knew exactly what it could do and what it couldn't, and was busy writing white papers and devising entire seminars aimed at briefing devs on optimising for the hardware.

(Latency) only puts Kinect gaming at the same kind of response level as cloud gaming service OnLive at its best, but with the additional 'lag' of the human body itself, because jumping, kicking or waving your arms about simply takes that much longer than pressing a button. There are also built-in latency issues with games based around gesture commands in that the system takes a certain amount of time to figure out what you're actually doing before it can even begin to turn your input into a motion in-game.

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that in these cases (recent games) Kinect is morphing into one hell of an expensive microphone in a world where almost every 360 owner already has a perfectly good one built into their Live headset. Utilisation of the RGB and depth cams in all of these core titles is notable only by its absence: game developers simply don't know how to implement them into their designs, or can't dedicate enough resources to do anything meaningful when only a minority of gamers will ever actually use them.

FUTURE KINECT

The recently leaked summer 2010 Microsoft presentation - confirmed by sources as being genuine, but very out-of-date - throws some light on what we could expect. Diagrams in the presentation suggest that the single Kinect sensor is replaced in favour of two smaller satellite cameras, offering a significantly improved field of view that could suit more playspaces and support up to four players simultaneously.

It's interesting to note that the second-generation PrimeSense camera (the original reference design is extremely similar to the existing Kinect) ups RGB resolution to 1280x960, but depth resolution remains at VGA standard 640x480. Instead, frame-rate increases to 60FPS. We can't help but feel that depth perception really needs to improve significantly to make Kinect 2 flexible enough for all gameplay scenarios - but maybe stereo viewpoints could make the difference.