Nintendo’s Wii has been a massive success, mainly because of its motion controller capabilities, and while both Sony and Microsoft joined the motion sensing game this year, with Move and Kinect, respectively, only the Xbox 360 Kinect actually gets rid of controllers altogether — you control the games and interface with your own body. It’s a great device in theory, but how does it work in real life, and especially, games?

For starters, Kinect is easy to connect and you’re ready to go in no time (after you’ve shed out the steep $150 for the device, which includes a bundle of mini games). You navigate the menus with your hands and voice, but probably know all the tech stuff now, so let’s get to the games:

Kinect Adventures is a collection of mini games made to showcase the capabilities of Kinect with a series of tech demos. But none of the games are deep enough to sustain your interest for long. Granted, they’re only supposed to showcase the technology (like Wii Sports), but it also displays the biggest hurdle we’ve seen in Kinect: lag and inaccurate controls. On top of that, the games are very forgiving and even when you give it the wrong input, it’ll help you along. It’s good for 5 year olds, but it’s an insult for real gamers.

Another game we played was Kinectimals, where you play with your pets, like catch and what not. These games are really cute but ultimately, pointless. Kind of like Viva Pinata without much of the depth. The third game, Kinect Sports is pretty much like Wii Sports, and has some of the same game as well, like boxing, bowling and table tennis. However, it suffers from the same glitches as the other games. The controls are not only inaccurate, but they’re not 1:1, which makes mini games like boxing even worse than it is on the Wii. Other games like racing don’t really require your input at all. You can just sit there. Doing nothing (like in this video).

Using your hands to navigate the menus is a great feature, and in theory should be great. Only that it’s a lot slower than doing it with a controller, and when all you do is wanting to navigate through the menus as fast as possible, going to your game, you’ll be waving in the air, trying to get to your destination. To make matters worse, you can’t use the controller when you use Kinect. You have to navigate with your hands and voice. Which is annoying to say the least. Also, be ready to clear your living room table, as Kinect needs some space in order to recognize you. Overall, Xbox 360 Kinect has some good fundamental ideas, but in real life, it goes from annoying (lag), to the really irritating (have to use Kinect to navigate menus). But it’s not to say that are a lot of possibilities to make great games for the device. A lot of third party developers are already working on them.

The Good:
Interesting concept
Quality hardware with lots of features

The Bad:
$150 price tag (in addition to an Xbox 360)
Often inaccurate
Lag
No option to use controller for menu navigation
Games are lacking in quality and quantity at the moment

Overall score:
System:6/10
Games 3/10