This is how shooters might work with Kinect:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as4SlcAExwc

You stil use a normal controller and you can switch any time between “normal” dual stick and motion controls.

I’ve played a couple single-player Wii games that used the motions well, such as swinging the sword in Zelda: Twilight Princess, or using the grapple beam in Metroid Prime 3 (especially for yanking away enemy’s shields).

Although the use of motions in Call of Duty 3 was just worthless and difficult.

@ Luke Maciak: Of course it will never catch on… and there is even another reason for it: Noone wants to play 3hours straight with holding his arms up in front of himself. :-D

But at least it looks some kind of usable and with force-feedback it could become something cool, that at least geeks will want to try.

Stalker is a pc based fps, and there is a difference between “hard” and “unfair”,in MW1 in the harder diffs a few parts when you are alone against a lot of enemies its almost impossible because they pretty much never miss and everyone is shooting at you even when you cant see them, you still can get head shots pretty easily with a mouse

@ Luke Maciak: It’s been a while since I played a Wii game, but I liked how Zelda: Twilight Princess used the Wiimote for aiming ranged weapons. The transition from classic controls to aiming mode was very smooth, and it’s an ability I missed when I later played the game on my Gamecube. Usually it’s small additions instead of gameplay overhaul, like the ability to balance the character while walking on a pole, or aiming a gun a little more precisely, but they work.

@ JKjoker: I don’t play many FPS. I think the latest was STALKER: Call of Prypyat, and I didn’t find it easy even on normal difficulty (until I got the overpowered gauss rifle, but that’s near the end). As far as multiplatform games go, I remember Bioshock was quite easy because of the resurrection chambers, and Modern Warfare was quite an ordeal to finish on hard difficulty – damn sniper escape. I’ve never been good at quick paced games like Quake or UT, so I haven’t felt this much of a dumbing down.

Still, even I noticed changes from the old days, my point was not that the games were unaffected, but that they were adapted to be playable with a gamepad… and by a larger audience. They succeeded: you can play such a game with a Xbox controller and not feel hindered by the control scheme. I suppose if you were good or decent at FPS before, playing one designed for a gamepad with unhindered mouse controls would be like playing DDR with a keyboard. It’s just not the way the game’s designed to be played, so no wonder the balance is messed up.

let me make another prediction, all fable 3 will use kinect for is for the context actions (you know, waving hands, farting and other pointless actions)

Zel: have you played a new fps on pc ? difficulty is completely broken when the mouse controls are not ruined by forced mouse smoothing, the game usually becomes extremely easy because enemies tend to stand still so you can pull off headshots in consoles (making them sitting ducks in pc) and bullet time tends to last long enough for you to clear an entire room with a mouse but just kill 1 or 2 with a pad

i remember when i used to feel useless playing unreal tournament and constantly having my ass handed back to me by both humans and bots, these days i beat singlep fps without even trying in the harder difficulties and im pretty sure i suck at them so please dont think consolized fps escaped unaffected

@ Dr. Azrael Tod:

Perhaps it would be better but it will never catch on because:

– it is technically a powerglove
– it is not casual enough

What kinect has going for it is the casual vibe of “look at us adults being spastic playing this game, LOLOLOLOLOL isn’t this even sillier than Wii! Look, I just kicked my kid in the head by accident. LOLFUN! Look at me I’m waving my hands and shaking my ass… I look twice as foolish as if I was playing Wii… PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BUY THIS THING! PLEASE! WE MUST WIN AT CASUAL GAMES WITH NINTENDORKS!”

Putting on a glove feels more like “virtual reality” shit which will probably scare away the crowd they are trying to attract with Kinect.

@ Zel:

That’s true. I used to play the original Diablo on my PS1 back in the day. The mouse intensive game play actually translated fairly well to the console without dumbing it down to much – instead of point and click system it had direct control for movement and auto-targeting which worked fairly well unless you happened to be fighting near some barrels or chests. :P So yes, you can adopt a game to a controller.

Still, is anyone using the Wii motion controls in a very serious and/or innovative ways these days? We have tons of Wii developers out there working on all kinds of games, but it seems that majority of them is unable to figure out how to use the motion detection other than the “shake for special movie” gimmick.

Dr. Azrael Tod wrote:

speaking of power-glove… i just saw a video of some kind of full-arm-exo-skelleton-controller somewhere (damn.. cant find a link)

Oh, you mean
http://dvice.com/archives/2010/06/the-power-glove.php
or
http://techpinger.com/2010/06/e3-2010-watch-forcetek-xio-exoskeleton-g ame-controller-hands-on-video/
I guess :)

This reminds me of the long raging argument for keyboard/mouse over gamepad for shooters. Not long ago playing a FPS with a gamepad was considered heresy, now some people actually use gamepads to play them on their computers. I think it all depends on the game. Developers have learned how to design a FPS playable with a gamepad, with fewer enemies, aiming assist, etc… Give your new hardware to lots of game developers with ideas and you can end up with something innovative.

Current and older games are designed to be played on the controllers of their times. You couldn’t play Doom or Quake 3 with a gamepad, because it requires too fast movements and aiming. It’s obvious trying to copy the game while changing only the control scheme is not going to work, or not as well. But if games are designed around a new system, like Guitar Hero and DDR are, I don’t foresee any problem in their controls apart from the usual learning curve that comes with them. A plastic guitar or a DDR mat doesn’t impress me technically speaking, but these two are great games when played with their special controllers, yet very dull if you use the classic one.

If Microsoft can come up with a brand new idea for motion detecting gameplay, their newest gimmick can be quite successful.

speaking of power-glove… i just saw a video of some kind of full-arm-exo-skelleton-controller somewhere (damn.. cant find a link)
this would imho be the much better approach to motion detection, because then it would be easy to implement both, feedback and exact recognition.

…allthough in the video i’ve seen it still seemed a bit sluggish to control, but some guy was allready able to show some nearly usable moves in a FPS-Game.