MotionSports

Motion control? Check. Sports compilations for the motion control? Double check. MotionSports is Ubisoft's take on the casual-friendly broad audience appealing sports compilations that are all the rage on the Nintendo Wii, but this one's for Microsoft and its Kinect peripheral.

 

The version shown at Ubisoft's booth at Gamescom in Germany had two playable events out of total of six the final product will have. Only skiing and boxing were selectable with American football, soccer, hang gliding, and horseback riding left on the menu. There will be more than forty different challenges within these six sports to spice up the variety.

 

In skiing, I got a chance to play Super G, which is essentially a high-speed downhill run through a series of gates. Maneuvering was easy: stand in front of the Kinect camera and lean left and right to shush downhill. Leaning down would increase the speed, and thrusting the arms would dig the poles into the ground for an extra boost of momentum. While this game was still a little rough around the edges with a 30 FPS framerate, after experiencing a similar set of skiing games on the Balance Board on Wii I think it was refreshing to be able to lean and maneuver with a lot more sensitivity and control using Kinect.

 

This mode had a two player split screen option that played just as well, but with a significant drop in framerate. Hopefully this will be tweaked before release.

 

Boxing was only available in single player (for now) but the demo was a taste test of things to come – and once again, even with some rough patches, it was a much, much better experience than, say, the awkward mess of Wii Sports boxing. The fight takes place from the fighter's eyes, with the gloves being represented transparently where you're holding your fists. Uppercuts, jabs and roundhouses were recognized with decent accuracy – though there were some misreads along the way.

 

The final version of the game will have color commentary played as the action unfolds on-screen – the voice over sessions were not implemented in the Gamescom version because they're being recorded right now. Ubisoft expects to get MotionSports out the door for a late 2010 release.

Eina sau iš tikro tai fainai tie visi Kinect ir Move, norėčiau pažaist futbolą su tokiu