Kinect Could be Brutal, and Gamers Won’t Even Know It

By Contributor Dan Wise

What can be done to keep Kinect from being the next Virtual Boy.

Nintendo’s Wii and DS are mini consoles with a repertoire of mini games for mini gamers, and therefore cannot offer the proper hard-core experience for gamers. At least, that’s the common opinion from forum dwellers with a discerning taste for hardcore games. They’re the gamers that gobble up Madden and Call of Duty games like yesterday’s Happy Meals, and then promptly sell those games when they get clowned by eleven year olds on Xbox Live.

The gap between the hardcore game and the hardcore gamer is starting to close, and last year’s Demon’s Souls has proven that frustratingly hard games can still sell.

Kinect has the potential to be huge, or to flop completely. Although, I did not have much faith for the peripheral, even after I demoed it at a super swanky Microsoft Kinect party.

I was starting to think that Kinect was sunk before it was even sent to sea, but a Nintendo DS title has me thinking differently.

I have started playing Knights in the Nightmare, which is a game that would have been impossible to pitch to any publisher except Atlus. When I describe the game as a strategy tactics, top-down shooter with RPG elements to friends I get a blank stare that brings a whole new meaning to what Nietzsche was talking about.

Developer Sting basically took two great genres that work well on hand-held systems. I’m a huge fan of Strategy Tactics Games, and I love my bullet-hell shooters. What I love most is that this game features a polarity system (think Ikaruga) between Law and Chaos, which offers strategic benefits, and its implementation is nearly perfect. My only qualm is that the small screen can make things a bit cluttered. Despite the hardware’s shortcomings, the game pulls itself together in lieu of the tremendous potential for a cluster– Well, you know. This is a game that proves that the DS is a capable system for hardcore players.

This game lies on the cusp of a bowl called genius, but the DS holds it back due to lack of screen real estate. A more appropriate system would be the Wii, Move or Kinect where players can have free reign on a glorious 32”+ LCD TV.

The fact that this game requires no button presses whatsoever is what makes this feasible for Kinect. Without going into excruciating detail (I’ll let you do the Google), KitN has the player controlling a wisp with the DS stylus an nothing else. The wisp must be used to select weapons, dodge bullets, and attack enemies. This is all done by simply guiding the wisp to different areas of the screen and highlighting characters, or picking up and dragging weapons and artifacts. This is a simple, approachable design. However, KitN has so steep of a learning curve that it makes the approachability a moot point.
That being said, I have heard gamers grumble about the lack of a hardcore appeal of Kinect; Gamers wouldn’t be able to get past the fact that there are no buttons even if Kinect had a hardcore offering.

To which I reply: stop being button monkeys.

The reason Kinect could fail is if developers do not give proper support to the system through creative design and innovation. Unfortunately, I feel as though the Bobby Koticks of the industry will fail to grasp this concept.

So far, Kinect does not have any appealing titles to warrant a day-one purchase. It’s only through the promise of great games that this peripheral will have legs. It took a while for PS3 owners to get their treasure trove of titles, but they’ve gotten that treasure, and it has this Xbox 360 owner feeling a little on the jealous side. My fear is that the Xbox 360 crowd lacks that kind of patience.