Sonic Free Riders is all about the pelvic thrusts.
Sega's hover board racing game has you controlling Sonic the Hedgehog, or one of his many friends or enemies, with the Xbox 360 Kinect controller, which means, you use your body to play.
To play, you stand with your body almost sideways, as if standing atop a skateboard facing the television, and then you swipe your foot over the ground to start and speed up. To steer you lean forward, bending at the knees, or lean back. Kinect can also sense when you reach your arms out, allowing you to grab on screen items and pick up the lines of golden rings that litter the race track.
The weapon items you pick up are used in different ways during a race. For instance, you swing your arm down in an arc toward the screen as if bowling to toss a giant bowling ball at enemies, but you swipe your arms sideways to throw missiles.
Initially I found the steering controls a bit difficult to use, with my poor Sonic riding his hover board nose into the side of the track for long stretches of time. But once I started stretching my arm out in the direction I was trying to turn, the game seemed to become a bit more responsive.
I still had issues with making jumps, which seemed to require that I jump a bit too soon to launch properly off a ramp.
The game seems like it could be a fun diversion, but I'm not sure I'd want to invest the price of a full Kinect game to pick it up.
The game also supports two-player split-screen mode and when I played it had six riders available, with more to be revealed down the line. There are also going to be "lots more weapons and tracks," the spokesperson told me.
A bleak future is portrayed in these Ghost Recon Future Soldier screens, released for this weeks Gamescom. No hotel sign is safe.
NetherRealm Studios adds two more to the roster of kombatants appearing in the all-new Mortal Kombat, with cybernetic ninja Cyrax and queen of fans Kitana officially committed to beat the shit out of each other next year.
The new Mortal Kombat also has a few new old stages that fans may recognize, the Desert and Bell Tower, which appear to be throwbacks to arenas from Mortal Kombat 3 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.
Until that unreal StarCraft FarmVille mod becomes a reality, FarmVille's millions of fans can use this helpful image to understand what in the world this StarCraft II thing is all about. [Via Rafardeon's Soup]
It took more than 100 years for the notion of 3D film-making to prove itself with the 2009 release of smash hit Avatar, and Sony believes that games like the Playstation 3's Motorstorm Apocalypse and Killzone 3 will do the same for gaming.
Mick Hocking, senior director for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Studio Liverpool, heads up PlayStation's worldwide studio's steroscopic 3D team, a group that's been studying the use of 3D in gaming for about two years now.
"I think 3D gaming is huge," Hocking said in an interview with Kotaku. "There are many, many benefits that 3D brings to games, but in general it enhances your sense of immersion. Your eyes pick up a lot more information that with 2D."
While most games can benefit from 3D gaming, Hocking said, sports games and racing games seem to benefit the most.
"In those you have more information to reach to, like judging the breaking point in a turn, where to overtake a care, or when to swing a bat in major league baseball," he said. "All of that is much, much more intuitive in 3D than it is in 2D."
At issue for the technology is the inherent cost of having to buy a new television that supports 3D and being forced to wear clunky, battery-powered glasses to see games in 3D.
Hocking doesn't see that as an issue though. He says that an estimated 50 percent of televisions made in 2014 are expected to have 3D built-in and that prices are expected to continue to drop for them.
Whether or not 3D gaming is inevitable, now is most certainly the best chance for the technology to succeed in gaming. But to do so developers need to prove to gamers that the cost and inconvenience of owning a 3D television and wearing 3D glasses is outweighed by the benefits of playing a game in 3D.
"I think it's crucially important that we produce high-quality 3D at this time," he said. "We're in the phase of building the market. We need to convince (gamers) to not only get the games but also to buy the 3D TVs."
That's done by not just adding depth to games, but by applying the use of depth in a meaningful way.
"If you do produce 3D games in the right way it is a stunning experience and justifies the need to put glasses on and buy that TV," he said. "If not done well it's just used to add depth, or worse, it can put people off."
"3D done right isn't just about adding depth to a scene it is a creative medium," Hocking said. "There are choices about how much depth you put into a scene depending on what you're after, whether it is to create a sense of suspense or vertigo."
Hocking pointed out that 3D has been around in cinema since the 1890s but that it took the tremendous success of 2009's Avatar by James Cameron to prove that the technology was worth the time and money to use.
"Avatar was proof that if you deliver a high-quality experience people will flock to it," he said.
So what will be the game that, like Avatar, will prove that 3D makes sense for the medium?
"My completely unbiased opinion is Motorstorm Apocalypse," Hocking said. "I think Killzone 3 has a great sense of vertigo, especially in the jetpack levels, but Motorstorm has things blowing up all around you and past you."
And Hocking is busy working with other developers to ensure that they don't just throw their games into 3D but use it more as a technique than a technology.
That includes making sure that games don't push objects so virtually far out of the screen that it strains a user's eyes, or that an image doesn't sink so far into the screen that the image appears to double.
But it also means teaching studios to look at their game design in different ways. For instance, use the amount of 3D on certain objects to help draw the focus of gamers toward or away from things.
"The teams are really coming to grips with it," he said. "These guys are really starting to understand the medium."
I finally got my first chance to go hands-on with Kinect today, and I wasn't allowed to use my hands.
Microsoft was showing off the soccer potion of Kinect Sports at their gameplay event today in Cologne, Germany, and seeing as I spent at least a portion of one whole high school semester playing something close to soccer, I was obviously the most qualified to give it a go.
But first, I had to get calibrated.
At six feet, six inches tall, most people have no problem seeing me. Kinect is not most people. I ended up having to stand pretty far back from the unit before it fully registered my form, though the crowd of folks milling about behind me certainly didn't help.
Once it did register my bulk, things went pretty smoothly. After a few rounds of bowling, which plays a lot like Wii bowling without a Wii remote, a fellow member of the press joined me for a round of co-op football.
It's like a regular soccer game, only without all of that pesky moving. Here's what happens:
Two players alternate controlling the active character. If the ball is in possession by your team, and you are the active kicker, you position your body in the direction you want to kick, and swing your foot. If your teammate is throwing the ball in, you might get a prompt urging you to slam your face forward at the right point in order to hit the ball towards the goalie. If it is your turn, and the enemy team is kicking, you get the opportunity to raise your hands and block.
It's a turn-based game of soccer sans all of that pesky running up and down the field.
The lazy person in me approves.
The more active in me is tied up in a corner with a gag over his mouth, so his opinion doesn't matter.
Either way you look at it, Kinect Sports soccer is a lot of flailing about in front of your television, and that's what Kinect games are all about, isn't it?
The most important question at Microsoft's Gamescom play session on Tuesday? What are they serving for lunch? That question answered here.
Perhaps my fascination with the food served at press gatherings stems from the fact that 90% of my Gamescom diet comes from exactly these sorts of boxes. Well, not exactly these sorts of boxes. This long, thin, corrugated cardboard number emblazoned with the label "Play Lunch" is special, if only because of that sticker.
Inside there were a bag of BBQ chips, an apple, a weird sort of chicken wrap thing, and a blueberry muffin, not pictured. Alas, the muffin was the best of the box, and didn't last long enough to get its 15 seconds of fame. Maybe later.
Probably not.
The most notable thing about this lunch is that there was actual flavor to the wrap. It was a little tangy, and even a bit spicy. You don't get that in North America. In the U.S., they are afraid actual taste might offend someone, so they limit the flavors allowed in any box lunch to salty, and that only covers the chips.
We are podcasting live right now. And by "we" I mean me and intern Aulistar Mark. What happens when an intern gets a live mic?
In this by-the-seat-of-our-pants edition I will regale you with stories of outer space (true ones) but we will mostly talk about all the big game news from the big shows of last week and this week.
Give us a call and let's talk some games. We will even answer your questions, unless you ask Aulistar if I am mean. He is not allowed to answer that.
Give us a ring — or listen live.
The weekly Kotaku Talk Radio podcast kicks off at 11:00 AM mountain time (1:00 PM ET) on Wednesday.
Call us on the air LIVE at (877) CHAT-212 or use Skype to dial in! You can also pick up a nifty, and free, iPhone App to listen to the show live here.
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And don't forget to subscribe to "Kotaku Talk Radio" in iTunes to check out past interviews with the likes of Sid Meier, David Jaffe, Amy Hennig, Ken Levine, Tim Schafer, Greg Zeschuk, Todd Howard, Cliff Bleszinski, Jeremiah Slaczka, Jeff Gerstmann, Jordan Thomas, Stig Asmussen, Major Nelson and Randy Pitchford.
We'll also continue to provide direct downloads of the show a couple of hours after showtime each Wednesday.
I've played Ubisoft's real-time strategy game R.U.S.E. plenty of times with gamepads and keyboards, But this week was my first chance to check it out using the Playstation MOVE: And I loved it.
I'm already a fan of the streamlined war game that blends the typical strategy elements of resource gathering and unit production with the ability to use deceptive special moves to fool the enemy. But playing the game on a console can be a bit awkward at times.
The issue, as with most console-based real-time strategy games, is that you're forced to push the cursor around with a thumbstick or direction pad and it always feels too slow or too fast, or not precise enough. There's also the issue of the limited buttons available to you on a controller, forcing a gamer to rely even more heavily on that painful cursor control.
Enter the Playstation Move, with it's ice-cream cone motion controller and a barrel-shaped Navigation controller. While playing R.U.S.E. with Move, the motion controller acts as the mouse and the navigation controller as a sort of mini keyboard, allowing you to use it's many buttons and pads as short cuts and to help with menu navigation.
To play you point the main Move controller at the screen, moving the cursor around by pointing. Once you've targeted the unit or building you want to select you just push the Move button. You an also select units by holding in a button and "painting" an area with the cursor. You can also move the camera around and zoom in and out by holding the trigger on the controller and tilting the wand side to side or leaning it forward or backward.
A flick to the right with the Move wand opens the menu and a flick to the left closes it.
You can actually play R.U.S.E. with just the Move wand, but it's the same way you can play StarCraft II with just a mouse: it's doable, but not the most efficient control set up. I preferred to use the wand to zip around the screen and control the mouse and the navigation controller to move through menus and the nav controller's directional pad to hot select unit types.
After playing the computer to draw in the game, I found that the Move controller set-up was almost as natural feeling as using a keyboard and mouse. What worked best about the control set-up was the use of the Wand as a mouse-like interface, something that the controller seems to excel at. The least comfortable was using the wand to snap open menus with a gesture, but you can also do that with a button push, so that didn't bother me too much.
