Voice control is one thing to miss the cut, with the ability to change media and control menus via vocal commands being a no-no. Given that this was one of the things that Microsoft were calling a key feature, this is a tad surprising.

Secondly, the Kinect video chat system – Video Kinect – will also not make an appearance at launch, instead being released separately (more than likely as a free service) later on.

Xbox Live EMEA Marketing Manager Robin Burrows stated that “we will be announcing when voice control will be turned on in due course.”

For gamers, these delays will probably not cause too many problems, but there are more than a few users up in arms about the shrinking Kinect feature set. Here’s hoping that this is the last we hear of such issues.

UPDATE: It seems that MCV may have made a little (by which we mean “quite large”) mistake. It appears that voice control WILL feature at launch for Kinect, but not in all languages. Awesome UK games blog VG247 has the scoop.

The setup of the Kinect Galleries is brilliant. There were free, chilled cokes available to all and the staff were amazingly friendly and chirpy without being condescendingly American. This was a direct opposite to the morons at the new Apple store in the area who were clapping and cheering every punter that entered the premises.

Everyone who attended was given a 30-minute playing slot and then escorted down to showroom lounges where they were assigned their own personal guide, and could sit and watch their mates playing whilst waiting for a go. One thing that I especially liked was that the players were all recorded and the videos of them playing uploaded to kinect.me, where they could log in using their booking reference number and watch their videos.

The number of games that could be played was limited by the number of people in your party. For example, if you had six people you would play six games. With that in mind, we’ll move on to the games that we were able to play.

Kinect Adventures

Kinect Adventures Gamepage
This is the game that everyone has seen on the demos, the Gadget Show featured it in their slot for E3 (along with Forza Motorsport) and there are a number of videos showing it on YouTube.

One of the levels of this game is white water rafting. This can be a one- or two-player game with the latter emphasising team play. Players steer the boat by leaning left and right and make it jump by jumping up. To go faster they lean in towards the screen. The idea is make your way down the river by going through gates, collecting numerous star tokens and using ramps to jump and get airborne.

What I especially liked about this game was that emphasis on team play. If one player went to the left and the other to the right, the boat just kept going forward, slamming into whatever obstacle was in front.

Another cool feature of Kinect and one which was exploited to good effect in the game is the ability to work out exactly what position the player’s body is in. This meant that if I did a star jump, my avatar would do a star jump. This is key to the game as there is no physical way of getting the stars without being able to perform the requested jump. Star jumps, straight jumps with your hands above your head and any manner of other positions are requested by the game, and all seemed to work well.

The second adventure game we played was a straight-out race on platforms which were mounted on rails. The start was especially good as you had to reach out as if you were grabbing rails and then pull hard to get started. In order to keep up momentum you had to jump up and down on the spot. As you did so, you approached obstacles that you had to either jump over, duck under, or dodge to the left or right.

This is the game that I really struggled with. My depth perception was completely out and I spent more time with stars about my head than I did actually making my way through the course. There was no indication as to when to actually try to dodge the obstacles and this meant that I was jumping, ducking and dodging far too late.

Needless to say, I lost this game and was glad of the comfy sofa and free Coke (did I mention the free Coke?) in order to chill down (I was sweating like the proverbial) and get my breath back whilst my gobby mates (and gobbier wife) tried their hand at the game.

Dance Central

Dance Central Gamepage

In the limited time I had available to test it out, I could tell that this is likely to become the best dance game that I’ve ever played. With Dance Central you’re getting a game that is ready to go straight out of the box. No extras needed, no dance mat that bows under your weight or which moves along the floor as you do the more energetic dances and no need for a shed load of £1 coins as you shake yo thang down at the arcade.

I played the easy level of Poison (hey, I was being watched not only by my mates, but most of the Microsoft crew and a number of other punters) and even that was more of a workout than I was expecting. Dance Central is cleverly set up so that you only have to mirror the moves of the dancers on screen.

Fortunately, the Dance Central dances do appear to have repeating chorus sections and you can therefore quickly pick up on some of the moves that you’re expected to do more than once. The game appears to score based on how well you mirror the actual moves and not on whether you do something appearing to be the move, which you’ve been able to get away with in some incredibly popular Wii titles before now. The best thing about this for me is that you actually IMPROVE your dancing ability.

All-in-all this is most likely going to be the game to watch. It’s going to appeal to frustrated daddy dancers like myself and keep millions of little girls (such as my daughters) engrossed for hours. The workout it provides will also help somewhat to banishing the fat-arse stereotype that gamers are often stuck with. This is definitely on my ‘to buy’ list.

Kinect Sports

Kinect Sports Gamepage

This is a game that the lazier gamer will hate! There’s no messing about in this game, and no half-arsed ‘jogging’ on the spot. It’s a full-on sprint to the finish. I played the hurdles game against a friend.

Assuming the standing sprint position we awaited the starter’s pistol. With a crack we were gone. Our avatars hurtled along the track and headed towards the first of the hurdles.

‘Wait for the marker to turn green’ shouted our chirpy little beardy Microsoft guy.

With a loud clunk we completely failed to clear the hurdles, our avatars slamming into and through them. It was at this point that my worthy opponent decided that jumping was too hard (he was 6’4″ after all) and that running through the rest of them was a better (if not exactly fair) way of winning the race.

Being a gaming professional (!) I persisted in my efforts to actually jump the bloody things, and tried jumping when the hurdles turned yellow. The thing with them either being yellow or green was that they changed colour miles away from the actual hurdle. The fact that you’re running as hard on the spot as possible makes it quite hard to go from running on the spot to jumping on the spot. It’s actually easier to run normally and jump a hurdle than it is to run on the spot and go from that to jumping. The result was that my mate just ran through the hurdles and won, whereas I tried to jump and lost.

Winner and loser both were knackered at the end of the race and the sweat was truly running freely. All-in-all it was a good game and I can see a lot of competitiveness coming to the fore as grandma tries to run the kids into the ground, but I hope that the finished game rewards actually trying to play it properly (such as Dance Central) rather than allowing people to take shortcuts.

Final Thoughts
Kinect has the potential to change the face of gaming forever. Science fiction meets science fact and gives gamers of all types the opportunity to play. The Wii and PSMove are both dependant upon the gamer being able to hold a minimum of one controller whereas the Kinect does not discriminate in this way. Granted, I haven’t seen how wheelchair bound players will be affected but I saw a one-handed girl playing whilst I was at the galleries and she was able to play without any problems.

I am very interested in seeing how first-person shooters will work, sadly enough I’m already thinking it’s going to be along the lines of  the Gerard Butler movie ‘Gamer’, in which case it will be very cool indeed! As a martial artist, I’m also very interested in seeing the UFC training game and any other martial arts-based games. The potential it has for complimenting class-based training with home-based practice is immense.

Without wanting to sound too much like a fanboy. Kinect FTW! I thought it was awesome stuff.

The word is that Rage are working on updating the current avatar design so that it works better with Kinect. You read that right. Apparently, the current avatars aren’t particularly well proportioned and this causes hand/eye co-ordination issues when you use them with Kinect.

The new avatars will be released at some point in 2010 and will be bundled with a firmware update. I’m betting that the update will occur at some point in November…maybe a tad before the 10th. What this means for all your purchased avatar clothes and add-ons, I don’t know, but you’d have to think that they’ll port over without fuss…wouldn’t you?

With that aside, Activision’s ninety-eight-thousandth entry in the Guitar Hero series – Warriors of Rock – is nearing completion, and they’ve provided us with a final on-disc tracklist that we thought we’d share. The game claims to be the first in the series to have a proper story mode – although what you’d call what we were all playing before in single player, I don’t know – and will be released on 24th September for Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360.

That tracklist is as follows:-

A Perfect Circle – “The Outsider”
Aerosmith – “Cryin’”
AFI – “Dancing Through Sunday”
Alice Cooper – “No More Mr. Nice Guy”
Alter Bridge – “Ties That Bind”
Anberlin – “The Feel Good Drag”
Anthrax – “Indians”
Arch Enemy – “Nemesis”
Atreyu – “Ravenous”
Avenged Sevenfold – “Bat Country”
Bad Brains – “Re-Ignition (Live)”
Band Of Skulls – “I Know What I Am”
Black Sabbath – “Children Of The Grave”
Blind Melon – “Tones Of Home”
Blue Öyster Cult – “Burnin’ For You”
Bush – “Machinehead”
Buzzcocks – “What Do I Get?”
Children Of Bodom – “If You Want Peace… Prepare For War”
Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Fortunate Son”
The Cure – “Fascination Street”
Deep Purple – “Burn”
Def Leppard – “Pour Some Sugar On Me (Live)”
Dethklok – “Bloodlines”
The Dillinger Escape Plan – “Setting Fire To Sleeping Giants”
Dire Straits – “Money For Nothing”
DragonForce – “Fury of the Storm”
Drowning Pool – “Bodies”
Edgar Winter– “Free Ride”
Fall Out Boy – “Dance, Dance”
Five Finger Death Punch – “Hard To See”
Flyleaf – “Again”
Foo Fighters – “No Way Back”
Foreigner – “Feels Like The First Time”
George Thorogood and The Destroyers – “Move It On Over (Live)”
The Hives – “Tick Tick Boom”
Interpol – “Slow Hands”
Jane’s Addiction – “Been Caught Stealing”
Jethro Tull – “Aqualung”
John 5 – “Black Widow Of La Porte”
KISS – “Love Gun”
Linkin Park – “Bleed It Out”
Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Call Me The Breeze (Live)”
Megadeth – “Sudden Death”
Megadeth – “Holy Wars… The Punishment Due”
Megadeth – “This Day We Fight!”
Metallica & Ozzy Osbourne – “Paranoid (Live)”
Muse – “Uprising”
My Chemical Romance – “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)”
Neil Young – “Rockin’ In The Free World”
Nickelback – “How You Remind Me”
Night Ranger – “(You Can Still) Rock In America”
Nine Inch Nails – “Wish”
The Offspring – “Self Esteem”
Orianthi – “Suffocated”
Pantera – “I’m Broken”
Phoenix – “Lasso”
Poison – “Unskinny Bop”
Queen – “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Queensrÿche – “Jet City Woman”
Rammstein – “Waidmanns Heil”
The Ramones – “Theme From Spiderman”
Red Rider – “Lunatic Fringe”
R.E.M. – “Losing My Religion”
Rise Against – “Savior”
The Rolling Stones – “Stray Cat Blues”
The Runaways – “Cherry Bomb”
Rush – “2112 Pt. 1 – Overture”
Rush – “2112 Pt. 2 – The Temples Of Syrinx”
Rush – “2112 Pt. 3 – Discovery”
Rush – “2112 Pt. 4 – Presentation”
Rush – “2112 Pt. 5 – Oracle: The Dream”
Rush – “2112 Pt. 6 – Soliloquy”
Rush – “2112 Pt. 7 – Grand Finale”
RX Bandits – “It’s Only Another Parsec…”
Silversun Pickups – “There’s No Secrets This Year”
Slash featuring Ian Astbury – “Ghost”
Slayer – “Chemical Warfare”
Slipknot – “Psychosocial”
Snot – “Deadfall”
Soundgarden – “Black Rain”
Steve Vai – “Speeding” (Vault Version)
Stone Temple Pilots – “Interstate Love Song”
Strung Out – “Calling”
Styx – “Renegade”
Sum 41 – “Motivation”
Tesla – “Modern Day Cowboy”
Them Crooked Vultures – “Scumbag Blues”
Third Eye Blind – “Graduate”
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “Listen To Her Heart”
Twisted Sister – “We’re Not Gonna Take It”
The Vines – “Get Free”
The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army”
ZZ Top – “Sharp Dressed Man (Live)”

Dance Masters, a Kinect launch title that we previously had somewhat limited knowledge of, will be rebranded in the UK as the much cooler DanceEvolution. Undoubtedly, Konami will see sense and change it worldwide before the game hits (oh, how I’ve said that before!) but as it stands, we’ve got the better version and we’re happy about that.

We know how particular you DDR fans are about your facts, so we’ll let the press release do the rest of the talking:-

“DanceEvolution will offer users the ultimate dance club vibe, and boasts the most realistic and exhilarating dancing experience to date. Kinect for Xbox 360 allows players to watch their actions in real time and also save two of their original routines for use as back-up dancers in the game, no controllers required. As players dance in tune to the game’s music, they can also take snapshots of their favorite dance poses, save to local albums and share the fun with friends. Utilising XboxLIVE® for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, players can also challenge up to four friends around the world and enhance their experience with dance sequences, theme packs and more.

Featuring 30 tracks spanning club music classics, Hip Hop, R&B, Pop, and Techno, DanceEvolution dancers can groove to their favorite songs. The game also offers three gameplay modes for the ultimate dance experience: Dance, Lesson, and Status. In Dance Mode, users compete to become the ‘Dance Master’ as they play and unlock their favorite songs and dance along with a friend. Lesson Mode offers a tutorial service, and Status Mode allows players to check their play records and review the titles they have earned. Players can also compete to determine the ultimate dancer with multiple difficulty levels including Light, Standard, Extreme and Stealth.”

DanceEvolution will be available in November, probably on the same day that Kinect launches.

Well, three more screenshots have trickled our way today, along with a Q&A session with an unknown person at one of the three development houses that are working on one of the versions of the game (yes, just INCREDIBLE planning and detail, Ubisoft…) that reads like a glowing  reference for the man himself, whilst not actually mentioning anything about the game. Whoever typed it up has a document to truly be proud of, as the most interesting thing about it is the size of the font it uses. Top work. Please do better tomorrow, since you can’t do much worse.

A seperate press release confirms that this is indeed – as you’d guessed – a “performance” game that tasks you with singing and dancing like the King of Pop to some of his biggest hits. If you’re interested, the Kinect version seems to be the one to back at the moment, as the press release documents details of how it uses Ubisoft’s proprietary Player Projection technology which puts the player “in” the game, whilst the Wii version is being worked on by the Just Dance developers (oh goodness, no) and the PS3 edition isn’t even mentioned.

I can tell you that “Bad”, “Beat It”, “Billie Jean”, “Earth Song”, “The Girl Is Mine”, “Who Is It” and “Workin’ Day And Night” have been confirmed as being playable, but aside from that….who knows? We’re not at gamescom in Germany. Can you tell?

A duet mode, dance battle mode supporting up to 8 players, a party mode (basically just non-stop dancing) and a “Just Sweat” mode, which – very much like Konami’s ultra-successful DanceDanceRevolution series – allows you to track how well you’re doing, fitness wise, with the product.

The development team have been working on improving movement recognition, but in a recent interview (conducted by Ubisoft, bizarrely) which asked why the game didn’t use MotionPlus, the team answered that they have managed to optimize dance detection with just the Wiimote, so MotionPlus isn’t required. Big words. Here’s hoping that they can back it up. With the likes of DanceDanceRevolution coming to the PS3 with Move support, and approximately nineteen thousand dancing titles launching with Kinect for Xbox 360, a lot of people will be skeptical as to how Just Dance 2 can keep up. I’m one of those people, but I’ve still no doubt that it will hit number one as soon as it goes on sale in Tesco’s and ASDA.

44 tracks have been confirmed for Just Dance 2 – with more being available to download, apparently – with that initial list comprising of:-

1. Avril Lavigne – “Girlfriend”
2. Bangles – “Walk Like An Egyptian”
3. Beastie Boys – “Body Movin’ (Fatboy Slim Remix)”
4. Benny Benassi presents “The Biz” – “Satisfaction”
5. Blondie – “Call Me”
6. Bollywood – “Katti Kalandal”
7. Boney M. – “Rasputin”
8. Charleston – “Mugsy Baloney”
9. Cher – “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)”
10. Digitalism – “Idealistic”
11. Donna Summer – “Hot Stuff”
12. Elvis Presley – “Viva Las Vegas”
13. Fatboy Slim – “Rockafeller Skank”
14. Franz Ferdinand – “Take Me Out”
15. Harry Belafonte – “Jump In The Line”
16. Ike & Tina Turner – “Proud Mary”
17. James Brown – “I Got You (I Feel Good)”
18. Jamiroquai – “Cosmic Girl”
19. Junior Senior – “Move Your Feet”
20. Justice – “D.A.N.C.E.”
21. Ke$ha – “TiK ToK”
22. Mardi Gras – “Iko Iko”
23. Marine Band – “Sway (Quien Sera)”
24. MIKA – “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)”
25. Outkast – “Hey Ya!”
26. Quincy Jones & His Orchestra – “Soul Bossa Nova”
27. Reggaeton – “Baby Girl”
28. Rihanna – “S.O.S.”
29. Snap! – “The Power”
30. Sorcerer – “Dagomba”
31. Studio Allstars – “Jump”
32. Studio Musicians – “Crazy In Love”
33. Studio Musicians – “Jungle Boogie”
34. Supergrass – “Alright”
35. The Frighteners – “Monster Mash”
36. The Hit Crew – “Holiday”
37. The Hit Crew – “Toxic”
38. The Jackson 5 – “I Want You Back”
39. The Pussycat Dolls – “When I Grow Up”
40. The Rolling Stones – “Sympathy For The Devil (Fatboy Slim Remix)”
41. The Ting Tings – “That’s Not My Name”
42. The Weather Girls – “It’s Raining Men”
43. Vampire Weekend – “A-Punk”
44. Wham! – “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”

Just Dance 2 hits stores in October.

Luc Verdier, Project Manager for Fighters Uncaged, answered some questions about the game:-

Who is in charge of the development?

Our AMA Studios team is based in the beautiful town of Charleroi (Belgium). The studio was founded by Yves Grolet (creative director of awarded Outcast) and Christian Guillemot (CIO of AMA Publishing) to create this game. More than 30 industry veterans are working on “Fighters Uncaged”.

Can you explain to what extent the Kinect technology is a real plus for a fighting game?

Kinect bring us a fantastic and innovative opportunity to make players feel that they are actually fighting, and replicate the exact motions of a real life brawl. The Kinect can accurately detect full body movement, meaning  each player can put themselves in the body of a real fighter and be able to unleash hooks, uppercuts, jump kicks, dodges, knock out blows, etc…. Moreover, it gives a fighting game a second layer of game play depth: The player needs to, of course, understand fighting techniques and strategy, but also really needs to manage their own physical skills. Being able to control these two layers provides an unprecedented level of depth that has never been possible before in a fighting game.

How many fighters do you battle with? Can you explain the basic structure of the game?

You will fight against 12 different opponents. Each of them has their own tactics and weak points.  You will need to strategize and use different techniques in order to beat them.

To get through the three leagues of “Fighters Uncaged”, you need to acquire crown achievements by beating your own battle records for each opponent.

How many different moves do you have in the game?

Basically, there are more than 20 fighting moves in the game, inspired by Thaï Boxing. They are separated into punches, kicks and special moves. Additionally, if you take the super strikes (you need to shout while unleashing your strike) and the combos into account, there are actually 70 fighting moves available.

So tell us about the combos? How many are there? How do you trigger combos? What competitive edge does it bring?

Player will have 10 combos to viciously deploy. Our goal was to make them difficult to execute, require players to master the skills but very rewarding if done correctly.  You will need to find the right opportunity to trigger them. But this game will be accessible to everyone, all players will be able to use some of the combos, but the best players will be able to trigger all of them.

Tell us about your favorite features in the game?

If I had to give you the three key features of this game, I would say that, first, you won’t find any other game with this level of depth of fight techniques. Second, there are many ways to beat an opponent depending of your personality (you can be defensive, offensive, try to use chain damages or focus on the weak points). Last but not least, “Fighters Uncaged” is a thrilling opportunity for any player to understand how fun motion gaming is on Kinect, and to fulfill the dream of having a go at a fighting game using full body movement and without the distraction of a controller.

Who would be the ideal consumer for “Fighters Uncaged”?

We wanted the game to be accessible for every player. Those who are playing a fighting game for the first time will have tutorials and advice about fight techniques and a smooth progression curve. Players who have fighting backgrounds will be pushed with “pro mode” (Kinect will detect your guard position and adapt the difficulty mode). I think that more than a fighting game, “Fighters Uncaged” is an immersive experience where each player will have an absolute blast playing.

Many thanks to Luc for taking the time to answer those questions.