We got our Kinect today. Well, honestly, we've had the Alpha and then Beta hardware for months, but we actually got four real game titles today--over the summer we mostly played "Cursor Chase" which is about as much fun as you'd think. Kinectimals is sickeningly cute, and Rhys will love it. I found it amusing that they are using Direct3D Shader Model 3.0 generation hardware mostly to do grass, fur, and slobber. Joy Ride is fun, and reminded me a bit of the old classic Crazy Taxi. Kinect Sports is pretty good so far. The bowling is fun, the table-tennis a little awkward, and the volleyball... well, a 6' 2" player attempting a jump & slam with 7 foot popcorn ceilings did not work out. I guess we'll have to listen to my brother's "Just vault the #*@!ing ceilings" comment after all :> I haven't tried Kinect Adventures yet, mostly due to the implied injuries sustained during Kinect Sports.

All-in-all, the game developers have managed to squeeze a lot of fun out of severely over-hyped technology despite some huge processing constraints put on them by the fact that Kinect is being added to a 4 year old console. It is much improved from the beta testing experiences, and the titles do a great job hiding most of the technical quibbles. I personally find using the dash with the Kinect hand gestures pretty frustrating, but the launch games are solid enough, easy to use, and actually a lot more physical exercise than sitting on the couch. We've not really gotten into any situation where we've used the speech recognition from the array-microphone yet, but I hear it is pretty good at least for non-accented English.

It's been a hell of a long week. The tutorial days Monday & Tuesday were very lightly attended, but the main conference was busy. Seems like most people saved some of the cost by not buying the extended conference pass and avoiding the extra two nights of travel costs. The career booths were of course mobbed, and our expo suites for our meetings required going back and forth through said mob.

Tuesday was a bit slow. Wednesday was meetings from dawn to dusk, and I did my Sponsered Session talk in the middle of it. Thursday and today I managed to attend some roundtables and lectures, as well as finish out my meetings. The Microsoft party Thursday night was decent, and it was fun to see all the Full Moon event people again. We've been working with them for longer than I've worked there and I've known them for 5 years, so they feel like long-time friends. Most of the other people I knew at the conference were all former Microsoft people who have since been taken in by the Cult of Larrabee at Intel.

The hotel was nice and very close to the Moscone, but I slept like crap all week. I'm looking forward to being home in my own bed, although the weather here in Cali is obviously far brighter and warmer.

Having a few hours to kill over the weekend, I broke out my Xbox 360 copy of The Force Unleashed. This game got a lot of buzz, and has been a number of years in the making. It was developed in-house at LucasArts (unlike say the Knights of the Old Republic series), and was supposed to be the first result of the closer "synergy" between the game and film side of the company.

Now, I already had some concerns since they have released it for every platform on the planet, but have no plans to ship it on Windows. In fact, they laid off their in-house PC compatibility lab after decades earlier this year. After having played it a while, I have to say it's a mixed bag.

The visual look is very cool, and they do have some amazingly dynamic environments, so the artists definitely delivered. The game play and design, on the other hand, leaves a bit to be desired. I ran into numerous collision/geometry bugs, ridiculous amounts of fighting-game button mashing combos, many of the levels are just repeated uses of the same mini-boss and puzzles over and over, and the voice acting/writing for the cut scenes is terrible. Did they get George to direct it? (just kidding :>)

Back in the day, X-Wing and Dark Forces were best-of-breed games and have become classics. Sadly I think this one isn't going to make that cut. The torch has passed to the chimera that is Lego Star Wars and Lego Indy, which are not 'cutting-edge' games. I still long for them to bring back SCRUM, so maybe I'm suspect.

Liberty City Police Face Allegations of Incompetence, Brutality [www.theonion.com]

"I was shot 14 times on my way to work today, including twice by police," said one Algonquin-area resident. "That is unacceptable."

Grand Theft Auto IV [www.escapistmagazine.com] (NWS, video)

"Politicians, organizations, and individuals like attorney Jack Thompson that are critical of the games industry are seeking to derail the game due to what they expect to be an overabundance of violence and sex."

Um, "what they expect to be an overabundance of violence and sex"? WTF? Not only have they not seen the game, but they were attacking it before they could have seen the game.

Look, I don't personally like the GTA series but I also don't like Saw or dozens of other gore porn films that are released by major motion picture companies all the damn time. Granted, Rockstar does seem to go out of their way to poke a stick in the eye of the censor police (see Manhunt and Bully), but it should still be held to the same standards as other media. We have a game rating system. In fact, we have dozens and they all clearly indicate this game is not suitable for children.

Get over it and try to focus on the real problems in this country. Have you noticed the value of the dollar, the trade deficit, the national debt, the state of health care, or the fact that our bridges are falling apart underneath us?

Ass hats.

Some interesting related opinions: "Grand Theft Auto IV" - it's more than a game [seattletime.nwsource.com]

INTERVIEW: PC Gaming's Biggest Roadblock [next-gen.biz]

[www.escapistmagazine.com] (NWS)

Turok

Devil May Cry 4

Game Developer's Choice Awards Review

Sim City Societies

Call of Duty 4

Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles

Microsoft CEO: We Will Support Blu-ray [www.gamedaily.com]

Microsoft says no Blu-ray for Xbox 360 [www.reuters.com]

Sony's PS3 Gets Boost From Its Blu-ray Drive [online.wsj.com]

As usual, it's been a busy week of lectures, meetings, speaking, party-hopping, walking between buildings over and over again, and a lack of sleep. Since they moved it up a week or two this year, there's very little nice weather here in San Francisco. It's mostly cold, wet, and very "Seattle-like".