Day 13, Game 13 - Wreckateer

Let's get to the point. The Kinect for the Xbox 360 sounded good on paper, before it was released. All the tech demos, videos, and hype made it out to be the best gaming invention since analog sticks on a controller.

Well, then it came out. And while it was fun for a bit, to play dancing games with your friends or show off how sorta-well the motion captioning worked, it got old and stale quickly. Then games, regular games, starting implementing Kinect controls into their games for no other reason than Microsoft paid them a bunch of money to do so. Games like Halo, using Kinect to throw grenades simply by yelling out "GRENADE!", and other crap like that. Sure, it was nice, I guess, to have the option to use them, but didn't anyone really utilize them in Mass Effect 3? I would bet not.

I've had some fun with my Kinect, but honestly, if I hadn't won it in a contest, I probably wouldn't own one to this day. My kids have gotten a lot of enjoyment from it, but they have problems using it thanks to the inconsistent camera, iffy lighting in our game room and just not enough space to make it worth while. Sure, we got a Nyko Zoom for the camera, shortening the distance needed for proper connectivity, but it's still hit and miss.

That being said, I decided to try out a Kinect game I've had for a while but never bothered to play ... until now. I tried out Wreckateer, a game I downloaded from the XBLA shop. The concept is simple. You fling ammunition (rocks, cannon balls, explosives, etc.) at castles and try to knock them down, earning more points and medals for doing more and more damage.

Sound familiar? It is. It was only missing some birds and pigs, basically. It's pretty much a straight Angry Birds ripoff, set in medieval times (when else would you use catapults?) and slapped with the motion gaming gimmick.

It was a little fun, for a while. But once the controls started going haywire and the game play got repetitive (which was quickly), I was pretty much done with it. All it made me want to do was play Angry Birds, to be honest. I admire developers for trying with games like these, but I think it's more the Kinect's fault then it is the game's being bad. There have been some good Kinect games, like The Gunstringer, but for the most part, it's filled with a bunch of repetitive gaming.

I know I will probably play a few more Kinect games for this project, and maybe I will try to rope my kids into playing with me to make it a little easier to swallow. Can't say I'm looking forward to it, though. And with talks of an all new Kinect sensor coming with the impending new Xbox system, and while I am cautiously optimistic, I think Microsoft needs to realize that maybe the Kinect isn't the best new innovation in gaming since the analog sticks.

Leave the gaming revolutions to Nintendo. 

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