Did someone say gaming? Video gaming?
Family game night is big in our house but our family game night usually consists of the high tech type. Video games. We have both the Wii and Playstation 3 gaming systems (though the Playstation 3 we originally bought to replace our DVD player and play Blueray movies).
We don’t own an Xbox. I’ve always thought the Xbox games were geared to the older male game player, lots of shooting-type games, so we were never really hooked in to get one. It made more sense to support a gaming system geared at the younger gamer (our kids are 3, 6 & 8 ) and Xbox didn’t seem to be that system. Until now.
Recently when attending BlogHer in New York City I had the chance to see the new Kinect system in person. And this week I had the chance to try it out, as did my 3 and 6-year old.
The event took place at The Fifth Social and was hosted by Xbox Canada and High Road Communications. The upper floor of the club was set-up with mini gaming stations, giving attendees the chance to not only try out the new Kinect system but also a variety of games that will be made available.
The Kinect system is based on a sensor bar reading your body’s movements for the game play versus you controlling your movements through a game controller. In essence your body was the game controller. My two kids loved the system. Even my 3-year old was able to play, enjoying the cat game Kinectimals. She was able to play with a cat on screen, teaching it tricks and petting it. When the cat sneezed, she would wave her hands in front to wipe the screen off. And as the cat ran through an obsticle course, she would control it with her movements: she would run, the cat would run; she would jump, the cat would jump. She loved it.
My son loved the Sonic FreeRiders skateboard game and the race car game Joy Ride. He was jumping and twisting and turning with each movement. The racing game took him some getting use to since he did NOT hold a steering wheel but just holding his arms out in front to steer the car.
I love that both my kids could play game together. The Adventures game included activities like rafting and dodge ball. In the rafting portion my kids had to work as a team to collect points. They had to lean together to go through the pylons and jump together to get the raft to go over ramps. They laughed the whole time.
There were also demonstrations of the Sports games (I tried my hand at a little bowling) as well as Dance Central (a somewhat realistic dance game) and Your Shape: Fitness Evolved (which actually shows a scan of you on the screen). And I’ve heard there’s going to be a Zumba Fitness version too; that really interests me.
The kids and I were moving non-stop during the event; when not jumping or twisting or running during the different Kinect games, we were busy moving about the room to try out another demo. The kids only stopped once to have a brief snack (and there was a nice breakfast/lunch selection provided) but then it was onto more gaming.
It was a great morning. I was lucky to leave the event without carrying two screaming, game addicted kids (chocolate cookies to go helped). Kinect is expected to come out in early November. I’m looking forward to getting a chance to try it out when it does. Who knows, this might just convince me to add yet another gaming system to our home collection.
