About thirty years ago, when video games existed mainly in the form of square machines weighing a couple of centners, the stereotypical image of a video game fan looked in the minds of the townsfolk as follows: a teenager, which was drunk from sugar pulls, is raised instead of a hefty box with a screen.
When the home consoles began to more insistently crowd slot machines, the image was somewhat mutated: now the same teenager, only much more calm, represented on the couch by the TV – again, in the company with Mario instead of Shakespeare. The long RS GEGMOMI was already generated by the third image: a puffy laceful lad, littered with gas-bags, chips bags and dirty socks, with a glazed gaze knocking on the keyboard. With the advent of WII image T.n. The Gamer blurred somewhat – our grandmothers and cousins suddenly began to be interested in games.
Well, in the near future, perhaps a fundamentally new image of fans of video games will appear. A new generation player does not sit still. He resolutely challenges the TV, waves his hands, regularly jumps and looks incomprehensibly at anyone who dares to ask, where is his gamepad. In fact – what other gamepad? There is Move and Kinect.
Kinectic energy
George Kurgan shares impressions of a year and a half dates from Kinect.
While Kinect was still in development and responded to the name of Project Natal, everyone treated it at best with coolness: Microsoft did not give rest the popularity of WII, so they invented EYETOY with two cameras. How to play shooters with this? That is, how it is "no shooters"? There are also casual games? Thank you, don't.
In Soviet Russia Xbox Watches You!
All this is true. The starting line of games for Kinect really consists mainly of names like Kinect Adventures , Game Party: in Motion , Your Shape: Fitness Evolved And Zumba Fitness (There is only one pleasant exception – fighting Fighters Uncaged ). They really offer to collect huge balls with their hands, play beach volleyball and dance hip-hop. This is strange, absurd, frivolous … And at the same time, it is the latest sensations from games from the time of the iPhone: when Jobs invited people to manage a device without any buttons, everyone at first also twisted at the temple, and now they do not use sensory displays, except perhaps the blind ones, and then for objective reasons.
The avatar on the screen repeats the player’s movements with almost absolute accuracy: you can at least jump, at least squat, at least turn in front of the monitor, at least remember the lessons of Capoeira; The only thing Kinect does not tolerate is when they turn their backs to it, in this case the movements are not recognized (but over time, this, quite possibly, will be corrected). Of course, very complex movements of the device are also too tough, but it is difficult to imagine a game in which you will be vital, say, tie your hands with a knot. Otherwise, everything is processed very clearly and with a minimum, barely noticeable lag.
The overall effect is very unexpected: instead of trying to cause some emotions in a person with a screen, Microsoft drag you inside the game. When the hero repeats your every movement, some effect of complete synchronization arises-one awkward movement of the foot rejects the inflatable raft from the given course. A wave of a hand sends a volleyball ball through a grid. The blow with the hand makes the neat hill of cubes crumble. And dance games for Kinect are a level breakthrough Guitar Hero. Unlike WII and PS3 Move, the Microsoft device does not follow a separate controller, and behind your entire body it is possible that with this approach it will really be possible to learn a couple of fashionable movements to amaze them on the village evenings.
Three games we tried on Kinect
Kinect Sports
Collection of sports mini-games, similar to Sports Champions for Move. Beta version looks strange: in the bowling you need to throw an imaginary ball, and in volleyball you can only wave your hands, but you can not move around the site. In table tennis, for some reason, the movements of the handlete hand were processed in the most strange way. The box looks promising, but a month before the release it has not yet been shown.
Kinect Adventures
A game in which, having accepted a combat rack, to fuse on the raft, to evade obstacles, balancing on a platform moving along the rails, as well as mocking the body in four more different ways. Simple, like Soviet sport, Kinect Adventures nevertheless fully uses all the capabilities of Kinect, and in addition, he takes pictures of the user at the most uncomfortable moments.
Dance Central
Multifacete game from the creators of Rock Band, which, however, as a glove fits into the Kinect: you need to mirror the actions of the dancer on the screen (which, for example, can be a brisk black -haired in the form of a pink audio cassette), and the game tracks how exactly exactly how exactly You fit into the amplitude of movements and rhythm. The only negative is to see your actions on the screen only in some kind of microscopic window, so in order to understand how well you get, you need to call the observer from the side.
Casual Kinect
Of course, there are questions to Kinect. Firstly, it is not entirely clear how the developers plan to cope with games in which the player needs to hold any object in their hands-for example, in shooters. Or in fencing simulators. The player will not, in fact, hold an imaginary sword in his hand and shoot from his finger? And if he shows the miracles of primitive thought and picks up, say, a stick – will the device be able to correctly calculate it? And if the Kinect dance and jumping exercises have no equal, then, for example, table tennis works much better with Move-if only because there is no need to use its own brush as a racket.
Finally, we need games! Products like Dance Central Ideal for the evening in a noisy and drunken company, but hardly many will seem to be a significant argument for buying periphery worth 8,000 rubles (especially in Russia, where even Guitar Hero has already been imported, it seems, abandoned). So far, when the question is when the hardcore games appear for Kinect, Microsoft representatives answer evasively – they say, first you need to see how the product will perceive the casual audience, and only then … But instead of them, the Japanese are quite optimistic: at least two Kinect was announced on TGS. -Horror and one Kinect Exchen about robots (see. About them in the insert nearby).
Three games that are necessary on kinect
Rise of Nightmares (2011)
Horror, exclusive for kinect. From the first person. SEGA is responsible for the development. In general, nothing is known about this game. In the only teaser, they yell with bad voices "Kill Me!"Someone is fried in an electric chair and crushed with spikes. It is incomprehensible and terribly curious – the fact of the existence of a horror for Kinect is already intriguing in itself.
Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor (2011)
Previous games in the Steel Battalion series (actually Steel Battalion and the Line of Contact sequel) offered to control giant inhuman-like robots and were mandatory equipped with a hefty bandura-controller, with three pedals, two joysticks and 40 buttons-from ignition to wipes. In Heavy Armor, this is superfluous: everything will be controlled by a light movement of the hand using kinect.
FIGHTERS UnCAGED (November 2010)
In fact – the first hardcore game for Kinect, fighting players, the creators of which are seriously planning to train players in the basics of Thai boxing. The numbers are as follows: 70 beats, 21 arena, including an abandoned church. In addition, they promise to use voice control (for activation of supervisors).
* * *
The technological victory, perhaps, will still get Microsoft: in order to track the player’s movements in all three dimensions, Kinect does not need any luminous “magic sticks”, and in addition, the device sees and can use your movement against you-from a foot impact Before scratching Tochas. In addition, Kinect quite successfully pretends to be the interface of the future – it recognizes the owners by voice and makes it possible to navigate with the help of passes with his hands, as in “special opinion” or the second “matrix”.
However, the final victory, of course, will get the platform on which there will be the coolest games. And here everything is still complicated: Sony is actively combining Move with hardcore titles (including those who have already been released), and Microsoft is still awkward and see erotic dreams in which the Nintendo audience comes to them in full force. With any outcome of events, the benefit for ordinary players is obvious: it will no longer need to be annoying to brush up from a reproach “I would go better to football!"And scare at nights loved ones with a glazed gaze and whitened fingers, frantically compressing the gamepad. Finally, now it will be possible to sincerely put the enemy with a click of a button, but a hukom on the left or foot from a turn-and let someone try to say that video games are entertainment for obese lazy people.
About the movement
At the request of Gamery, blogger Sergei Galenkin offers an alternative opinion about the future of sensory controllers in general and the PlayStation Move in particular.
Since the release of PlayStation 3, all kinds of gaming analysts have regularly prophesied that the next year will be a year Sony. In 2006, it did not work out-it means exactly 2007. Oh, Halo I came out … well, then, then definitely 2008. GEARS of WAR 2? What a failure. So 2009-and this is for sure. Again not? What is it like. We put on the 2010!
Brownian movement
I must say that all this time the struggle in the minds of players and analysts was conducted in second place – the first was captured by the company Nintendo and its absolutely incredible client base: housewives, elderly businessmen and children under 13 years of age. No one even doubted that the success of his home Mario and Luigi could be challenged in this generation, forecasts were made exclusively about PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720.
But, of course, Sony could not just give the market of casual console players, which she long and stubbornly raised in the last generation of prefixes: remember Eyetoy and numerous sports and party games for her. Since the game control without a controller revealed a number of problems during the PlayStation 2 time, Sony engineers came up with Move – not the most elegant, but quite accurate and, most importantly, compatible with Wii in ideology.
The fact that Nintendo sales will sooner or later begin to fall, it was clear to its competitors – do not go to Pakhter. And there is no need for any crisis that shook the target audience WII. The heyday of HD-televisors in itself would have killed an old-fashioned prefix in itself, which does not know how to show a picture of a high resolution. Obviously, Sony expected that the developers who were disappointed by sales of their games in a hurryly portended games on the PlayStation 3 with Move support, the benefit of doing this is easier than remaking the game to a competing solution from Microsoft , where there are no controllers at all.
However, the financial crisis, which accelerated the fall of Wii, made its adjustments to Sony plans. It was no longer possible to expect that the public constrained in the funds will lay out half a dollars for PS3 with Move and a set of games for it – especially after the so -called casual players noticed that the WII is more dusting in the closet than work. So, it is urgent to prepare something for devoted fans of Sony-young men interested in games (games-in the sense of shooting, jumping and elves, and not Wii Party -like clones). Hence the unexpected invasion of Move in classical hits: Mag , Heavy Rain , Killzone 3 , Littlebigplanet 2.
The funny thing is-after almost five years of expectations, the year Sony still came, and Move has not even come out yet. PlayStation 3 sales are steadily bypassing WII sales in Japan, the same picture with the confrontation of PSP and DS. All that it sounds, no matter how trite is good games. Well, the reduction in the price, of course, also helped.
Three games we tried with PlayStation Move
Sports Champions
Collection of young physical education, includes six sports mini-games. For some reason, for some reason, they look much more natural than a similar product for Kinect-perhaps because any exercise with sports trials (from the competitions of archers to table tennis) is felt better when the hands are not empty. Not to mention the gladiatorial battles – in our opinion, an interesting competition: the movements of the brush are carefully counted, you can apply the upper, lower blows, hide behind the shield and finish the wounded in the jump.
Heavy Rain
The brilliant thriller Heavy Rain was one of the first games to which Move support was added retroactively. It would seem that the best candidate cannot be found: the management in the game is based on imitating the movements of the heroes on the screen using a gamepad. However, after five minutes it became clear that the new methods of controlling the game were not suitable: although the imitation seems to have become more accurate (to open the window, you need to make a wide movement with the whole hand), the game reads the movements rather badly. In addition, without an additional controller (ordinary or “nunchak” for move) it is still impossible to play, so the immersion effect is blurred.
Resident Evil 5
Another game, converted for the needs of Move, is Resident Evil 5. We saw her even on Gamescom, but then the case did not seem to complain. And there is something: as you know, Capcom never knew how to make decent management (to teach the hero Dead Riding to run and shoot at the same time, they needed to call Canadian Varangians), and it would be stupid to wait for Move to fix everything. It is already enough that for a shot in the RE5 you need to clamp three different buttons. The brightest example of the fact that far from every game is suitable for management with the help of motion sensors.
Human rights movement
However, sales of the Xbox 360 in the United States have also been bypassed sales of WII, which means that 2010 can be considered the same successful the year of Microsoft. The American company has been preparing for a long time by this moment, diligently copying the best achievements of competitors: Kinect is a brought to the Eyetoy mind, Avatars Xbox 360 are correctly implemented MII
The situation is actually a complete: three years Sony and Microsoft were actively preparing for the capture of the Nintendo audience, created incredible products, conducted massive marketing training, and when it was time to remove cream, it turned out that the audience has long been interested in such things – who on Facebook farms builds, and who has grown up and now instead WII Sports plays Halo or God of War.
Microsoft is still hoping for more than three million Kinect by the end of the year, and Sony originally put the bar below. Although the first results were disappointed (about 60 thousand devices in the United States and 80 thousand in Europe in the first week), then sales of the device gained revolutions – 1.5 million MOVE (together with all the gangs) sold in Europe and 1 million shipped in the United States. The result is far from the failure, but with such an installation base to wait for high -profile exclusives from third -party developers under MOVE. If the situation does not improve significantly in the near future, then the story with the motion sensor in the gamepads will be repeated (remember sixaxis?): In several games, there will be optional support for such management, but the further, the less often the developers will spend their strength and time on it.
Three games that are necessary for PlayStation Move
No more Heroes: Heroes ’Paradise
After Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 has proved its failure, the main hope for lovers of wave of sword is the game No more Heroes. In Japan, the port for PS3 and Xbox 360 was released back in April, but in the USA and Europe it will be reached only next year and only for PS3. The main character NMH is a Japanese geek with a light katana that works as a hired killer. The game was published in 2007, long before the appearance of Motion Plus, and the movements there were not processed very clearly, but with the advent of Move it may change.
Sorcery
One of the few announced exclusives for Move is released next year. Sorcery is based on Irish folk traditions, but for some reason they do not promise lepreecons in green pots. Instead, we will be offered to play for a student of a sorcerer who should save humanity from an unfriendly lady named Korolev Nightmares. The main weapons, as it is easy to guess, will be various spells and drugs – for the creation of both, of course, Move will be used.
Infamous 2
At the end of August, Sony officially stated that in the sequel of the Superhero (Superpostan?) Infamous action is planned to support move. How exactly this will look – so far no one says, but in general such an announcement at the same time intrigues and alarms: in the first part of the game, sensations were best transmitted with the help of a banal function of vibration, and Cole spent his best techniques with his bare hands. Why in this scheme you need a move – it is strongly unclear.
* * *
Of course, it’s too early to talk about the complete failure of the ideas of Motion Controls-Kinect barely came out, and the crisis will someday end. But for some reason, it seems that the next prefixes from Microsoft and Sony will be the old fashioned way first of all to focus on ordinary players like you and me, without radical changes in control schemes or losses in a genre diversity. For this, it was worth to endure the universal hobby of WII.
[[Break]] leveragePerhaps it seems to you that playing, holding Ilyich’s light in your hands from Sony or jumping like kukarach in front of Kinect cameras is to look strange and stupid. To calm your nerves a little, the editorial office of Gamery talks about several no less ridiculous management means in video games.
P5 Glove
Back in the 90s, it was fashionable to believe that the next step in the evolution of controllers was gloves with motion sensors. One of the heroes of The Wizard wore a glove of Nintendo Power Glove, considering it a very fashionable accessory. The branch, however, turned out to be a dead end: all the samples available on free sale cost frantic money, and with the advent of devices such as Kinect, the need for them may completely disappear. One of the latest attempts to introduce these gadgets in video games was the P5 glove, which was supported in Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Black & White, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, as well as (informally) in Die by the Sword.
Samba de Amigo
It is reported that the maracas-the oldest shock instrument of the indigenous inhabitants of the Antilles, the Taino Indians-are traditionally made from the dried fruits of the Calebas tree. In turn, Samba is a Brazilian music genre that arose as a result of the merger of African and European rhythms. In contrast to all this, in the game Samba de Amigo, controllers-markes are made of plastic (inside-sensors that track movement), and in the soundtrack, not so much samba plays as popular Latin pops. In addition, the need for controllers has disappeared with the invention of vigomet.
Pool Shark
Any fan of billiards knows that wooden tables in this game are a relatively recent invention. Even in Stalin's times, a slab of shale-ardesite was considered the best basis for playing billiards. They tried to replace it with cast iron and reinforced concrete, but these attempts were unsuccessful. The first successful replacement was the asphalt-sand plate. Well, in 2000, a device came out in Japan, with which any table was suitable for playing billiards, even a magazine. A device with the original name Pool Shack allowed to play virtual billiards with a real kiy. What is characteristic, the invention of vimotus made it possible to send history to a landfill and this device.
Beatmania
In those days when DJ Hero was not even in the project, the corresponding niche was completely filled with the game Beatmania. During the period of its existence (1997-2002), she managed to go on slot machines, PS One, Game Boy Color and even Wonderswan, if at least someone remembers such. In fact, the game was like a mixture of DJ Hero and Guitar Hero, only to twist the “turntable” about two times less often, and press the buttons about ten thousand times more often. Be sure to enter the name of the game in YouTube-you will see a lot of interesting videos in which the miracle Japanese play at a speed of about twelve presses per second.
