Microsoft Kinect TGS Roundup - Kinect Sports and Joy Ride

Over at Microsoft's Tokyo Game show 2010 booth, attendees can grab a controller and play as massive robots, deadly ninjas, and even giant green superheroes with a limited grasp of the English language. But the Xbox 360 maker's booth also offers the unique distinction of being able to play a number of games with no controller at all. That's right, Kinect is being featured prominently over at the Xbox 360 corner of the show floor, and we were there to check out some new content for a pair of launch titles courtesy of Microsoft Game Studios' Kudo Tsunoda.

First on the agenda was Kinect Sports, a game we most recently covered last month at Gamescom. You can think of Kinect Sports as Microsoft's answer to the Nintendo Wii's Wii Sports and to the PlayStation Move's Sports Champions in terms of flagship launch titles that show what that new technology is capable of in the familiar world of athletics. Kinect Sports is a mishmash of disciplines that features bowling, soccer, track and field, and a number of others. Here at TGS, Tsunoda gave us a chance to see table tennis and beach volleyball for the first time.

Table tennis is a straightforward re-creation of the sport where you use your open palm as the paddle. The Kinect camera can read your movements and detect when you've sent a forehand shot, backhand shot, and what kind of angle you've put on the strike to determine the spin. In those respects, it works really well, though we noticed that it didn't seem to do a great job of picking up lateral movement, as strikes tend to go to one side of the table over and over regardless of whether you want to send them left or right. Overall, though, table tennis is a fun, if simple, version of virtual Ping-Pong--especially when you've got two players going at it split-screen.

After playing table tennis, we then got to see Tsunoda demo beach volleyball. The tech is able to read when the player jumps up into the air and slams his or her arm for a powerful spike. Beyond that, there's a clever little indicator system that seems to remove a lot of the guesswork from reading an incoming spike. The game flashes a circle where the ball is going to land, and there's a ring that fills in time with when the ball is about to land so that you know when to go for your return. It's something that might remove some of the real-world challenge from playing beach volleyball, but it makes sense when you remember that, well, you've already forgone that challenge of elaborate button layouts--why not take it a step further?

After Kinect Sports, we took a stab at Kinect Joy Ride. This is a game that lets you control a car using just your hands, pretending that you're clutching a steering wheel as you zip through cartoonlike landscapes and exaggerated tracks. We got to play Smash Ride for the first time. We'll be honest: this mode is basically Mario Kart. You start against a handful of virtual opponents (as well as a split-screen one if you want) and do your best to make it to the finish line first. Standing in your way are giant ramps sending you across massive chasms and weapon power-ups that racers can pick up to send rocketing toward opponents or behind as hazards on the track. The controls are simple here: steer with your hands as though holding a wheel, lean back and forward to engage your turbo boost, and extend an arm out to the side to use your power-ups. The controls in Joy Ride aren't quite as tight as in Kinect Sports, but it does come with the added benefit of being able to do backflips in a bright red sports car and pummel your friends' avatars with a rocket strike. It's hard to argue against the benefits of that. Both games are scheduled to be released on Kinect's November 4 launch date.