So when taking her to the mall to get to work, Tricia and I found ourselves there considerably early after overcompensating for anticipated traffic (it is a Friday afternoon in Atlanta, after all). We decided we would walk around the mall and windowshop for a bit, when we ran across Macy’s in Lenox Square Mall.
Now, the mall is fairly upscale and drives in a LOT of traffic from out-of-towners, tourists, whatnot, so the mall is a fairly common place to find special kiosks set up to promote virtually anything. A few years ago I spotted The Nintendo DS Spa, wherein you could opt for a free massage while you play one of their DS games onhand. More recently, Nintendo again set up a huge display with the Wii Sports Resort, with about a half dozen to a dozen televisions each with a specific Wii Sports Resort game playing, not to mention “scenery” like the fake palm trees you see there, and staff handing out leis. Finally, Microsoft is getting into this, but the last time I saw them in the mall, they were advertising Windows Phone… too bad one of their guys was doing an excel spreadsheet for them on a MacBook. Irony at its best.
Anyway, I found this one notable enough to make a thread considering at the time these mentioned demo kiosks were set up, the product was available for purchase. Today, though, in Macy’s we ran across a Kinect – obviously NOT for sale yet.
The game the Kinect was demoing at the time was Kinect Adventures, as you can see across the screen of the demo TV. The only one Trish and I tried though, for sake of time, was the first thing it offered us: a slalom-like river rafting experience, where the object was to direct the raft by sidestepping left or right, and jumping to get extra points off ramps and such.
Needless to say, the game requires a TON of communication with your teammate, but although we struggled here and there a bit we still pulled something like 107 points for a Silver Medal by the end of it. Very fun, and surprisingly accurate avatar representation of motions, given the infamous “you can see the bottom of your avatar’s shoe” thing E3′s ago – they’ve obviously improved it. Tricia’s hands were on her hips, and so were her avatar’s.
One thing that did concern me, though, was when the game had finished, it presented to us a series of snapshots taken from the Kinect device of Trish and I jumping around during gameplay. I don’t like that it took those without telling me, but I imagine the device has settings for that when it’s released in November.
Altogether, though, very fun. Probably still won’t get it though unless I have THAT much disposable income. Anyone else played a Kinect yet, or seen one in a Macy’s or their mall?
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