No, my air conditioning is fine, I just picked up a Microsoft Kinect, their new motion control device for the Xbox 360.

The first thing I did after I set it up was play the TRON: Legacy trailer…with my voice.

“Xbox…Play Trailer!”

BAM! High-def Tron goodness.

That was a “future soon” moment for me. I hate voice control. I don’t really like babbling commands at my phone. I can’t imagine dictating something I’m writing.  I make great use of Dial-A-Human. Yet, talking to the entertainment center in my living room felt very natural. After a week or so of playing with the Kinect voice control, I’m wishing it could do more things, especially since using your arms and hands to control the menus with gestures is still a bit fidgety.

Rumor has it Microsoft wants to bring this kind of gesture and voice control to computers. I’m hopeful about this because I hate touch screens. After five minutes of fiddling with my phone at lunch, my screen is as smudged as a Macy’s window during the holidays. Pizza grease and touch controls just don’t work well together. Kinect makes me want to wave my device in the air, like a Harry Potter wand, to control it. “Wingardium dial-my-mom-um!”)

Games is where Kinect really shines. Kinect Adventures, the game that comes with it, easily equals the fun of Wii Sports. You jump around, wave your arms, have fun, and get winded and yes, extremely sweaty. The fact that Kinect Adventures takes pictures of you being a silly ass that you can then post to the Internet is a bonus.

The virtual puppet rewards are really fun, too.

Since my wife uses the Wii to work out, I also picked up Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. Being able to follow along with a workout without having to hold a WiiMote, nunchuck, and some crazy fitness rubber band is a big bonus. Kinect gives you the ability to actually work out while holding weights.

It comes with an excellent  variety of workouts and some fun fitness games, though their confusing menu system makes it a bit difficult to find different things. While I like working out with it, I’m finding it’s kicking my butt and I can’t really create the custom wimp-ass workout I want to. How about I tell you how many lunges I want to do, Fitness Evolved?

Definitely some nice innovation here from the Microsoft folks. Looking forward to checking out some of the other games, as well as seeing what other neat hacks people come up with for the device.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iioJ0UY4JHM

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612

Edit: Updating the embedded video to a link to the video, since I can’t seem to figure out how to make their player not autoplay, and I hate videos that start playing as soon as you enter a site.

http://swtor.com/media/trailers/deceived-cinematic-trailer

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/indiana-jones-and-the-staff-of-kings/indiana-jones-and-the-staff-of-kings-videos/1299470

From Midway Mania

Yes, I like Wii games, but I don’t go to theme parks to play them. When I go to a theme park I want to have that “Mission:Space” or “Soaring” experience, where I get to do experience something, I get to have a rush of emotion and experience I can’t possibly recreate at home. “Midway” just feels like an annoying way to play a video game — what with the spinning and long waiting in lines with sweaty tourists. If I wanted that, I’d wait an hour to play Wii Sports with my air conditioner turned off and a packet of liverwurst open in front of me. And then when I played I’d have my wife spin my recliner in random directions between levels.

Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for the folks who put together these rides. It’s hard and it’s expensive. There’s no question in my mind that it’s an incredible challenge if you’re trying to make something a game and interactive and entertaining and also make it a big enough experience that people walk out thinking, “I may never do that again in my life. That was incredible.” And maybe Midway isn’t meant to be that kind of experience. But it’s hard for me to accept that you would build anything nowadays in a theme park that wasn’t that for someone at some level of thrill.

My suggestions? For Midway — it needs a better story. The game is fun, but where’s the “Buzz has been stolen by the evil carnival owner and the only way for me to get him back is to score high on these games and win him!” And then where’s the total twist on that, where’s the point where I won Buzz, but the evil carnies realize what I’m up to and I have to throw baseballs and pies to escape the carnival before we’re all caught. Just a blue-sky, not perfect. But I really feel like there needs to be a more emotion-grabbing resonance somewhere. The story that comes first and engages me in the game.

Maybe they’ll give away some liverwurst free with the Wii version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of4u5PMsD0Q&eurl=http://www.roosterteeth.com/archive/&feature=player_embedded

Jeff Green on why he says he sucks at gaming.

Grim Fandango Cover

Just the simple number of wacky adjectives you can apply to Tim or the things he worked on are examples of his genius. Give it a look. If you haven’t played his games, you’re missing something!

For those who don’t know, two-factor authentication means you have to provide two items to prove who you are to, for instance, the Internet site you are trying to log in to. In the case of an authenticator like this one, you provide both your password, chosen by you, and the random code provided by the authenticator, to log in. Since each code generated by the authenticator is unique each time it it used, someone who wanted to sneak into your account would have to actually have the authenticator in their possession AND know your password.

Authenticators like this are a really good idea, when used properly by the companies that implement them. I hope to see a lot more banks and credit card companies offering this kind of authentication in the future.

I know people who have had their accounts hacked, so I think getting one of these is really a great idea.