Traveling Kinect...

Microsoft is setting up demo booths of Kinect across the US. If the Chicago demo were a week earlier, we could have planned a LAN field trip...

Dean and I went to the Mall of America this weekend to check it out...

We played one game of batting balls at targets. Decent fun, but not something you'll sit and play all day. A good party game. Then we played the rafting mini-game where you jump to get tokens throughout the course. That was fun too - but same party game feel. (Both of those are from Kinect Adventures which comes with the hardware).

Then it took a little convincing from the people running the booth, but I finally played a couple songs in Dance Central. It was a little embarrassing dancing in the middle of the mall with a lot of people watching me...But I've been so pumped for this game, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try it out. The worst was the few moments of "free style." I just busted out my best hip thrusts for all the mall-goers to enjoy. Here I strike a pose:

From the short demo, Kinect is about what I felt it would be. A big improvement over the Wii, but not perfect. There's a slight delay in the motion capture (to be expected, I guess) playing the Kinect Adventures game, but nothing you can't account for when playing. And Dance Central is a huge improvement over the existing dance games out there. I just can't wait to play it in the privacy of my home sans crowd.

They were also demoing the fitness game, Your Shape, but I didn't get a chance to try that. Maybe next time we're out at the mall.

PS - In other gaming news. I managed to get 500 orbs in Crackdown 2 last night. Woot! Back to Call of Duty (if my friends will have me).