In my household, waking at 5am is normally greeted by a grunt and the subsequent burying of my head into my pillow. Indeed it would have been the case on Saturday 16th October 2010 were it not for one simple fact – the inaugural Rare Community Day! Having seen and heard a lot about Kinect Sports for a considerable time, today was to be the first chance to get some in-depth hands-on (or more specifically, hands off) time with the game and Kinect, and not even a late one the night before (the post-GMAs Ready Up London meet) could keep me tucked in bed!
Bleary-eyed and slowly feeling the coffee kicking in, as I headed to the train station I couldn’t help but shake one recurring thought – I hoped the day would be worth the epic voyage from Brighton to Twycross!
A few hours later and I was on the third and final train of the morning though, despite having ample time, I came close to missing it owing to the rather random encounter I had with a young foreign fellow in Boots, who wanted to know (via some very broken English) if I could direct him to some hair styling products. I happily obliged, hoping that, should I ever have a gel emergency on foreign shores, someone would spend 5 mins helping me out too.
Arriving at Birmingham International train station and already breaking out the energy drinks I was met by John and we embarked on the final stage of the journey.
With both John and I swearing at our iPhones and Rare’s far-from-civilisation location, we took a gamble on an unassuming side road, distinct thanks to the huge metal gate and the signs reading ‘BEWARE! GUARD DOGS!’. Fighting against every blokey impulse to not ask for directions, I got out of the car to press an intercom button and see if the security guard behind this imposing entrance could point us in the right direction. Fearing that this disembodied voice should choose to press their ‘Release the Hounds’ button at any moment, we were pretty relieved to find that we’d found Rare! (A pleasant surprise since we’d driven past this imposing gate a couple of times!)
The short trip from the front gate to main reception allowed us to really take in how nice Rare’s turf is, while also convincing us that with this much security they MUST be developing some top secret military technology here!
Entering the building, John and I were greeted by one of the most beautiful sights any gamer geek could hope to see – a large glass cabinet containing Rare memorabilia dating back to their original NES titles right up to present day, reminding us both just why Rare has remained so prominent and relevant in the gaming industry for 20 years now.
Likewise in the reception area we encountered a line-up of Rare character statues, one of which John was particularly taken with!
[John: Look, I want to make it very clear here that I was genuinely admiring her guns. Any reference to ‘what a lovely pair’ was taken completely out of context!]
We were ushered into the staff restaurant (which felt very much like a uni or high school canteen) and were greeted by some of the lovely Rare team who had volunteered to show us the ropes for the day.
As John and I sat and chatted before the main event, we were greeted by the always awesome Ben Talbot, Community Manager at Rare, good friend of Ready Up and – perhaps most importantly – the drummer for the Ready Up House Band’s incredible Eurogamer Expo gig!
After a quick sit down, Ben checked his watch and made his apologies for dashing off – the time had come!
We had a quick intro from Mike Wilson, Web Producer for Rare (and the voice behind the avatar on this video) and then the floor was handed over to Ben, who, I suddenly realised, is clearly a bigger deal at Rare than he modestly lets on. The first part of the morning was to introduce the assembled throng of bloggers, community sites and Twitterers to the main sports on offer in Kinect Sports, Rare’s offering for Kinect’s launch line-up.
Without further ado, Ben asked for someone to help demo the game and, spotting a shy and retiring chap sat on the front row, found his first volunteer.
[John: Giles had his hand up almost before the request for volunteers was made! I’d considered giving it a go but, to be honest, was afraid of being trampled beneath the Armstrong boot heels! Shy and retiring my a*se!]
Ahem! So, while Ben did the talking, one of the game’s programmers did the walking. Well… the sprinting, leaping, throwing and triumphant poses copied admirably by his in-game avatar!
In Kinect Sports there are six main sports, each enthusiastically announced in-game by the mighty Peter (ruddy) Dickson of The X Factor and E4 advert fame, which are: Football, Bowling, Beach Volleyball, Table Tennis, Boxing and Track & Field, which encompasses sprinting, hurdles, long jump, javelin and the discus.
With the ice well and truly broken, Ben and the rest of the Rare team led us to the gameplay area, a large space helpfully divided into nine bays (one for each of the six main sports and three spare bays for whatever someone fancied trying), presumably to help us lot to not fall into someone else’s game!
And so it was that John and I got our first chance to really spend some significant time with the game. John quickly made a beeline for Table Tennis, which looked ace.
[John: There’s a very good reason I went for table tennis; I figured it would be easier and a lot less personally ego-destroying than running, knees high, on the spot or punching manically at nothing.
I served first, mimed throwing the ball in the air and took a swing… MISS! Dear God, my first go and an epic fail! The problem was that I was expecting Wii-like responses and so behaved in the same way I do playing tennis on the Wii, chuck and swing. Kinect – I discovered – is much, much more aware of what you’re doing and really does need you to be accurate in your actions. I had another go.
Ball thrown up with left hand, wait… ball falls and I swing right hand in a gentle arc to connect. Bang! Superb!
It goes far further than that though. During my first-to-21 game I discovered that swiping down onto an incoming ball created back-spin and sipping up a top spin, I found the timing and effort needed to induce a smash and, ego forgotten, was soon bouncing from side to side just waiting for that perfect shot. I was hooked, NEXT!]
However, it was only a matter of time before we both stepped into the virtual ring for some Boxing action!
Boxing works exactly as you’d imagine it would, with your real-world strikes matched pretty closely by your on-screen representation. The game required slightly larger-than-life movements to register your blocks: high blocking was more or less holding your hands above your eyeline, blocking low required you to block below your belly. If you’ve ever done any boxing or martial arts before it takes a little getting used to, but was superb, not to mention tiring!
Throwing our professionalism to one side and instead of ensuring we sampled each of the games on offer (bad Gilo, bad John!), we found ourselves drawn into Boxing more than we had anticipated, that is, until Kid Gloves turned up.
Kid Gloves, as he became known, had a unique approach to Kinect Sports’ Boxing – punching like Bugs Bunny after a few too many carrots! Taking on all challengers, no-one could stand up to his might – although John and I gave it a go. It wasn’t until one of the Rare staffers stepped up that his reign was ended!
John and I moved on to the Beach Volleyball game where I finally found my forte! Requiring a less intense amount of gesturing, Beach Volleyball plays out like a test of reflexes; on screen prompts warn you when you need to perform certain actions, but allow you to have a breather for a few seconds between inputs and so is less physically demanding than the Boxing and Track & Field events.
Just as we were getting into the swing of things it was time for lunch or, as my body clock believed, dinner! Lunch was a delight, comprised of some familiar mini bundles of culinary joy I got to sample at the GamesAid / Eurogamer Expo party last October (I was hoping to one day encounter those mini burgers and mini fish & chips portions again!) along with some great mini pizzas, wraps and a collection of cakes to help us all keep our strength up!
As John and I polished off our tasty treats and got to know some of our fellow attendees, Ben read out the teams for the afternoon session. That’s right – teams! With us all grouped into eight teams each comprised of four or five people, we were led back to the gameplay area to meet our teammates and burn off our lunches by testing out Kinect Sports’ Party Play mode!
John and I formed the mighty Team 3, along with Julien from French site NewRare (who, I was a little disappointed to learn, had in fact travelled further than me to be there!), Carly, who had won a Twitter competition to earn her place at the day and Dan Thornton of OnlineRaceDriver.
The teams were then split into two groups, where Teams 1-4 would compete against each other to win their group, as would Teams 5-8 to win theirs.
Party Mode sees teams choose from a colourful cast of mascots – ours looking like a cross between Mike Wazowski and Sully from Pixar’s Monsters Inc. – and compete in a round of six of Kinect Sports’ 20 mini-games, each derived from the six main sports. Points are awarded based on whether your team wins or loses the mini-game with some rounds offering double points and, as you’d expect, the team with the most points wins!
Each round is followed by a quick highlight reel (instantly familiar to anyone who’s played SingStar) showing the players leaping around and gurning with enthusiasm, all edited nicely in time with some suitably rousing music.
Starting strong, we found that what began as a fun way of seeing one of the game’s main modes soon turned into something quite competitive! With a mystery prize up for grabs, John and I stepped up our game somewhat and, within a short space of time, Team 3 quickly found that each team member had a strong sport. Unless your name was Giles. Fortunately, John didn’t seem to mind.
[John: It’s true, we found that each member of the team did indeed have a speciality or two and we sort of stuck to them. I was sure at this point we’d just not had the opportunity to find Giles’ yet, it would come… surely.]
Carly, having impressed with her first-time bowling prowess during the morning’s demonstration, became our official bowling expert, finding her way to victory more or less every time she stepped up to the Kinect sensor. John excelled at Boxing and Javelin, with the pair carrying our team somewhat. I had a nasty habit of losing by one or two points more or less every time I stepped up, which of course was due to being up since 5am that morning… obviously! (Ahem!)
[John: I’m not an overly competitive person… really I’m not, but for effs sake, all you had to do was put out your hand at the right time to hit the ball! It’s not rocket science and we lost by ONE POINT!]
Having given it our all or, in my case, giving the other teams a chance to catch up, it turned out that Team 3 had scored the joint highest score for our group, along with the nefarious Team 4. There was only one way to settle this – but we opted to play the game again instead.
In a not-so-nail-biting finish, Team 4 were the better team by quite a margin and so went on to win the group. I breathed a sigh of relief at Team 3 getting knocked out of the tournament: I was knackered! John seemed to be taking it well, especially considering his rather prominent competitive streak.
[John: Gods-dammit! We spanked these guys in the first round! How can we (and I’m being oh-so generous with the “we” here) be so crap! Games lost by me – zero, games lost by everyone else – TOO FRIGGIN MANY!! If the big prize is a new Xbox and a Kinect, someone’s gonna die!]
With the group stages of the Kinect Sports Day over, the tournament and its players headed back into the restaurant to witness the grand final! Putting our differences aside, John and I cheered Team 4 on to victory against a strong effort from Team 7. Just as we thought Team 4 were about to have a well-earned sit down and receive their mystery prize (with John still grumbling that “It better not be a bloody Xbox!”), Ben announced that it was time for some very special cake!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN_R7V4UNLg[/youtube]
Failing to contain my Splosion Man-esque love of cake and a few delicious mouthfuls later, it was time for the main event! Team 4 vs the Rare All-Stars, a team comprised of the brains behind Kinect Sports, a group who don’t just know the game’s inner workings – they ruddy well MADE its inner workings! Needless to say, the Rare All-Stars made short work of Team 4 who made a valiant effort nonetheless, and were awarded their mystery prize: signed Kinect Sports concept art and the promise of a copy of the game upon its 10th November release – great stuff!
With some freebies dished out and fond farewells to new friends, John and I left, but not before stopping by to see some old friends.
So there you have it! Rare’s inaugural Community Day was a blast – Rare proved to be the perfect hosts, and Kinect Sports genuinely impressed! I went in with fairly high hopes and still found them pleasantly exceeded. Of all the Kinect launch titles I’ve played so far this is the easiest to recommend, a strong showcase and introduction to the new Kinect technology, and sure to be a hit at parties and gatherings for some time to come!
Was the day worth the 5am start, the epic voyage, the sweating and the aching limbs the next day? Heck yeah!
Thanks to everyone at Rare for a great day!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd-252x5Uq0[/youtube]
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