If you’re anything like me,
hearing the word “Kinect” immediately
brings to mind images of people embarrassing themselves as they
foolishly pantomime various actions in the middle of their living
rooms. Honestly, using theatrical gestures to control a video game has
very little appeal to me. There are some obvious examples of
experiences that benefited from the use of motion controls, including The
Gunstringer and Fruit
Ninja Kinect. These games
succeeded on a design level by providing simple and immersive pleasures
that quite frankly could not be replicated via a controller. Sadly,
most Kinect titles end up transforming into frustration simulators
(yes, we’re looking at you, Kinect
Star Wars). With the news that
Bethesda was preparing to release a patch for Skyrim
that weaves Kinect functionality into the game, many of us worried that
we’d end up looking like jackasses as we played through one of 2011’s
finest titles. Thankfully, these fears were quickly squashed when we
saw how refined and subtle the new non-traditional method of control is
in Skyrim.
Bethesda was wise to forgo the
obvious route of having players flail their arms like a Dovahkiin in a
slap fight. You won’t find yourself using your Kinect to swing a battle
ax or target specific enemies in the the middle of a fracas. In fact,
Skyrim doesn’t even make use of the technology’s camera function
whatsoever, instead focusing on the use of voice commands to streamline
the experience and help maintain a steady tempo to the game. You can
assign specific arms to every class of weapon, allowing you to pull out
out your favorite sword when you say, “sword,” and equip your favorite
bow when you say, “bow.” This simple shortcut does an amazing job of
maintaining the tempo and rhythm of the game in the middle of combat by
not forcing you to navigate a series of menus as soon as you spot a
tough enemy on the horizon.
