Happy 2nd Birthday Kinect! Here is How You Have Let Me Down

Not only is this November BLOPS2 month, it is also the month in which we celebrate 2nd birthday of the Kinect. Happy 2nd Birthday Kinect! Here are 3 ways in which you have dissapointed me. That is more disappointments than you have had birthdays, Kinect.

Die.

It has been two years since we were first given the opportunity to use our bodies as controllers rather than as our own personal amusement parks.

Something cool and rather unexpected is that Kinect has been given surprising uses from third-parties and hardware aficionados. MIT researchers have even been developing a way to allow Kinect to be used by firefighters as a wearable sensor to map buildings in real time.

But what about Kinects intended purpose? Before my dreams were shattered by reality's unforgiving grip, I was really excited about the uses we might find for Kinect in gaming. I had not even laid hands on one and yet, there I was, dreaming up various game scenarios. Here are three games I really wanted to see for Kinect that have not been and probably never will.

An ASL tutor.

Surely Kinect would be able to recognize the individual and complex movements of a human's second most useful appendage. Imagine if Kinect were able to recognize individual finger movements and various positions.

American Sign Language is a hand-gesture based language used by those who can't speak or hear. By combining hand-position recognition with a set of fun games, interactive quizzes and progress reports, Kinect would have been a great tool for those wanting to learn ASL. Language learning is one of the most intellectually stimulating activities there is and unlike juggling, will surely come in handy (bad pun) one day, either for yourself or someone else.

A sequel to Jurassic Park: Trespasser

(Go to the 1:00 mark to see what I mean)

Jurassic Park: Trespasser was an old PC game in which players navigate Isla Nublar while using a fully controllable arm to manipulate the environment. Most of its puzzles consisted of stacking boxes on top of each other to reach a higher platform but controlling the arm was really cumbersome; you had to hold a button down and then move the mouse around to move it around the screen while holding other buttons to rotate around its different axis, bend the wrist, etc. Ugh.

With Kinect, this would have been the perfect game to enhance traditional gamepad control with motion gestures.

Imagine....

You are walking through the thick foliage of a tropical jungle when suddenly you come upon a velociraptor following its prey's trail. You hold a button down on your controller and a transluscent arm appears on screen. You move your arm around which in turn controls the arm on the screen, pick up a rock and throw it with one fluid motion into the bushes away from you, luring the hunter away from your path. Later on, you use this same 1:1 arm control to pull levers, reach behind rocks, fan a campfire, etc. SO GOOD

Air Guitar Hero

Sort of a more rockish Dance Central, players strum their arms to the rythm of a variety of hard-hitting rock tunes while doing windmills, headbanging, jumping around and sliding on their knees to achieve the highest score.

Also, this game would have had Xbox LIVE's first gender specific achievement

Acquired whenever a male player's pokey pickle pokes out from within its confines during a rather strenous session, be it either purposeful or completely accidental.

In my dreams, Kinect was more than capable of detecting the subtle anatomical variances of a human model whenever genitalia became exposed. Of course, achievement huntresses would have to have a male friend jump in their place to get the achievement or rig up a homemade prosthetic device. I'm also sure the tech support forums would be filled with complaints from those dudes with a distinct lack of manpower for which the achievement was not unlocking. After all, Kinect's wang detection can only go so far.

While I remain content with Kinect's status as a Dance Central delivery device, every night I cry myself to sleep, dreaming of what could have been.

:(