At the Ubisoft booth, we were allowed into a special contained transparent room, where onlookers could see us prance about as we interacted with thin air before a Kinect, a television and Xbox 360 running Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. The perfect environment to get sweaty and work those plentiful gleuts! The first task that Your Shape will accomplish when you step in front of the Kinect camera is scanning you into its system, which is exactly as it sounds. You're required to hold still as it measures your height, arm length, leg length and bust size, from which it's apparently able to literally determine 'your shape'. It's frighteningly accurate too, at least in our case, as it got all of our statistics pretty much spot on with its first try.
Yes, I know.
Anyone who's used the EyeToy on the PlayStation 2 will know how to operate Your Shape on Kinect. Essentially, in the middle of the screen will appear a reflection of yourself as you stand in front of the camera, masked with a 3D-ish colourful layer which can be changed depending on what colour you think best brings out your figure. This effect actually illustrates how well the Kinect is able to separate your body from the background, although it should be noted that for our demo we were against a white wall wearing a black shirt. Nevertheless, our body on screen acted just as we were on the floor, and to select menu options, we only needed to raise our hand up onto one, and wait for it to fully highlight (usually around five seconds), just like the EyeToy.
We only spent a limited amount of time with Your Shape: Fitness Evolved and thus only had time to try out a couple of the many mini-games which are inside. The first one was an upper workout, that had us punching blocks, and finally kicking blocks, that were hovering around the periphery of our outline on the screen. This was a fairly straightforward exercise, and the Kinect was very accurate in picking up our movements and knowing when we made contact with the blocks. It could even tell when we were meant to be doing cross punches, so when we tried to cheat by flailing our arms about instead of doing the correct exercise, our efforts simply did not register and we had to keep trying until we performed the correct hit.
The second exercise was also very accurate in picking up our movements, as it required us to maneuver our body into different precise positions. A sort of basic skeletal outline was overlayed onto our bodies during this exercise, which showed a certain position that our body had to match, and would only light up once we had matched it correctly. It didn't matter when we tried to cheat and just have some part of our body covering the correct area, it was able to detect the movements of our arms and legs so we had to match up the position properly.
The irony that I'm always the one doing the fitness game articles does not escape me.
As we've mentioned several times in this preview, the key word for this game is 'accuracy'. It really shows off the Kinect as being capable of some very precise measurements and detecting very precise movement in the individual using it. However, with all that said, we did feel a little strange due to the very nature of the Kinect - there's no physical feedback, only visual. There's no way to 'feel' if you've punched the blocks correctly, or if you're in the correct position, you have to keep your eyes on the screen to make sure you're connecting and not just missing. The same went for the loading screens in the game, which placed us in a floor littered with exercise balls. You're meant to walk up and kick them around for fun, but it was actually quite difficult knowing where to kick without looking at the screen constantly, instead of where you're kicking (which comes naturally). Whether this is something we'd get used to after a lot more time with the Kinect, we don't know, but we do know that it was a little off-putting during our brief time with the game.
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved is a very impressive demo of the capabilities of the Kinect, and it brings a whole variety of possibilities to the table. By being to accurately measure your height and body shape, as well as your body movement so that you're forced to assume the correct positions for exercise, it's certainly a lot of potential as a tool for gamers looking to get trim or keep in shape. However, the lack of physical feedback means that, like the EyeToy before it, you're left waving your arms in thin air, trying to hit precision targets with only the image on the screen to let you know if you're getting it right or not. As we've said, this may become less of a problem as players get more used to the Kinect, and regardless of this issue, the actual Your Shape software itself stands as a great use of the technology and possibly a great health and fitness tool for active gamers.
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