Comments 63

Re: Review: Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor (Xbox 360)

dirtyvu

one other thing I noticed in the controls. if holding your arms forward causes you to go to viewport view and close the viewport shutter, you're holding your arms too high. if you hold your arms forward at less than horizontal, that should solve that problem.

Re: Review: Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor (Xbox 360)

dirtyvu

here's my tips on getting the controls rock solid:

I will say that some of the motions in the tutorial instructions are wrong or a little misleading.

You have to be very regimented in your technique and what hand to use. For example, all the instructions for the right hand have to be used with the right hand. All the instructions for the left hand have to be used for the left hand.

For example, to select what type of ammo you're going to use, you can only use your right hand. To pull the left instrument pod, you have to use your left hand.

I'll start off with the wrong information. In the tutorial, it says to select the heat rounds, you put your hand over the heat rounds button and then press downward. In the viewport viewing screen where the viewport takes up nearly the whole screen, this doesn't work. To select the heat rounds button, you put your right hand over the button and then push the hand forward. Pushing down on the button doesn't work except when you are in the cockpit view where the viewport is far away. The regular ammo button requires that you take your right hand across your body and then you move your right hand downward to press the button. Now, you can push the ammo buttons while in cockpit mode instead of viewport mode. I actually think it's easier to select the ammo buttons in cockpit mode but of course, that means switching from viewport mode to cockpit mode, then selecting ammo, then selecting viewport mode again. So there's the debate between the more imprecise shorter method or the more-steps-but-easier-to-do method.

The instrument pods on the right and left are probably the trickiest controls. To pull the right pod out toward you, you reach out at 2 o'clock (imagine that 12 o'clock is straight in front of you) and then you swing your arm out wide toward 3 o'clock. To push the pod back, if your arm is in the 3 o'clock position, you can swing it back toward the 2 o'clock position. If your arm is lying down, you can just raise your hand back to the 2 o'clock for it to swing back. If you're having problems with pulling the pod out and then having it automatically being pushed back and you're lowering your right arm, you can minimize this problem by dropping your right hand from the 3 o'clock position to down and out of view instead of just dropping your hand.

With the pod pull toward you, you can activate the light but raising your right hand to the switch as if you're doing a "hail, Hitler" pose and then drop your arm. To turn off the light, raise your arm back to the "hail, Hitler pose. To vent the cockpit, you reach toward the handle, grab it and then put your hand straight down. To activate the self-destruct, take your right hand and cross over your body to get to the self-destruct switch and push forward.

The pod on the left is just the mirror of the pod on the right. So to pull it out, put your left hand out to about 10 o'clock and then pull your left hand outward toward 9 o'clock. To push the pod back, if your arm is in the 9 o'clock position, you can swing it back toward the 10 o'clock position. If your arm is lying down, you can just raise your hand back to the 10 o'clock for it to swing back. If you're having problems with pulling the pod out and then having it automatically being pushed back, you can minimize this problem by dropping your right hand from the 9 o'clock position to down and out of view instead of just dropping your hand.

For the periscope, raise your right hand straight up as if you want to answer a question in school. Don't be swinging your arm forward as you're raising your hand as a forward motion can be interpreted as you wanting to adjust the viewport screen.

To open the viewport, you hold your right arm horizontally forward, wait until the hand grabs the hand and then raise it to open or lower it to close it. This is why the periscope motion can be confused if you push your arm forward as you're raising your hand as the forward motion is for the viewport.

You can go from the periscope mode directly to the viewport mode. So if you're in periscope mode, just push both arms forward to switch to viewport mode. Similarly, to go from viewport mode to periscope mode, raise your right hand straight up. You do not have to go from viewport to cockpit to periscope nor do you have to go from periscope to cockpit to viewport.

When you start a mission, you're in the cockpit mode. To be able to see where you're going to go, you have to switch to viewport mode by pushing both arms forward. If your hand is automatically on the grab handle for the viewport, raise it up to take it off the handle. If you pull it down, you'll close the viewport which is a problem I notice a lot of reviewers having.

The thing with the controls is that you can't be sloppy with your arm motions and you have to use the correct hand for the correct motion.

Re: Kinect-Powered Dance Evolution Arcade Game On the Way

dirtyvu

this is how insular Japan is. when Dance Evolution/Dance Masters far outsells Just Dance, Dance Central, etc.

I was reading an article the other day about whether the Tokyo car show has any more relevance on a world stage anymore. a lot of car manufacturers have basically given up on selling in Japan. The biggest foreign car maker in Japan in Volkswagen at 5%. And there's kind of no point for selling in Japan for many companies because it's such a small market (it is an island after all).

Re: 750,000 Kinect Sensors Sold in Thanksgiving Week

dirtyvu

@teamdoa. people bought the 360/kinect bundle because they wanted kinect. if they didn't want kinect, they would've bought the 4GB system for $140 or $150 or the 250GB system for $200. the non-kinect gamers prefer the hard drive over a kinect. so there's no problem including bundled kinect sales. heck, all the 360 bundles sold like gangbusters (with or without kinect).

Re: Review: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary (Xbox 360)

dirtyvu

As indicated in the text(but not described completely), when you say "analyze" you enter an analyze mode where the screen turns blue. anything that shows up as orange can be scanned. Analyze mode looks cool and looks like the thermal sensors of the Predator. so you point your reticle on the orange object and say "scan". it will then be put into the library for you to browse and read information about the object. You'll be scanning multiple weapons, characters, various types of enemies, ships, vehicles, etc.

When you're at the main menu, you can go into extras and then select Library. Once in the library, you can enable Kinect mode. At which point, you navigate the objects just like Dance Central. you raise your right arm up and down to go up and down the list of items you scanned. Then you swipe across your body to load the object description. you can rotate the object around, scroll text, etc. To get back to the list of scanned objects, you swipe your left hand just like in Dance Central.

Apparently, you can go to the library directly from within the game but I didn't try that.

For the voice commands, they're really cool.

The first benefit is you can change your settings without having to go to the settings page. So if the level is too dark, you can say "brighter" and immediately see the changes. If you want more contrast, you can say "more contrast". If you want to turn off subtitles, you can say "subtitles off". Note that the settings has to be enabled before the cutscene begins so you can't say "subtitles on" once the cutscene has already started and expect to see subtitles during mid playback.

Saying "reload" is not useful. mainly because when you are shooting your gun, it won't reload with the voice command. You have to stop shooting for it to reload as far as I can tell.

"Grenade" is also not really useful but it's neat and more responsive than "reload".

Now the useful voice commands are things like "flashlight" and "change weapon". I actually much prefer saying it than pressing Y for changing the weapon. It's very responsive and just as responsive as pressing Y (in contrast to "reload" which has a little lag and the stupid have-to-stop-shooting) in my opinion.

I didn't try commands like "pause" but that seems useful (though I think I'll stick to hitting the start button for that).

The "Analyze" feature is uber cool. Even in the heat of battle, I was turning the feature on and scanning things as I was fighting. It makes it like an adventure game or RPG.

Re: Rumour: Next Xbox Split in Two Models for Kinect and Core

dirtyvu

functioning as a Windows Media Center would require a tuner card built into the 360. besides, we're moving away from a world where episodes float by on a stream and you have to watch it live, record it, or lose it. we're moving toward a streaming world where you watch it whenever you feel like just by selecting it. It's a Netflix or Hulu style world now. There's no need for you to DVR it if it's available whenever you want to watch it.

Re: Microsoft Creating Kinect Hardware Just for Windows

dirtyvu

all they're doing is making it a shorter USB cable, adding a dongle for Windows PCs, and augmenting the software libraries. the USB cable for the 360 is 9 feet long! Remember that the reason the most common USB cable length is 6 feet because some motherboard chipsets crap out when using longer USB cables. It's a YMMV based on your MB. Some people's PCs can handle really long cables, others can't.

I'm sure Microsoft will sell the shorter cable for people that want to connect their Kinect to the PC though you can already connect the Kinect to the PC as-is (as noted by the gazillion demos).

and there's 1 MB of nonvolatile flash memory for firmware upgrades to the current Kinect (in addition to the 64 MB of DDR2 RAM)

Re: Out Now: Just Dance 3 (Worldwide)

dirtyvu

don't worry about dance tutorials with Just Dance. I have Just Dance 2 for the Wii. the dances are not hard and the scoring is not precise so it doesn't matter. the moves are really repetitive and not hard. it's more about bopping around with your friends and being silly

Re: Forza 4 Season Pass Puts You in the Driving Seat

dirtyvu

because the cars in the Forza series are high quality. you're already getting 500+ cars on the disc.

not like GT5 where 800 cars are straight out of GT4 on the PS2 and less than 200 are newer models meant for the current generation of hardware... and let's not even get into how repetitive that list of cars is for Gran Turismo. do you really need 20 civics? 40 evos? c'mon. you can't add a spoiler and call it a new car.

Re: Review: Leedmees (Xbox Live Arcade)

dirtyvu

played the demo. pretty fun! I kept messing up until I actually followed the on-screen hints. Like the level with the leedmees on the ground. I tried to put my hand on the ground instead of just lowering it enough for them to grab on to my arm. also had fun throwing them into the endzone thingy...

Re: Brace for Impact - Burnout Crash! Due on 20th September

dirtyvu

surprisingly, it's getting a lot of good previews. joystiq just raved about it in their latest review and they said they thought they'd hate it. kotaku liked it as well. this game is more for the burnout revenge crowd and older burnout games. i know burnout paradise didn't have crash events and a lot of gamers never played the crash events as a result, but for some people, the crash events were fun. my friend loved that and forced me to play the events in burnout revenge. I was just never good at it and thus didn't like it.

Re: Review: Child of Eden (Xbox 360)

dirtyvu

there are lots of unlockables in this game as well. also, the developers said that the game analyzes how you previously played a level and adjusts the patterns of the enemies so theoretically, each time you play the level, the experience should be somewhat different (not dramatically though).

Re: Gold Members, Have An Exclusive Fantastic Pets Demo

dirtyvu

yeah, even though the graphics aren't as good as Kinectimals, I think it's a more fun game, judging from the demo, especially for the kids. The augmented reality is really cool. And none of that overly talky flying animal with the wonky accent. Though to be completely fair, I've only played the demos for both Fantastic Pets and Kinectimals. I read in reviews of Kinectimals that surprisingly it's not for the little kids since there's a lot of reading that's needed and the UI is not for the little ones either so parents end up having to do a lot of things for the kids.

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