Microsoft clarifies Halo Anniversary's use of Kinect, smoothes our furrowed brows

On theHalo Waypoint forum, administrator 'bs angel' told concerned forumites:

"Just to let everybody know, the Kinect features we're exploring with Halo: Anniversary are optional and won't affect your core gameplay experience. Our mission, from day one, has been to deliver a faithful recreation of the original game, and we remain dedicated to seeing that through to completion."

Xbox's own Major Nelson (Larry Hryb) then retweeted about the issue (which just goes to show how high up this goes).

So there we have it. Kinect features will be optional and they won't affect the gameplay. Which we assume means they'll be used for menu screens and the like. One of our readers,XboxInsomniac,had the wonderful idea of using Kinect for machinima videos - those oft-funny webisodes where game characters appear to be conversing instead of shooting each other. That would indeedbe awesome.

Above: Back to complaining that we totally shot that guy a million times, yet one melee attack killed us dead

Of course, you could argue that this confirms that Kinect cannot work as a FPS control system. We'll have to wait for the inevitable on-rails Halo shoot-em-up for that.

21 Jun, 2011