Black-Eyed Peas Kinect dance game apparently revolutionary, sounds like potential body-horror nightmare

So, you may well know that Ubisoft is making a Black-Eyed Peas themed dance game. Which is great. Because as I've oft theorised,the only way to improve the experience of flailing one's arms around during a desperately embarrassing, misguided attempt at fun is to do so while making it abundantly clear to all in the room that you have really shitting appalling taste in music.

But wait! There's more! As the game is apparently going to be revolutionary within the motion-controlled dance genre. Not only that, but it's going to be revolutionary in ways which, going off previous Kinect-powered experience, may well unleash upon the world a whole torrent of seething Cronenbergian horrors andgrotesque crimes against the human form. So everyone wins!

Read on, so that I can explain my point with words and illustrations.

The revolutionary bit? Where games like Dance Central simply present a pre-rendered, pre-animated character on-screen and charge you with mimicking its movements, The Black-Eyed Peas Experience will use "a revolutionary system where the player is actually going to be able to control an avatar and see their dance moves and get real-time feedback on how they are performing".

And lo, the sky did turn black with the wings of a thousand feral bats, as the air became thick with the screams of the damned. Truly, the time of man was an and end, and an age of chaos and disintigration had begun. Why am I worried? Think about this: We know that Kinect can have issues when rendering avatar movement as a real-time, 1:1 animation. Churning out a blurry Predator-vision scannerview of your movements? Fine. When processing a 3D, on-screen, computerised character as well? A bit jerky and imprecise. So this can happen:

Now multiply that by the wonderful medium of dance, then multiply the sum of that by ten to the power of the Black-Eyed Peas:

Of course, I'm being facetious for the sake of a cheap Photoshop gag here (and don't pretend you wouldn't do the same), and I have no doubt that Ubisoft is working its collective arse off to ensure the anatomical integrity of its dancing people-puppets. But really. Think of the horrors this could spur into being if it goes wrong. Think of the horrors and then never sleep again.

Source:Digital Spy

July 04, 2011

But wait! There's more! As the game is apparently going to be revolutionary within the motion-controlled dance genre. Not only that, but it's going to be revolutionary in ways which, going off previous Kinect-powered experience, may well unleash upon the world a whole torrent of seething Cronenbergian horrors andgrotesque crimes against the human form. So everyone wins!

Read on, so that I can explain my point with words and illustrations.

The revolutionary bit? Where games like Dance Central simply present a pre-rendered, pre-animated character on-screen and charge you with mimicking its movements, The Black-Eyed Peas Experience will use "a revolutionary system where the player is actually going to be able to control an avatar and see their dance moves and get real-time feedback on how they are performing".

And lo, the sky did turn black with the wings of a thousand feral bats, as the air became thick with the screams of the damned. Truly, the time of man was an and end, and an age of chaos and disintigration had begun. Why am I worried? Think about this: We know that Kinect can have issues when rendering avatar movement as a real-time, 1:1 animation. Churning out a blurry Predator-vision scannerview of your movements? Fine. When processing a 3D, on-screen, computerised character as well? A bit jerky and imprecise. So this can happen:

Now multiply that by the wonderful medium of dance, then multiply the sum of that by ten to the power of the Black-Eyed Peas:

Of course, I'm being facetious for the sake of a cheap Photoshop gag here (and don't pretend you wouldn't do the same), and I have no doubt that Ubisoft is working its collective arse off to ensure the anatomical integrity of its dancing people-puppets. But really. Think of the horrors this could spur into being if it goes wrong. Think of the horrors and then never sleep again.

Source:Digital Spy

July 04, 2011

David Houghton
Long-time GR+ writer Dave has been gaming with immense dedication ever since he failed dismally at some '80s arcade racer on a childhood day at the seaside (due to being too small to reach the controls without help). These days he's an enigmatic blend of beard-stroking narrative discussion and hard-hitting Psycho Crushers.