Rumours of a Kinect-centric Gears of War game had been circulating for years after Microsoft introduced the motion-control sensor to the world. One game called Gears of War: Exile was confirmed as cancelled two years ago. But, what looks like footage of another gesture-based Gears game has surfaced. It… it doesn’t look good.
Embedded in an oddly worded post on VGLeaks, a two-minute clip shows what appears to be a segment of a Gears of War strategy game that would have been controlled by the Kinect sensor. Gameplay is viewed from a top-down perspective, with squad placement and movement controlled by player gestures.
Of course, there’s every chance that this could be an elaborate fake. But Microsoft does have a history of trying to create motion-controlled spin-offs for its more traditional controller-based franchises, like Fable: The Journey. Looking at this footage makes it clear why Gears of War: Tactics never saw the light of day. What’s on display here doesn’t capture the gritty, despereate vibe that makes the Gears games fun or unique. It looks like Delta Squad in a game that they weren’t made for.
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4 responses to “Leaked Video Shows Kinect-Controlled Gears Of War Strategy Game”
I don’t know if I’d be happy about it taking away from XCom developing time, but I’d be all for a Firaxis developed strategy game set in the GoW universe.
This thought…..
“Kinect support” is bad enough, but “designed for Kinect”….. You’d think they’d have learnt their lesson by now.
How about “Designed for Kinect by people who actually know what they’re doing and have put a lot of thought into making it really work well rather than adopting a ‘fuck it, that’ll do‘ mentality”? or “Designed for Kinect and controllers where Kinect acts as a supplement to the controller adding new features rather than as a stupid gimmick doing the same things in a less efficient manner than the controller could do with a single button press”?
To me, that’s what Kinect and similar things need to do to gain love. Not replace controllers, add to them and make them better.
The video on the VGleaks site now says “Unsupported video type or invalid file path” which, unless it’s a problem local to my machine, implies it might have been a legit thing and they were given a takedown order.
Still, even if the game was looking shit there’s always ways it could have been worse. It could have been a timelocked mobile wallet-robber where you needed imulsion tanks or something to be able to move your units each turn and you never had enough but there was this convenient storefront where you could buy them in job lots for up to $120 for what sounded like quite a lot until you realised that you were just paying a higher ransom to not have your enjoyment held hostage for a little bit longer…
I could stand to play a Gears of War game that was something of a mix between Halo Wars and Dawn of Wars (that’s a lot of wars…).
I’m not sold on the idea of a Kinect RTS though. I guess End War could have been a much better game if it used Kinect instead of a headset and homemade voice reconginition. Still not sure if that’d be good or just better than the way it worked out.