Kinect is getting a much-needed non-dance game later this year as Electronic Arts and Microsoft have revealed Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 will feature full Kinect motion control and voice support on Xbox 360.
There are three main areas in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 where Kinect will impact gameplay. The first is in the menus which will require players to use their extended right hand to scroll through the menus, and a swipe of the hand across your body to make your selection. To back out of a selection, the same swipe is performed with the left hand.
I’m personally more a fan of the hold your hand in place for a couple seconds to make a selection design, but Eric Busch, a top designer on Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13, says he and his team went through many prototypes to get the menus just right. For now I’ll take his word on it.
The second area where Kinect makes an impact is via in-game gestures and voice commands. Hate having to scroll through all the clubs in your bag to get the right one for each shot? Kinect will allow you to call out “Change Club, 7-Iron” and get the desired results. EA is calling this their “See it, Say it” approach, and it sounds like a welcome addition to the Tiger Woods franchise. I personally hate scrolling through the clubs!
Hand gestures will allow you to zoom in and out of the landing area by raising your hand to your brow and back again. Aim is performed by reaching out, grabbing the aiming marker, moving it to the desired spot, and letting it go by opening your hand. The “grab and go” technique will also work for adjusting your golfer’s stance or making him crouch down.
The final use of Kinect in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 is the obvious one: the swing. EA boasts that Kinect allows them to track 1,000 unique data points on the human body via Kinect. They are able to use this data to analyze the swing and get the most realistic interpretation of subtle body movements and mechanics.
In other words, prepare for your handicap scores to go through the roof.
The golf swing with Kinect is accomplished by clasping your hands in front of you as if you were holding a club. If you feel like it, go ahead and hold an actual club, but make sure there’s plenty of clearance around you.
From there you perform your swing and the difficulty setting you chose will determine the effects of your swing on the ball’s flight. EA recorded “several hundred” players swinging the club, of all ages and abilities, to make sure the game would recognize a good swing versus a bad one. If you’re on an easy difficulty setting then you may not hook or slice if your swing is off. On the harder difficulty settings, you best be sure to practice and get your swing down right.
Check out this developer video that walks through the Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 swing mechanics on Kinect for Xbox 360.
– Dan Bradley
