EyeToy: Kinetic Combat

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Are you The Architect?

Do you sit in your giant white room at the heart of the Matrix all day in your giant white chair with all your TVs, eating white frosted donuts? Big white arse beginning to have trouble fitting into your big white pants?

Thankfully, here's the answer: EyeToy Kinetic, the perfect PS2 exercise game for the effete individual who lives in a featureless omni directionally lit space!

Eyetoy Kinetic is, essentially, the latest evolution in the home exercise market. Since the mid-60's the exercise video cassette has been keeping housewives fit and pubescent boys entertained in the comfort of their own home. Video cassettes became DVDs, and now DVD's become home console disks - the evolution is complete, but the principle at heart is the same. Exercise videos are essentially extended games of Simon Says, whilst wearing a leotard, but now the program actually can tell if you're doing what it tells you, and will censure and congratulate you accordingly. It is debateable whether this is really progress from the good old DVD days when you could make J-Lo in spandex bounce up and down at the flick of a remote control and simply admire the view, but you can see that a lot of thought and work went into the title, with mixed results.

First off, it's worth pointing out that EyeToy Kinetic, despite its macho title and Kung-Faux styling, is not really a game. If you want to wave your arms about a bit and have some jolly fun, go for the Play range or EyeToy Lemmings, which are both marvellous after the pub with a bunch of mates, and will certainly get you red in the face. Better yet, don't go to the pub a couple of times, club together, buy a Wii, but that's a different story. Kinetic is an extensive aerobics program, with a wide variety of activities and quite a lot of research and input from some fairly serious personal trainer types. The activities can be played in isolation for fun, but few people would mistake this for entertainment per se.

The first clue as to its intended market comes immediately upon loading, which starts the worlds most gentle and comprehensive guide as to how to play the game. You can expect to be told in a calm but encouraging voice how to select 'Start' for about two minutes. Doing anything as complicated as entering your name into a profile sets off such a comprehensive and gentle explanation of what's going on that its better to go off and get a cup of tea whilst it gets around to making its point. It is clearly aimed at people who have never before this moment used a console or even a PC recreationally. Really, this is laudable, and more should be done to encourage women and members of more senior generations to use today's consoles for their wide range of entertainment applications. For an actual veteran gamer (as I'm assuming most of this site's patrons are) this is actually crucifying, and will have you looking for the skip command.

The same principle applies to the bulk of the activities themselves - they are all aimed at an aerobic experience for a gaming novice, and are not strictly designed to be entertaining, only distracting from the shortness of breath and the pain in your chest. Okay, that last part was perhaps subjective experience, but distraction from the repetitive actions rather than involvement is the programs purpose. An example of this is in a few of the 'games' that can be played in isolation (rather than part of a lengthy exercise regimen) such as the Backlash Zone and Combat Zone, which involve the player punching away encroaching targets. It is essentially 'wax on, wax off', but the system makes a decent effort to include enough sound effects and explosions of colour to distract you from this.

Kinetics major advance, and major failing, is in how much of ones body it wants you to use. Unlike Play, which was only interested in you from the shoulders up, Kinetic wants to see your feet, and get every part of you swinging and hopping. This is ideal for a full body work out, and I'm certain that if one was to partake in its 12 week long personalised trainer program, you would feel all sorts of health benefits and your chakras would just zip into a line, or a star, or wherever we're meant to keep 'em. The extensive program will not just have you smashing floating pots or punching a hovering droid, but also includes Yoga programs, meditation guides, callisthenics tutorials, and will even teach you the fundamentals of Tai Chi. There has been a lot of work put into the application, and its obvious that the two trainers who 'host' the routines know what they're talking about. The half naked kung-fu types in the demonstration video are terrifyingly fit, and show you how to perform each task with the effortless grace of a stretching panther, which you then mimic like a pink faced hippo.

The failing of the program is that it expects to be able to see every part of you, track every part of you, and you to actually see what's happening around you on-screen. I am sure the military have some pretty natty tracking technology up their camouflaged sleeve, to identify and lock-on running targets and so on. SCEE Studio is, however, still a few years behind this feat of technical wizardry, and defiantly overreached itself in its attempt to accurately map motion at what has to be quite a distance. To help the poor EyeToy camera achieve this, you will need to be effectively omni directionally lit to avoid confusing shadows. You also need to have a background that is more or less a uniform shade, to prevent the camera losing you as you traverse its field of view. Since you now have to be such a long way from your camera to get the whole of yourself in view - even with the addition of the fish eye lens attachment that comes with the game - that you will need a huge room. Also, since you are now so far away, you are going to need a pretty huge TV, say about 40 inches plus, to actually see what's going on around you. Add up all of the above, and you see why this appears to be niche designed for The Architect. Others of more humble means will find the collision detection works about 4 out of 5 times, which is a forgivable rate with EyeToy Play, but will frustrate the crap out of you when you're trying to maintain a workout rhythm.

To sum up, if - in your giant white high tech apartment - you have a female relation that you want to ingratiate the console with, this is a great addition. If you yourself are having some trouble shedding the last of the seasonal pounds, then this could be for you too. Each fitness regime will be very specifically tailored to your age, weight, sex, and what you actually want to achieve, and will certainly get your pulse going and the calories burning when it decides to sweat you. The sound and graphics, when the collision detection works, are good and do an excellent job of distracting you from the essential ludicrousness of what you are doing. Not much in the way of entertainment value, but probably the least disagreeable fitness product I have yet seen.

As a product, not a game then...

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By Duncan Lawson