What does happen when two simulators with no apparent link meet? In case of dancing and dating simulators, Love Training happens.
Mint is the second version of Love Training available (the other two being Bitter and Sweet) and the main difference between the three is the four girls available in each.
I think the story is the same for every game: the current head of the dance club in a Japanese high school asks you to take over as the club head as she's a third year student. Then it's time to pick one of the four girls available and begin dancing with her.
The relationship level with a girl is determined by how good you are in the various "stages": the dating aspect of the game is very light and boils down to a simple progression on how a girl will relate with you and the availability of minigames like a digital version of Red Light/Green Light where you have to approach the girl and strike the suggested pose when she turns around. Getting good scores will also unlock various clothes, but so far, such clothes only appear in menus and not during dance routines.
The core of the game, the dance part, is...puzzling. I'm using the Nyko Zoom Lens due to the limited space available and for the first two or three stages everything seems to work well. After that the Kinect's calibration/accuracy/whatever is lost and navigating game menus becomes almost impossible; even trying to bring up the system's menu for a recalibration/tracking test becomes difficult but I don't really know if this affects how the game scores the dance segments.
Even when things seem to work, the game refuses to recognise certain moves and there's no indication of what is wrong. Sometimes your body's image is overimposed with blue and red shades to help correcting posture, but not every time. In some exercises you are left wondering what you are doing wrong as there is no indication if it's the posture or the timing, though the latter has the lowest priority.
In most exercises the scoring is given to just one part of the movement you are requested to mimick: so far I've only been able to get "miss", "OK" and "good" as scores for single movements, and those are not calculated on how close you tracked the movementwith your whole body, but just two or so limbs, like hands at the end of a pose or if you bent the knees.
The general feeling, though, is that movement recognition is good only when one or two points have to be tracked (like hands or fully body movement): when the game/Kinect has to track three or four limbs things go completely wrong; exercises that ask you to simply extend one leg toward the camera seem completely out of reach as I've only been able to get "miss". And again, the game doesn't tell you what's wrong: not out of Kinect's area, no indication if body posture is correct or completely wrong timing; there are times where you are left wondering what you are doing wrong and others why you are doing right and I can't really understand if it's the game's or Kinect's flaw.
And, well, I really want to like this game. It's essentially about moving and this is the most basic form of having fun, but it gets frustrating when you just don't know what is going wrong.
From what I saw, initial dance routines are the same for all four girls present in the game, though I'm focusing on just one of them to unlock as many stages as possible...which is more difficult than it sounds due to the previously mentioned tracking issues.
Technically the game is OK. Dancing has been motion captured (apparently from someone famous) and is applied seamlessy to all models. Backgrounds are very plain but the girls show different expressions based on how the chosen routine is going; animations during the dating part are OK and the main thing is that there aren't many of them; when seen from the side, the girl's face is somewhat strange...it's standard anime proportions, but side views feel a bit awkward. Some voices are from famous VAs...but the lipsynching is completely wrong. I mean, lipsynching libraries were available to Flash 10 years ago and now the technology has given us mocapped 3D models and a camera (sort of) able to track body movement, it's not possible to have a mouth moving when a character's voice is actually heard? This goes beyond nitpicking, it's an almost catastrophic failure when half of the game is about staring at a girl talking to you.
As a first Kinect experience, I'm disappointed by the input device more than the game: from what I've seen so far the amount of content is good (much more and more varied than I was expecting), but having to deal with that camera is infuriating.
Mint is the second version of Love Training available (the other two being Bitter and Sweet) and the main difference between the three is the four girls available in each.
I think the story is the same for every game: the current head of the dance club in a Japanese high school asks you to take over as the club head as she's a third year student. Then it's time to pick one of the four girls available and begin dancing with her.
The relationship level with a girl is determined by how good you are in the various "stages": the dating aspect of the game is very light and boils down to a simple progression on how a girl will relate with you and the availability of minigames like a digital version of Red Light/Green Light where you have to approach the girl and strike the suggested pose when she turns around. Getting good scores will also unlock various clothes, but so far, such clothes only appear in menus and not during dance routines.
The core of the game, the dance part, is...puzzling. I'm using the Nyko Zoom Lens due to the limited space available and for the first two or three stages everything seems to work well. After that the Kinect's calibration/accuracy/whatever is lost and navigating game menus becomes almost impossible; even trying to bring up the system's menu for a recalibration/tracking test becomes difficult but I don't really know if this affects how the game scores the dance segments.
Even when things seem to work, the game refuses to recognise certain moves and there's no indication of what is wrong. Sometimes your body's image is overimposed with blue and red shades to help correcting posture, but not every time. In some exercises you are left wondering what you are doing wrong as there is no indication if it's the posture or the timing, though the latter has the lowest priority.
In most exercises the scoring is given to just one part of the movement you are requested to mimick: so far I've only been able to get "miss", "OK" and "good" as scores for single movements, and those are not calculated on how close you tracked the movementwith your whole body, but just two or so limbs, like hands at the end of a pose or if you bent the knees.
The general feeling, though, is that movement recognition is good only when one or two points have to be tracked (like hands or fully body movement): when the game/Kinect has to track three or four limbs things go completely wrong; exercises that ask you to simply extend one leg toward the camera seem completely out of reach as I've only been able to get "miss". And again, the game doesn't tell you what's wrong: not out of Kinect's area, no indication if body posture is correct or completely wrong timing; there are times where you are left wondering what you are doing wrong and others why you are doing right and I can't really understand if it's the game's or Kinect's flaw.
And, well, I really want to like this game. It's essentially about moving and this is the most basic form of having fun, but it gets frustrating when you just don't know what is going wrong.
From what I saw, initial dance routines are the same for all four girls present in the game, though I'm focusing on just one of them to unlock as many stages as possible...which is more difficult than it sounds due to the previously mentioned tracking issues.
Technically the game is OK. Dancing has been motion captured (apparently from someone famous) and is applied seamlessy to all models. Backgrounds are very plain but the girls show different expressions based on how the chosen routine is going; animations during the dating part are OK and the main thing is that there aren't many of them; when seen from the side, the girl's face is somewhat strange...it's standard anime proportions, but side views feel a bit awkward. Some voices are from famous VAs...but the lipsynching is completely wrong. I mean, lipsynching libraries were available to Flash 10 years ago and now the technology has given us mocapped 3D models and a camera (sort of) able to track body movement, it's not possible to have a mouth moving when a character's voice is actually heard? This goes beyond nitpicking, it's an almost catastrophic failure when half of the game is about staring at a girl talking to you.
As a first Kinect experience, I'm disappointed by the input device more than the game: from what I've seen so far the amount of content is good (much more and more varied than I was expecting), but having to deal with that camera is infuriating.
Iz good innit!
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