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Fighter Within actually has me excited for next gen Kinect

by: Nathan -
More On: Fighter Within
I'll just come out and say it, I hated Kinect on the Xbox 360. Aside from Dance Central and using it occasionally in Mass Effect 3, I never touched it. I downloaded some Kinect only demos and all of them had the same problem. The motion tracking was horrible. While I do have an Xbox One pre-ordered, my interest in Kinect 2.0 is still pretty low. On the flip side of things, I think I am one of the very few out there that is glad that Microsoft is sticking to their guns by not releasing a Kinect free Xbox One model. Hopefully now that the tech is better and devs know that every Xbox One owner will have a Kinect, they can take the time and money to make some truly great games for it. 

Up until now there really hasn't been a Kinect game for Xbox One that I was interested in. Well that changed today when I discovered Ubisoft's Xbox One exclusive Kinect game, and that game is Fighter Within. Maybe it's because I love fighting games, but after seeing the reveal trailer and some Gamescom footage, this actually looks like a fun game. 

Now, of course you wont actually be fighting in the game. It seems that throwing punches can be tracked by the Kinect and your character will punch the opponents on screen. You can block by putting your hands in front of your face, build your meter by opening your arms and sticking your chest out and you can throw your opponent by making a grabbing motion. Now the characters can all perform 10th degree black belt style kicks and luckily if you just make a simple kicking gesture, the game will do all that work for you. The game claims that it will feature 1:1 precision movement tracking and I read a Metro UK article saying that Kinect actually works this time around, so I have hope. 

Even after being somewhat excited for the game, I had my reservations because it screamed tech-demo to me, but it will apparently be a full game complete with 12 fighters, traditional fighting game modes and online play. 

Will Fighter Within finally be the Kinect game we have been hoping for since Project Natal was announced all those years ago? We don't know just yet, but the least I can hope for is that we get a fun fighting game that anyone with the new Kinect can enjoy.