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Get Your Air Guitar On With Kinect Fun Labs Air Band
Kinect Fun Labs doesn't really offer games, but rather small-scale experiences that show off some of the interesting technical feats that developers can accomplish with Kinect. One of these new experiences shown at Gamescom is Air Band, a unique all-motion take on music gaming. Think of it as a hands-free Wii Music...but perhaps Microsoft would rather you don't.
Jeff Cork, our man in Germany, got to shake his groove thing with Air Band and wrote back with these impressions. As with most Kinect Fun Labs content, it's a fun novelty, and nothing more.
"This is more of a toy than a game, but that's what people have come to expect from Fun Labs. Players appear as themselves on stage, and by making one of three gestures – air guitar strum, pounding fake drums, or sliding your hands across an imaginary keyboard – they conjure up imaginary instruments. It's a nifty effect, with these fake instruments popping into place. They're superimposed onto the live images nicely; the guitar rotates with the player, and the sticks appear in the drummer's hands. You can change your instrument at will. Once you're done making noise for a while, you're probably done with Air Band, but it's a pretty slick tech demo."
It will be interesting to see in the months to come if some of the Fun Labs content is expanded into proper standalone games.
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