Originally Posted by dirtyvu I wrote it because it's hypocritical for a game like Street Fighter to demand that you do a motion correctly in order to pull off a move. But in a game like Steel Battalion, it's making the game too hard? I watched gameplay videos from guys like Evan Narcisse who are flailing and then saying it's the Kinect's fault for not interpreting his intentions. Well, duh, the Kinect can't read your mind. Yes, there could be a lot better ways of doing some of the motions. For example, on the snow levels, the viewport fogs up and you're supposed to wipe it off with your arm. But I could never get it to work right so it's the motion I avoid (luckily, the only one). Within any game's framework, you have play within any game's design. Like you can't do a triple jump in a platforming game but you can do a double jump. Do people complain that you can't do a triple jump? No, of course not. That's the way the game was designed. Now, it's perfectly fine to not to want to learn a game's nuances. If you don't want to learn how to play Starcraft II, that's totally your perogative. But you don't see a COD player go into a Starcraft II forum and say, this game sucks. Why can't I do this? What is this weird thing here? But yet a lot of Kinect haters who have never really played with a Kinect except at a store like Best Buy which didn't calibrate the device, find a need to go into a Kinect thread and vomit hate. The biggest issue I had with the reviewers was that they didn't give the game to their usual Kinect reviewers. They gave it to the guys that already don't like Kinect. It's like giving a puzzle game to a COD player. And the reason a lot of gaming sites did that was because this game was supposed to be the game that proved to the hardcore gamer that you could do a hardcore Kinect game and that this game could convert a hardcore gamer. However, the typical hardcore gamer is pretty set in his ways. Take him out of his environment, and he resists and tries to prove that hey, it doesn't work and thus is broken. Just like trying to get a kid to like vegetables. He'll wince, take nibbles, go through his vomit motions, and say that vegetables suck. Take a game like Mass Effect 3. The voice commands are rock solid. You don't have to pause the game and go through nested menus to get things done. You can keep the action going. But most reviewers glanced over how it worked but went back to their traditional ways of playing it. Even compensating by saying that hey, pausing the game gives you time to relax, analyze the situation, etc. Well, in a real-world fight, you can't just hit the pause button and think what you're going to do. Again, I'm not saying this game is perfect. Lots of things could be improved upon, but it didn't deserve the vitriol it got.

Okay, there's quite a bit of difference between what you typed out to make Steel Battalion work and those other games.

I mean you're comparing a fireball in Street Fighter to:

For example, to select what type of ammo you're going to use, you can only use your right hand. To pull the left instrument pod, you have to use your left hand. I'll start off with the wrong information. In the tutorial, it says to select the heat rounds, you put your hand over the heat rounds button and then press downward. In the viewport viewing screen where the viewport takes up nearly the whole screen, this doesn't work. The best way to do this is to crossover your body. So if you want to press the AP ammo button, use your right hand, crossover, and thrust forward toward the AP ammo button on the left side. To select the heat rounds button, use your left hand, cross over your body and thrust forward toward the heat rounds button on the right side. Alternatively, to select the heat rounds, you can do a thrust your right hand forward. So the tutorial was pretty wrong on this.

And that's just to select between different types of ammo, not to perform some 20 hit master combo.

I for one appreciate this guy taking the time to explain the nuances of this game. For what it's worth, it made me interested in at least giving it a try some day. (Not until there's another price drop, though.)

Originally Posted by dirtyvu Take a game like Mass Effect 3. The voice commands are rock solid.

I loved giving voice commands, and I think that should be used in more squad-based games, but I wouldn't call ME3's rock solid. Kinect recognized what I was saying about 85% of the time. Pulling up the menu worked flawlessly every time, but in the end I decided I liked the continuous action better, despite having to repeat myself at times.

Originally Posted by morrodox I for one appreciate this guy taking the time to explain the nuances of this game.

Certainly it is an effort that is admirable, but what it tells you is how badly the game was designed that he had to come up with entirely different motions than the ones that the game tells you to use.

Originally Posted by Slermy Third party seller. Also, Amazon proper and NewEgg had it for $19 last week.

Shipped by Amazon.

Originally Posted by tukai It's still $19 too high. Once it drops another $19 and they offer a $10 gamer credit, I'll bite.

You beat me to it.

Anyone interested in this game should watch the Xplay video review to fully understand how the mechanics of this game work.

I also appreciate the lengthy explanations, and I'll try it when I play this game again (I did pick it up for full price when it first came out). But comparing the difficulty of controlling a mech in this game to the complexities of Street Fighter is insane. If a game doesn't control well or intuitively, then that's a mark against the game. I'm sure a lot of reviewers didn't have the right setup to play this game and gave up too early, but they're probably more hardcore than the vast majority of game players, so I don't mind those reviews. If you need the perfect room and the perfect lighting, and then you have to improvise movements and go against the in-game instructions just to control the game, then the game has a control problem.

Plus, the game is hard even without the control problems, so it makes it even more frustrating.

a fireball or dragon punch is a simple circular motion with a button press. but tons of people can't pull it off when they really need to. and that's the issue with Steel Battalion for a lot of people. if you can pull off a dragon punch 85% of the time in SF, you just chalk it up to well, I need to practice more. but if you can pull off a motion in SB 85% of the time, well, it's a failure of the game.

just because I wrote a lot doesn't mean it's hard to do the move. I just like to be precise with what I say. like how hard is it to do a "hail, Hitler" motion? the critics say that you should do a wrist flick to turn off the light. but the Kinect on the Xbox in this game can't do that. so it's a game design limitation.

yes, the SB game is hard even if it was strictly a controller game. It would've been nice if they had difficulty levels like COD or Halo or any other shooter has.

yes, the tutorial in SB definitely needs to be reworked. but it's not the only tutorial out there with mistakes. take Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. for one of the moves, the move guide is a little off. If you try to pull it off like the diagram, you'll miss half the time. A slight tweak of the motion, and you get the move 85% of the time.

hey, if you ever want to do the co-op missions, let me know. I've got a group of friends on my list that play this game a lot more than me. They'll help you out a lot. I'm not a good player (as the videos showing all my deaths will show). But they helped me get all the unlocks.

Originally Posted by psunami Certainly it is an effort that is admirable, but what it tells you is how badly the game was designed that he had to come up with entirely different motions than the ones that the game tells you to use.

let's get away from the exaggerations. they're not entirely different motions. it's just that you have to be regimented. people want it to feel organic. in real life with a real control panel, you reach high toward a button. You know that they're reaching for a button because you see them push a button. Well, if you suddenly remove that control panel and look at someone doing the motion, are they pulling down a periscope or are they pushing a high button or are they trying to open a vent? there's so much interpretation with just raising your arm.

so the designers made it so that you had to do a very specific motion so that it could differentiate between all those motions. yeah, it would be nice to have it more organic but that would open it up for interpretation. And watching the reviewers play it, every reviewer does the motion differently. which means it's a failure of the tutorial.

it would've helped the tutorial if they used a 3D model of a person doing the motion. instead, you had 2D images floating across the screen to indicate a gesture.

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Should have just made it a controller based game with some optional Kinect controls for those that want it. As it is, CAPCOM would have to pay me to play this piece of software.