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View Full Version : Yes, I Do Really Like Kinect, and Yes I Will Be buying The Cookie Monster Game


Jupiter Jones
10-10-2011, 01:45 PM
So there!
Thoro
10-10-2011, 01:58 PM
Okay.
RepoMan
10-10-2011, 02:11 PM
I too will be buying it. It's out this week? SWEET. Only downside is I will wait until Christmas to give it to my kids :-\
Rasputin
10-10-2011, 02:12 PM
I too will be buying it. It's out this week? SWEET. Only downside is I will wait until Christmas to give it to my kids :-\

You'll just be playtesting it for them, right? To make sure it's good before you give it to them?
Aeon221
10-10-2011, 02:22 PM
I too will be buying it. It's out this week? SWEET. Only downside is I will wait until Christmas to give it to my kids :-\

Armistice day present. What? You have to mark 11/11/11 somehow, right?
Chris Gwinn
10-10-2011, 02:56 PM
I don't have a kinect yet, so I'm waiting for reviews. If it sounds good, I'm guessing it'll push me over the edge.
JoshL
10-10-2011, 03:03 PM
Totally looking forward to this. My 5-year old likes Kinectimals a lot, but the single-player-only aspect of it is a drag. And TIM SCHAFER! Gonna have to break out Day of the Tentacle next...
Aeon221
10-10-2011, 03:08 PM
Totally looking forward to this. My 5-year old likes Kinectimals a lot, but the single-player-only aspect of it is a drag. And TIM SCHAFER! Gonna have to break out Day of the Tentacle next...

....?
JoshL
10-10-2011, 03:39 PM
It was the "sequel" to Maniac Mansion. He also did Grim Fandago.
Alan Au
10-10-2011, 03:51 PM
....?
Here's the intro video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vJioAZ1oIY) for this classic LucasArts adventure game.
Theodore Rex DX
10-10-2011, 03:59 PM
You don't know what Day of the Tentacle is? Are you fucking kidding me?
JoshL
10-10-2011, 05:14 PM
I can't post links! But you should really go to youtube and watch "Once Upon a Monster - Zombie Pitch"
BigWeather
10-10-2011, 06:17 PM
I can't post links! But you should really go to youtube and watch "Once Upon a Monster - Zombie Pitch"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RfI-14UV-M
Theodore Rex DX
10-10-2011, 07:19 PM
Okay, that was pretty rad.
RepoMan
10-11-2011, 11:56 AM
Going to pick this up tomorrow. My wife told me we don't have to wait for Christmas, which is awesome :-D We'll be getting a computer for the rec room at Christmas, so one kid can be on my wife's laptop and the other on the rec room computer, so that'll be the big Christmas win.

Therefore, the kids get monsters TOMORROW! They are four and six, so this is SMACK in the demographic for them.

I don't EVEN CARE what the reviews are.

Yes, I do. (http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/sesame-street-once-upon-a-monster) OXM 8.0, Game Informer 85, GamingXP (who?) 76. Good enough for me!
kentdog
10-11-2011, 12:45 PM
Totally looking forward to this. My 5-year old likes Kinectimals a lot, but the single-player-only aspect of it is a drag. And TIM SCHAFER! Gonna have to break out Day of the Tentacle next...

It freaks me out that the voice of the "bumblebee" guide in Kinectimals is the voice of Raz in Psychonauts. They even have similarly oblong heads.

Now that I think about it, this might be the greatest thing ever, except that there's no Googlor level in Kinectimals.
Wendelius
10-11-2011, 12:50 PM
Thanks for reminding me. Guess my daughter and I will play Sesame Street on Friday before I am allowed to try out Forza 4. :)

Wendelius
JoshL
10-11-2011, 12:55 PM
It freaks me out that the voice of the "bumblebee" guide in Kinectimals is the voice of Raz in Psychonauts. They even have similarly oblong heads.

Holy CRAP, I never put that together. Now I like Kinectimals more. Yes, I know that doesn't make any sense!
Chris Gwinn
10-13-2011, 09:20 AM
Has anyone actually played this?
RepoMan
10-13-2011, 10:29 AM
My wife righteously put it back on the Christmas plan, so I haven't yet.
Aeon221
10-13-2011, 11:05 AM
My wife righteously put it back on the Christmas plan, so I haven't yet.

Just tell her to say "T is for Tapir, and Tapir is for me!" and it'll all be (hilariously) better.
JoshL
10-15-2011, 02:41 PM
Quick impressions after an hour or so of play:

Some things they did SO right. You don't have to go through a jillion menus to start the game (although you still have to go through the multi-step sign in process, like every other Kinect game -- will they never get this right?). The art is great, the characters are spot-on (familiar favorites like Cookie Monster and Grover, new inventions like Marco, and well, also Elmo). The activities are simple and usually fun.

But, argh. And it kills me to say this, as an early adopter of Kinect and a big Tim Schafer/Double Fine fan, but the gesture recognition is still... bad. My 5 year old can do the pose-matching and the flying and leaning and jumping ok, but the catching and throwing... just... doesn't... work. Even I can't do it half the time. All the activities feel like the software is making some arbitrary decision that your gesture is "close enough" and so you succeed. In some cases I didn't have to move at all to succeed.

One highly touted feature is the ability to jump in and drop out of the game at any time, which is a great feature, when it works, which it does sometimes. Other times it doesn't recognize my daughter and she has to wave frantically for a long while before it decides to let her into the game. And if I walk away while she's doing that, it decides there is no-one in the game and it goes to the menu screen.

Oh, and despite the fact that the individual activities are quite short, you will hear Cookie Monster and Elmo says the same things over and over again during each one.

Finally, the rewards you unlock by collecting stars (AND IT IS ALWAYS STARS) are videos of Tim Schafer and the other Double Fineans talking about the development of the game, which I think it kind of neat, but my kids are NOT INTERESTED. Maybe there are other rewards, I'm only partway through the 2nd chapter.

Summary: The game is fun, and really well done, but suffers from all the frustrations of Kinect. I'll try to come back with more if/when I finish it (like how long it is and how much replay value there is)