At Microsoft's conference at the E3 Expo on Monday night, Ubsioft took to the stage to announce that Kinect would be used in their upcoming tactical shooter game, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Admittedly, this wasn't exactly cutting edge news - rumours of this first leaked way back when Kinect was still only known as "Project Natal", but on Monday night, Microsoft made it official.
A gritty, military infused tactical shooter, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier puts you in charge of a group of elite special forces operatives known as the Ghosts. Only the best of the best get to join the Ghosts, as they go above and beyond the call of duty, to take out high risk targets in high risk areas. Equipped with the most highly advanced technology (and now Kinect), it's a game of stealth, of staying in the shadows, and of efficiency, as you move in, and out without a trace.
In a game where you have to order your team mates around, there are numerous ways Kinect could be implemented. Gesture tracking, letting you hold your fist in the air to order your team to wait, or literally just point to a location to order them to move is the most interesting one - but strangely, that wasn't what was shown at E3.
Instead, Ubisoft unveiled Gunsmith - an unusual way of utilising the Kinect sensor in order to customise your weapons. Perform a gesture with your hands as though you're pushing two things apart, and you can break your weapon down into its constituent parts, before switching through the menus with a swish of your hand to change individual pieces. If you'd prefer, you can also simply shout out customisations - tell Kinect to "Optimise for range", and it'll make you a gun with a scope, for example - or just shout "randomise" to get an entirely original gun. According to Ubisoft, there are over 20 million different combinations possible - although using the rules of factorials, that's probably not as many as it sounds. Either way, it was certainly an original, and swish demonstration - and it looked more useful than the second part.
As well as through gunsmith, you'll also be able to use Kinect to test how your weapons worked - although seemingly, Ubisoft has no qualms making you look like a complete berk in order to do it. Squatting awkwardly, holding his one arm out in front, and randomly opening his other hand in order to shoot, it didn't exactly look like the most comfortable of control schemes.
We're not sure if the squatting's necessary, but we certainly can't see ourselves playing Ghost Recon: Future Soldier for hours using Kinect if it is.
The segment ended with the confirmation that all future Tom Clancy game on Xbox 360 would support Kinect - although sadly, there was no sign of our idea of using gesture control to order your soldiers around the battlefield. Either way, the presentation was an interesting, if somewhat strange at times, demonstration - and a sign of what's yet to come.
