Although the games that have been announced for Microsoft's revolutionary new motion sensing camera, Kinect, have mostly been either rip-offs (or tributes, may be a fairer term), to certain best selling Wii games so far, there was one game amongst the line up that seemed to be something that approaches being a "proper" game.
Known only as Star Wars Kinect, a short trailer was shown at the recent Electronic Entertainment Expo, that showed a young Jedi Knight battling against the dark forces of the Sith, through the use of his trusty lightsaber and force powers.
Holding your hands as if you were holding a lightsaber, the Kinect camera then detects how you're moving your hands, with your in-game Jedi Knight swinging his lightsaber on screen to match.
In the demo, the player was fighting their way across a courtyard that resembled the Jedi Temple from Star Wars: Episode 3, deflecting lasers back at Stormtroopers, Droid fighters, and AAT tanks using their lightsaber, with a few fancy force powers mixed in - all controlled through gestures, before coming face-to-face with Darth Vader himself.
Unfortunately the demo ended about here, meaning we never saw how a lightsaber battles would work.
While it was obviously a rather unfinished demo, it certainly whet our appetites for a full game based on this sort of technology. As science is currently sadly lacking when it comes to creating a real lightsaber, we'll happily make do with the best virtual alternative - and a Star Wars game that uses Kinect to track your gestures should turn out to be a real tour de force for the camera, especially with the use of various hand gestures to use your force powers (imagine the feeling you'd get from doing Darth Vader's choke by simply scrunching your hand into a fist).
This is a shot from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but imagine being able to throw the characters on screen around just using your hands! It'd be amazing.
Sadly, there's very little concrete information out at the moment, but our imaginations are already running wild with ideas. This is a concept that really needs expanding on. While the trailer only gave a rather vague release date of 2011, we'll have more news on Star Wars Kinect when we get it.
