It's been about a week since I contributed to our Gut Reactions piece on the Kinect and so, now that I've been able to spend more time with my own, I figured I'd deliver some updated thoughts on it. Kinect Sports is still the game that I'm spending the most time with, and I've also played a lot of Kinect Joy Ride for review. My copies of both Kinectimals and Kinect Adventures are still sealed, though I did spend a couple of hours with an office copy of the former prior to its release.

A week after allowing the Kinect into my home I'm still impressed by how well it works in my dimly lit living room. Since the regular controller is still much easier, I'm not using it to navigate menu options on my X360 or anything like that, but when I'm not working on games for review or reacquainting myself with World of Warcraft in preparation for the impending Cataclysm, Kinect titles are my games of choice right now. That's largely because they're fun for my girlfriend and I to play together, though I should point out that she's no slouch in "regular" games, as evidenced by a competitive Puzzle Fighter session recently.

Oddly, while her coming over to play Kinect games with me is undoubtedly one of the main reasons that I've been playing with and enjoying it so much, her presence has also served to highlight a flaw of the Kinect that I hadn't experienced previously. The problem, at least in my living room, is that there's almost nowhere that she can stand, sit down, or otherwise position herself when she's not playing where the Kinect won't see her. Escaping its infra-red gaze is tougher than steering clear of the Eye of Sauron.

When it inevitably spots her, it assumes that she wants to play, and--depending on the game--loads in her avatar automatically. This is only a minor irritation, but it'd be great if the Kinect was somehow able to tell the difference between someone who's standing right next to me wanting to play and someone who just happens to be laying on the couch off to the side. Maybe I'm expecting too much of this new technology, but perhaps the fact that her head is about three feet closer to the ground than it was when she created her Kinect ID should clue it in? Or maybe that she's not really inside what the Kinect generally considers to be an acceptable area of the room for playing in?

I guess my only other complaint with Kinect right now is simply that there aren't many Kinect games that I want to play. (The same is true of PlayStation Move, incidentally.) I'm hoping that will change, but as I scour what we know of the release calendar for next year, Child of Eden is the only Kinect game that I'm excited for. I know that Dance Central is great, but games with the word "Dance" in the title just aren't for me I'm afraid. And nor are games that throw around words like "fitness" for that matter.

I'm happy that I bought a Kinect, and I'm very much looking forward to playing it with some non-gamers over Thanksgiving. I'm still not entirely convinced that motion controls are for me, though, and I can't help wondering how long it will be before layer of dust on my Kinect rivals those on my Wii and Move controllers. How many of you already have a Kinect, and how are you liking it so far? Any amusing stories to share? I almost forgot to mention that, while playing at work, one of our Kinects was trying to use its facial recognition on a pedestal fan that I'd stuck on top of a chair to make some room. It was funny at the time, even if it doesn't sound funny now. The opposite is true of this video: