Eye Toy Kinetic was made in association with
Nike Motionworks, (which, as far as I can tell, has never done anything worthy of being mentioned on the internet
before their involvement with
Kinetic; I assume that
Motionworks is involved in some way with Nike's sports training ventures.) The result of this association is that some of the games manage to be fun and challenging while introducing some of the moves of Tai Chi, Yoga and conventional fitness training.
There are, of course, some issues with the game. First and foremost, there is the possibility of lighting issues. You'll want to tweak the settings on your Eye Toy camera if your room is overly bright or dim; luckily, this is possible through the Settings menu. You can also adjust the sensitivity to fit your environment. This remains the biggest detractor for Eye Toy games - getting the proper lighting setup. You need adequate overhead lighting, but if the lighting is too focused, you'll experience decreased sensitivity further from the light. I had this problem and attempted to remedy it with some lamps flanking the television. This worked, for the most part, but with the sensitivity settings set too high, I found that my shadow would register as motion sometimes, hitting things I didn't want to hit. (My chihuahua would also hit several targets - both good and bad - with his excitedly wagging tail, so you may want to make sure that the room is clear of others when you attempt your workout.) After a good bit of working out, I thought I'd turn on the ceiling fan to cool off a bit while I played. The shadows and reflected light caused by the fan's motion worked against me on a much grander scale than my chihuahua could ever hope to - targets both good and bad would register one or multiple hits all over the screen for no obvious reason. When I realized what was happening, I turned the fan off and sweat it out.
The menuing system in Kinetic is, in my opinion, too slanted towards profile based gameplay. This makes it difficult to jump in and try out one of the exercises without building a routine. Some people aren't interested in building routines - they'd prefer to play some of the games and then go off and do something else. Perhaps it's because they want to attach warm up and cool down stretches to the routines. I can see that as a somewhat decent reason, but gamers can still opt out of these stretches - it just is an extra step to aggravate you. If you're in it for routines and long term growth, Kinetic's fine. Just don't expect to jump in and out of the game quickly.
