'Tiger 13' Kinect preview

January, 23, 2012
01/23/12
3:46
PM ET
By Jon Robinson
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13Playing "Tiger" with the Kinect controls adds your real swing to the virtual course.

It's the 16th hole at Augusta National, and with a Green Jacket on the line, I decide to try something never before seen in a golf video game.

I'm going to skip my shot across the pond.

That's right, thanks to the new control scheme found in "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13," you can now play the game of "skip it" on the Par 3, skipping the ball across the water and up a ten foot bank in order to reach the green.

And while that's cool and all, it's "Tiger's" new controls that are the real star this year, especially when you factor in the Kinect sensor, not only picking up all of your movements in order to deliver your exact swing (for better or worse) into the game, but also the mic that picks up your voice and enables you to verbally ask your caddie for a change of club.

"We've implemented a 'see it, say it' feature where anything you see on screen that has a microphone by it, you can use the Kinect microphone to verbalize instructions," explains "Tiger 13's" executive producer, Brent Nielsen. "So we have features like change shot, select club, or ask caddie, and you can either select those with your hand or you can literally say, 'Change shot,' and the camera will automatically zoom out and put you in the aim state. You can then move the aimer with your hand, and when you're happy with where you're about to hit the ball, all you need to do is bring your hands together like you're about to address the ball and that puts you right back at your address state and you're ready to take your swing.

"We've tried to streamline everything in the game, but aiming and swinging are the two most frequent things people do in the game, so we wanted to make sure to nail these controls and really make it simple and easy for people to do."

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