We’ve previously pointed out that the lineup of games expected for Kinect is heavily skewed toward the mini-game compilation titles à la Wii Sports. As if to answer the critics, Microsoft trotted out a bunch of Kinect-enabled titles at TGS that seem to make a pass at – dare I say – the hardcore crowd. Check out the roundup of new games for Kinect. Read all about them after the break.

• There isn’t much info yet about Project Draco (1up‘s got the cinematic trailer shown at TGS), but the images shows humans riding what can reasonably be described as “attack dragons.” Oh, and it’s being developed by Panzer Dragoon creator Yukio Futatsugi. Project Draco is likely to be very derivative of Panzer Dragoon, but that’s certainly not a drawback. Kinect will be used both to pilot your aerial steed into combat, and to raise and bond with the critter Kinectimals-style.
• Similarly mysterious is Haunt, created by NanaOn-Sha, the studio behind PaRappa the Rapper. Haunt is ostensibly a horror title, but that’s about all we know. The trailer intro by NanaOn-Sha head Masaya Matsuura (give the trailer a look at Gamespot) includes some pretty quality unintentional translation comedy: “By utilizing the Kinect environment – very innovative and very much fun – or very…horror, horrible game.”
• Codename D is developed by Grasshopper Manufacture, Suda51′s studio and the folks behind No More Heroes for the Wii. If the cinematic trailer (GameTrailers.com has it) is indicative of the gameplay, then motion-control combat is what Codename D is all about. Eat that burning baseball, you…mascot-headed…gangsters?
• Steel Battalion is returning, and with it the promise of replacing this with this. That’s right, Steel Battalion – the game remembered mostly for its awesomely huge $200 cockpit-like controller – is being resurrected by Capcom and From Software in the form of Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor. The trailer (thanks, Kotaku) shows a D-Day-like beach-storming of a future Manhattan with anachronistic WWII GIs alongside the titular walking mech tanks, the latter of which will presumably be piloted via some sort of body waggling.
• Lastly, hit up GameTrailers.com again for the trailer of Rise of Nightmares if you like, but you won’t learn anything other than how creepy it is when you set screams and flashes of ghouls and victims of torture to a soundtrack of screechy, dissonant violins. With two of the five debut games here being horror titles, I’m getting curious to see just how Kinect can deliver the concept of a horror game more potently than a controller does.

One more thing: I try to be conscious about exercise, but…am I going to have to be standing up the whole time I’m playing these things? Maybe Rise of Nightmares and Haunt intend for the fetal position to be a valid move.