As one would imagine with a melee focused game, enemies will have weak spots that you can target if you swing or stab correctly. A chainsaw can be used to swipe back and forth, but you can push forward with both hands to stab with it. A giant pair of hedge trimmers can be used by bringing both hands in front of you to cut off limbs. And there is no shortage of crazy weapon types in the game: exploding vials, survival knives, bellows filled with acid, cleavers, the list goes on and on. You really are given a variety of implements to dismember your enemies with; all items do eventually breakdown over use forcing you to change up regularly, but you won’t mind doing so. Sure, the combat is simplistic and its hard to die on anything but the boss fights, but lopping limbs off zombies is still a pretty good time.
The movement of the game is a bit of a sticking point. Obviously, you’re not walking in place, so you have to stick one foot out in front of the other and hold it to move forward. The more exaggerated the stance, the faster you walk. To turn, simply rotate your shoulders one direction or the other. While you can go in and change up the speed of which you turn, you cannot set how fast you are walking, which is a real pain in the ass. You really have the step forward to move quickly, and when I say, “Move quickly” I mean “plod along like you don’t have a care in the world”. There’s something maddening about being chased by a half dozen abominations and you’re slowly meandering towards an exit. Fortunately, if you’re tired of making that forward motion, you can simply hold up your right arm and you’ll break into an autopilot, where the game will correct your path and zip you where you need to go.
The other issue with the movement is that certain places within the dungeon require extremely specific movement, and a hair’s difference left or right will mean you get cut in half. Of course, for as well as the Kinect plays with the game, it is not a precision controller, and many times, you’ll find the camera is thinking you’re trying to do one thing while you’re doing something else. I had the camera lock up while taking a step backwards and I ended up walking backwards 5-6 steps into the teeth of a spinning saw blade. Fortunately, most death trap rooms will restart you relatively close to where you died, as if it knew that this was going to be a problem and most people would be getting brutally killed over and over again.
A Pretty Piece of Flesh?
Sure, it’s not going to win any Game of the Year awards, but for what the game tries to do, Rise of Nightmares definitely succeeded for me. It’s a solid six hour storyline as opposed to the usual “half-hour for 1000 achievement points” schlockfest out there for the Kinect. If this game were in an arcade as one of those giant Japanese import use-your-fully-body-to-play-the-game dollar-munchers like Konami’s Police 911, people wouldn’t think twice about playing it. I get the feeling most reviewers are holding this game up against games like Resident Evil or Dead Space because it’s on the 360, which makes it much easier to hate on the game. If for nothing else, Rise of Nightmares shows you a brief glimpse into the future of what we can hope to expect from Kinect gaming down the road. The whole time I was playing, I kept thinking to myself, “Man, this is pretty good, but I can’t wait until they really figure out the Kinect hardware.”
If you’re an adult Kinect owner, the list of games you can actually play and enjoy on the damn thing can be counted on one hand, and I feel that Rise of Nightmares should be on that list.
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