The first ever mature game to hit the Xbox 360 Kinect is Rise of Nightmares. Why is it mature? Well, it’s full of blood, gore and monsters created by an insane scientist for one thing. It might sound like an incredible idea, but the reality is far from that. At best, Rise of Nightmares is mildly entertaining; at worst, the game can drag on to infinity with its lack of story. It is a novel and interesting concept, controlling a character in a horror game with your body, but the lack of a compelling story that will draw the player into the action and a weapon system that limits the player’s options just drags this game down.

The Story Behind Rise of Nightmares

The hero of this tale, Josh, is going on a trip with his wife to Eastern Europe in an effort to save his marriage. Josh is an alcoholic and his wife is, perhaps understandably, very unhappy with his desire to get totally wasted at a moment’s notice. In the early scenes, however, Josh is one of the cleanest alcoholics I’ve ever seen, so all I can imagine is that the reek of the booze is what gave him away to his unimpressed other half.  Back to the story: Josh and his wife find themselves the victims of a train hijack by a group of horrific-looking monster people. His wife is subsequently kidnapped by an evil scientist, then the train is conveniently derailed moments after the kidnapping, leaving you to guide Josh to safety as the train plummets into a raging river. You eventually cross paths with the other survivors and begin your search to find a safe haven while trying to learn what has happened to your wife. As in most good horror stories, resistance is futile; Josh is captured and taken prisoner by the evil scientist.

This scientist likes to do evil experiments on people in his frightening castle and the aim of the game is to avoid you or your wife becoming his newest specimens. Players must navigate the suitably horrific selection of evil monsters, puzzles and traps the game throws at you in order to survive in this gory tale. The story really reminded me of the Saw and Hostel movies in tone and imagery; it’s not the most original story, but it somewhat justifies the merciless onslaught of struggles and gore that follow the opening.

Mastering the Controls

I will admit that getting used to motion control as the method of game navigation presented a huge learning curve, especially since no other motion-based horror title is currently available for Kinect. I felt like an awkward, uncoordinated kid who was playing a game for the first time with no concept of the game mechanics. It took me until around the third chapter to really feel comfortable with the movements that you have to make in order to navigate the game space.  They might be rather basic movements, but at some points they really seemed unintuitive and overly simplistic.

The biggest problem I found was with the very fundamentals of character control: moving forward and backward. This is rather simple; you place one foot in front of the other to go forward, and to go in reverse you must place your foot behind you. The problem is that if you wish to switch from forward to reverse, you must go from having your foot in front of you to making it parallel to your other foot, and then step back to go into reverse. If you try to simply go directly from forward to reverse the controls get confused and usually just keep Josh rolling onwards. In battle situations this can cause massive frustration as there are usually traps or monsters all around, so fast, accurate navigation is of vital importance.

Another problem I had was with the enemy target lock which often locked onto an enemy I didn’t want to attack as they were further away than another monster. To block an attack, you must keep your hands up like you are about to attack; this also keeps you locked on to the same target. If you want to change targets, you must put your hands down and then raise them again while looking directly at the target you want to attack, leaving you vulnerable for a few seconds. This caused some difficulties since attacks en masse occurred pretty often. Kicking nearby enemies helped with melee attackers, but you remain prone to projectiles and large groups of enemies.

The rest of the controls were rather easy: you can kick to knock back monsters, duck to dodge traps, tilt your body to keep your balance on shaky ground and use numerous other body movements to interact with objects in the game. Attacks are done by holding your hands in front of your body like you would in a fist fight, turning left and right with your shoulders to change your aspect. Although it was a little slower than I would want, it worked really well and immersed you quite nicely into the game. If you grow tired of navigating your character there’s an auto move feature you trigger by holding your right hand straight up in the air. This is handy when you get tired of physical exertion to control Josh, but you still have to use the regular controls to avoid traps and enemies. You also select to interact with objects by holding your hand in front of yourself, making a pointer on the screen. You use this to pick up items, operate doorways and to select anything you need to within the game.

Kinect was very sensitive to my movements and performed really well in this game. It did suffer from oversensitivity when someone walked in front or behind me while I played, which made the screen go a little crazy, but so long as no one confused the Kinect by walking past, the sensors worked great.

Gameplay

With a rather lacking storyline, getting into the gameplay was a little harder than I would have imagined when the novel genre concept is considered. The graphics helped support the weaknesses in the story, though, and reminded me of the old House of the Dead games I used to play in arcades. Epic monster-slaying is hard work on Kinect, and I am sure that any spectators to my gaming sessions would get a laugh from finding me flailing about while attempting to kick and hit all the invisible monsters around me.

The enemy AI was rather basic and defeating monsters didn’t really require much in the way of thought. Once you were spotted they would come at you to try and take your head off and that was about it. If there were traps around they could be easily herded into them, making your job even easier. The developers tried to add some strategy by making you have to stand still and be out of the way of the uber-monster Ernst, who I am disappointed to report was the least scary monster in the game.

The game shows how it cares about us players; it will ask you if you are tired and need to take a break after playing for around an hour. While moving around may make you a little tired, this isn’t exactly the most taxing game on the Kinect, but it’s nice to keep track of your game time and learn to take breaks.

The Weapons

The weapons in this game had a nice range to them, including everything from thrown weapons to handheld melee weapons. Some were scientific marvels, like the fantastically funny shock knuckles, yet this fun didn’t disguise two big problems with weapons in this game.

The first problem is that you can only carry one weapon at a time. There is no reserve weapon system, so you constantly have to change weapons at every given opportunity. This wouldn’t be that bad if not for the second problem: the fact that the weapons had very little durability. They tend to be useful in clobbering only a handful of monsters before they break, so if you are in the middle of a fight with several monsters you’re going to face some frustrating moments as you try to pick up a new weapon mid-combat.

Despite these problems, I found myself enjoying the range and variety of weapons to be found when you search for hidden weapons; this proved to be one of the most entertaining game features for me. Combat was simply not as much fun as it could have been; the developers perhaps needed to keep in mind that bare hands never compare to a kickass chainsaw.

My Conclusion

Rise of Nightmares was much better in theory than it turned out to be in reality. I sincerely hope these types of games don’t end on Kinect, but some serious improvements are needed. There are other Kinect games that are more fun to play, and there are better survival horror games out there without motion control. Making a relatively dry survival horror game and giving it motion control does not change the fact that competition is still out there. Try it out by renting or buying in a bargain bin somewhere in a few months, but I just can’t recommend this game as a must-buy. It has a few high points that are far overshadowed by the annoying areas in which it lacks. For those that do try it, I advise holding off judgment until you have put in a few hours, as it does improve as you move away from the beginning, which is slow and almost impossible to be enthusiastic about. In short: check it out if you really want to, but don’t say you weren’t warned about the areas that held this game back.

Written By: Paul Miller

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