Ever since the Xbox 360 Kinect hardware was announced my imagination ran wild thinking of all the different horror themes and how the Kinect versions of them would play out. I mean can you imagine a Saw game where you are in the trap and have to release yourself with real world movement?!?! Fast forward to the end of summer and you will see Kinect owners drowning in a sea of party games and sports/action titles. Along comes Rise of Nightmares promising new game play that did not involve a sport and was horror themed. Imagine my excitement after seeing a few videos of these playing. Did R.O.N go the distance and breath some life into a rather stale game assortment for Kinect owners? Does it take the survival horror genre in a whole new direction with an all new layer of game play? Kinda of and kind of not. Read on for "the skinny" when it comes to Sega's latest foray into horror.
Right off the bat this game screams House of the Dead in not only game play, but voice acting, art, and almost everything else. This is not a bad thing because I loved the series, but did hope R.O.N would not be an exact rip off, and it was not. The story is so so and pretty basic. You play as Josh who is on a trip with his girlfriend Kate, who busts his alcoholic ass before the train can crash. And you start the search for a missing Kate. You will interact with others from time to time, all of which felt really stereotypical and once again reminded me of characters from Sega's House of the Dead.The levels are broken out into 10 acts much like another shoot em up Sega title (Ahem.. House of the Dead). The level design was a lot better than I expected and the enemies were varied enough to keep your eyeballs into it. A decent amount of time went into the design of the enemies and some like the zombies look awesome, while other filler types like cyborgs looked cheap. The sound was nothing super awesome but did the trick and voice acting was as expected being on par with House of the Dead.
Oh the flipping controls. Thank god I did not have an actual controller in my hand or it would have went from one to one thousand pieces before act 3. I had plenty of issues while in "flailing combat" where Josh would just start going backward or forward. In battle this was easily the most frustrating thing I found in the game. I did get a little better later on by making my movements more of a lunge, versus the step a normal human would take. The addition of an auto-walk button was a god sent at times but felt like they knew something was broken and just offered a band-aid versus a repair. Recalibrating the sensor did nothing to remedy the movement. Luckily the robust weapon choices and gore filled combat made the trip through each act doable.The Kinect has very little in the way of games that rock outside of the genres already mentioned. If you like the House of the Dead series, as I do, you would be a miss to not at least rent this title. It would also give your Kinect a break from make believe pets and boring ass party games. I really hope to see more developers embrace the Kinect and take a chance at making something different. If it is fun and engaging I have no issue standing all day and flailing like a sweaty fool.
Welcome to yet another fantastic fall/holiday rush of AAA titles. I start to sweat with excitement when I think of this time of year. When the last Batman game in this series Arkham Asylum was released I intentionally passed over it, even though every friend and media outlet was gushing like a nerd at comic con. My reason for this mistake was based solely on the amount of games with super heroes attached that completely sucked ass. I will not bother making the list because I do not need carpel tunnel that bad. I think my point is pretty obvious and I am not alone in thinking these companies have made a lot of quick cash by flipping a turd with a super heroes name on it. So Arkham Asylum landed on my Christmas present filler list because it was about 20 or so bucks and I did not want to waste the cash. Low and behold the Almighty holiday came and so did a neatly wrapped copy of Batman AA. I was on holiday break and decided it was time to see what all the fuss was about. From that point I did not eject the disc from my Xbox 360 until the main quest was complete, which is pretty rare for me and my 30 second attention span. Since the announcement of the sequel at the 2009 Spike VGAs I have been waiting patiently to play this one through just as the last. And let me tell you it was damn well worth the wait.
