Review | Rise of Nightmares

Arms flailing, panic and confusion pumping adrenaline through your body. Something flashes past your field of vision and you lash out blindly. Nothing connects. You try to run, but your feet seem frozen on the spot. You’re going to die, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The above description applies equally to a horrible nightmare and a Kinect game, so it’s lucky Sega have seen fit to combine them in one box. Rise of Nightmares is a Kinect-only horror title which chronicles the fate of a collection of comically mismatched characters as they flee from the undead and various other forms of evil somewhere in Europe. The game begins in classic horror style, with a young couple being horrifically murdered in a dungeon. Then just like that, you’re on a train and inside a troubled relationship. This game wears B-movie cliches on its sleeve, so you quickly find yourself having to prove you’re a real man by rescuing your girl from the clutches of evil.

And so it goes. The cheesy aesthetic actually turns out to be one of the main strengths of the game, with cackling mad scientists, spooky castles, clockwork zombies and snooty ballerinas (living and dead) around every corner. The line between horror and comedy is always a blurry one.

But how does it work? Being a Kinect game, your character is entirely controlled with the wiggling of your own body parts. Attacking with your fists or the various melee weapons scattered around the game-world means punching your real fists, or swinging wildly to slice and dice the creatures begging to eat your flesh. Outside combat, you can investigate objects in a room by looking at them and doing a little hand-hovering, then once you’re in close you can pull down switches, kick open doors and turn valves as if you were standing there yourself. And there’s movement. The big selling point for Rise of Nightmares has been that it isn’t on rails like so many other Kinect games. Moving one foot forwards will start Josh walking forward, while moving it back will reverse. Turning your shoulders left or right will turn in that direction.

I’ve never personally had much trouble walking in real life, but Rise of Nightmares really made me feel like a clumsy drunk. The controls sound simple enough, but it can – and will – go wrong very quickly. Turn a corner too quickly and Josh runs into the wall, so you try to back up but you’re still twisted so the game spins you around backwards until you’re facing a different wall. Back up, stop, reposition, rotate your shoulders, rotate them again after you go too far, move forward, turn a corner and smack your face into a door.

Walking around is an exhausting chore, so much so that the developers saw fit to include an “auto-walk” feature, which allows you to hold up one arm and have Josh tromp to the next door or switch automatically. Even though much of the game environments are linear, the help is appreciated. Sadly, inevitable overuse of this makes the game into a sort of on-rails hybrid with optional pause button.

Luckily, the combat is much better. Enemies are auto-targeted when you pull your arms up for combat, which usually points you in the direction of the nearest threat. Weapons behave as they would in real life, and range from small knives, to machetes, to the inevitable chainsaw. There are increasingly ridiculous variants lying around to, such as the electrified brass knuckles. Each weapon has pros and cons, and will come into their own as different enemies drag themselves towards you. Initially it will be simple zombies, but as the game progresses you’ll come across nasties that have several metallic limbs impervious to your blows. Carefully timed blows in the right spot will quickly punch the goo out of them, and it’s surprising to see how accurate and smooth Kinect can be when it wants to be. All the weapons in the game break after repeated use, and most break far too fast, which often leaves you either scrambling for a replacement or dying very quickly. Josh is apparently too drunk to hold two weapons at once.

Most importantly, fighting is fun. Even though you’re constantly fumbling to tell the game you meant back instead of forward, even though enemies behind you will be beating the hell out of you because there’s no way to turn around quickly, and even though most of the bad guys move like snails, punching zombies in the face with your real-life fist is awesome. Despite the silly story and setting, I often felt more like a real character in a horror film than I have in any other game, simply because I was actually the one stabbing, running, kicking and screaming.

The game deserves credit for making every little action – outside walking -  feel natural. An early sequence has Josh balancing himself on top of a derailed train, and then quickly running to get off before it washes over a cliff. And you’re actually running too, pumping your usually-static gamer legs in a desperate rush to avoid certain death. Heck, even sliding (or kicking) open doors is kind of fun.

Beyond the problems, then, it’s worth noting that Rise of Nightmares is a lot of fun. Free movement without the controller is all but a total failure, but aside from that everything is pretty entertaining. The combat is frenetic, involving and suitably gory, and – as I may have mentioned – you get to punch zombies in the face. The story is completely ridiculous, the acting is sub-par and the enemies look incredibly silly. The game is flawed and awkward, and I still had a fantastic time. Not a nightmare at all, really.  [6.5]