Rise of Nightmares
Score: 70% ESRB: Mature Publisher: Sega Developer: Sega Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Action/ First Person Shooter
Graphics & Sound: Rise of Nightmares isn't the most cutting edge game in the graphics department. The game's look is reminiscent of a lot of old Sega arcade games like The House of The Dead. The problem with that is, well, they're old games. Sometimes mouths don't move when people talk. Don't expect blood spatter on walls or bloody footprints, even after you exit a pool of blood. Sometimes you can't tell a boulder from a bag, or a pile of rags. Sometimes textures are just dull. That's not to say everything is terrible. The creatures are pretty gruesome and interesting with their metal limbs and various scars and ghastly injuries. The backdrops are sufficient to portray a madman's private island, complete with old mysterious castle. It's just when you put anything up to any kind of scrutiny, it falls a bit short. As a side note, bloody effects in this game are rather disappointing in general. There's kind of a generic bloody splash animation that is layered on top of anything that happens (no custom responses to a slash or a bludgeon type of blow, for example). It ends up looking pretty cartoonish, and the horror factor for the game does get diminished by this. Sound is another quaint throwback to the old arcade days. You know, when you could barely hear what was coming from your machine or another, and the booming vibration of sound was all that really mattered. Your footsteps are constantly going, faster than it seems they should. It's sometimes hard to tell your footsteps apart from incoming monsters. The voice acting is also pretty lackluster. You play a man that's lost his wife, but sounds like he's dealing with it with all the emotion of losing his umbrella.
Gameplay: Rise of Nightmares starts you off on a train ride with the main character, Josh, and his wife Kate. They're trying to patch up their relationship, but when Josh accidentally lets a flask slip onto the floor, you see it's going to be a long train ride. Kate storms away, Josh follows, and a train wreck throws them all onto a mysterious island in the middle of nowhere. Somehow. You find yourself in a mad scientist's castle, and you don't find your wife. The castle is overrun by Frankenstein-like creatures that have been pieced together with metal parts for arms and legs, or just seemingly reanimated like zombies. Josh finds weapons like knives and machetes at first, and more "creative" things later on like hedge shears and meat grinder tools. The problem is, these weapons break, and you can't hold an inventory. If you want some long range and short range weapons, that's too bad. You'll only be able to hold one weapon at a time (there's an exception later in the game, but it also has its limits). Some of the enemies are really creative in their use of the Kinect controls. One monster in particular is dressed like an opera singer. She'll shriek a high pitched sound that will damage your character if you don't put your hands to your ears. This gesture leaves you unable to defend yourself as well, until you can get out of range of her song. There are also environment traps like spikes in the floor. Sometimes these will trigger a message that will tell you what to do, like sidestep or step back. You're given a pretty generous amount of time to respond to these kind of Kinect quick time events, so it's really not difficult, but it does break up the monotony.
Difficulty: Rise of Nightmares isn't a particularly difficult game, but that may be in part because of the limits the controls place on the game. Moving, for example, is not always easy. Twisting your sholders often turns you a bit more than you want, and you often run into door frames or walls. But you can use an "auto-move" gesture that will make your character automatically move down a hall or up stairs to wherever he needs to go. Also locking on to single enemies is pretty much done for you, eliminating at least one complication in combat. There are also occasional puzzles, but clearly the designers didn't want to tax anyone here either. You don't have to hunt very far for any clue, and anything that you can interact with is something you need to interact with. Hunt and fetch quests are kept exceedingly short and simple. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's just a fact with this game; Nothing is complicated beyond the controls.
Game Mechanics: Rise of Nightmares steps out as one of the first Kinect games to really let you run, turn, and "shoot" like a standard first person shooter game. The thing is, it didn't seem to grasp all the things that have made Kinect game fun so far. And it falls truly short of replicating a first person shooter experience. Basically the controls go like this: put your foot forward to walk forward. Stand to stop walking. Put your hands up in a fighting stance to get your weapon ready. It seems like it could work seamlessly, but when you put it altogether, it feels clunky. You basically have to separate most actions for them to work (no strafing, you have to turn, wait, turn more, then run). You can't really switch targets easily when you're locked on, so you end up having to drop your fighting stance and move. There's really no running to speak of, just a slightly faster walk. Did I mention there's no strafing? You can tweak the turning speed, as well as the amount of time it takes to complete a gesture, like picking something up. It still doesn't seem quick enough and fighting just doesn't seem responsive. I had several people try the game with similar flailing results. It just seems impossible to find the right gesture that the game "likes" in order to consistently swing a weapon. It seems like the poor controls were compensated for, since the enemy A.I. is pretty near nonexistent. Sometimes enemies will just randomly run away. They won't necessarily swarm you when they can and sometimes they don't approach you at all, even when you're inches away. What Rise of Nightmares does do is offer you a glimpse of what might be possible with future Kinect games like this. Right now it feels like an old arcade game, and a bit of a gimmicky one at that. Put a few quarters in, try it for a few minutes, but it won't really grip you for hours.
-Fights with Fire, GameVortex Communications AKA Christin Deville
Related Links: Rise of Nightmares on Sega.com Buy Rise of Nightmares on Amazon
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