Rise of Nightmares Review

Making a 'proper' game using Kinect seemingly isn't very easy to do. While some of the peripheral's better titles have managed to capture your movements modestly well, none have been able to put you into a virtual world and let you actually explore. SEGA's Rise of Nightmares tries to do just that, offering walking, looking and combat wrapped up in a nightmarish world. Problem is: walking and looking around using Kinect isn't much fun - it doesn't matter how amusing a dog with a man's head is.

You're a normal guy, on a train with your wife. She gets angry that you're drinking again (she's been putting up with your problem for five years apparently), so leaves in an understandable huff. You try to find her, only to come across a carriage that's seen an obscene amount of bloody carnage. One guy gets his stomach ripped out by an especially unpleasant monster-thing, and then you spot your wife being carried off. The train crashes into a river, leaving you to find out what the hell is going on.

Rise of Nightmare's big selling point is how you control your character. Put one leg forward and you'll walk forward; turn your shoulders and you'll look left or right; hold your hand out and you can interact with objects; put your fists up and you'll enter combat mode, letting you block and attack - either with melee weapons or projectiles like knives. And yes, against all odds this control scheme does work as it's intended to. The problem is, playing a game like this just isn't fun.

There's an initial feeling of "Wow, this actually works. I'm wandering about, completely off-rails, just using my body and Kinect," but this is soon countered by real audible moans along the lines of "No, stop turning, why are you walking like you're a drunk toddler," and "how the hell am I meant to tackle all these zombie things at once using this control scheme?!"

Once things start to heat up a bit, the enemies will begin coming at you in larger numbers and with varying special abilities (screaming, exploding, vomiting, etc), at which point it becomes increasingly hard to keep calm and not have a go at the controls. Nothing here is difficult in the traditional sense, but in Rise of Nightmares you'll die because you couldn't get your guy to walk backwards in time - and that's frustrating.