Review by: Mike Thompson

You’ll have to excuse Josh. He’s been having a tough time, lately. He got into a fight with his wife, Kate, about his drinking (despite what Kate says, he doesn’t have a “problem”, he promises). Then the train he was on de-railed. And then some dude kidnapped Kate and Josh wound up fighting through hordes of zombies on some mad scientist’s estate. It’s just one of those nights.

Rise of Nightmares is the new survival horror game that utilizes the Kinect to turn players into the controller. It’s incredibly promising and ambitious at first, but it quickly goes downhill, starting with the overall narrative. The story follows the alcoholic Josh on his quest to rescue his wife as he roams across the estate of a psychotic scientists named Viktor, and it’s pretty much one of the most ridiculous plots around.

That said, there’s a certain charm with the story here, mainly because it’s so god-awful that it almost feels like it was intentionally written to be bad. It feels like the script, complete with its hokey dialogue and massive plot holes (like when Josh, after protecting Kate for hours, lets her randomly walk off into the unknown darkness), would’ve been a perfect fit on a late night SyFy TV movie. Essentially, this is one of those stories that is so bad it’s good.

Walking forward merely requires you to simply place a foot in front of them; Josh will move faster if the foot is placed further out. Changing direction is as simple as twisting your shoulders. Since the game takes place in a fairly open world, this means that you have been given a truly unique way to explore their surroundings. Doors are opened with a push (or a kick), and combat is designed to feel natural, based on exactly how Josh is fighting the undead at the moment. If you get tired of manually controlling things, though, you can hold up your right arm and Josh will move on auto-pilot towards his next goal until he has to stop and kick some zombie’s teeth in.

Unfortunately, moving around is easier said than done. Josh can’t really run, and there’s no way to shift the first person point of view without completely changing direction. Additionally, when certain obstacles like spikes, pits, and giant blades pop up (as such things are part of the standard décor when estates are run by a crazy villain), the movement controls are often too clumsy to make avoiding the traps possible. Finally, the position that you have to hold your right arm up isn’t a natural position, and it doesn’t take long before the shoulder starts to feel really sore from doing this.

Combat, however, fares a bit better when it comes to controls. Because this is a Kinect title, fighting is based around unarmed and melee combat. If Josh isn’t holding a weapon, standard punches will do the trick, but different weapons require specific movements like slashing or throwing. There are occasional enemies (and some decent boss battles, too) that require a bit of strategy, though they’re few and far between, and most of zombies can be taken out with a few solid hits. Finally, the block move makes fighting feel a little too easy, since it holds off attacks from every direction and is pretty much impregnable.