Review

Rise of Nightmares

Now that Microsoft’s Kinect is barely out of its infancy stage, developers are beginning to come up with bold concepts attempting to usher in new gameplay experiences. Dance Central was THE reason to own a Kinect redefining the dance game genre and making it cool to play a dance game in front of your friends. UFC Trainer is putting a new spin on the fitness genre, and the assault on sports games is right around the corner. But what about the Survival Horror genre? Taking the first crack is Sega with their offering titled Rise of Nightmares. Nightmares is a survival horror game with a first person view, taking advantage of the Kinect, immersing you in the game as you try and survive the monstrosities set before you.

The game revolves around a modern day American couple touring the European countryside (cliché much?). During your train ride you and your wife are separated and being the concerned type you go to look for her. Right when you’re about to catch up with her, you enter a train car that’s had a huge blood bath commence. At the end of the car you see a huge brute carrying off your wife with a mysterious man on looking and laughing frantically. Moments later the train crashes and you awaken in the rubble trying to escape the wreck alive. Fast forward to the plot of the story and you find yourself trapped in a huge mansion trying not only to get out alive, but to find your loved one in the process. However, a couple hundred grisly man made zombies are standing in your way. Some have enhanced arms, legs some even having full body upgrades, with the sole purpose of killing you. Further into the game you realize the mysterious man on the train is a deranged Dr. with unknown motives and being the person behind those grisly zombie like creations giving you and others hell.

Gameplay for Nightmares consist of very basic, yet effective and accurate movements to help get you safely from point A to B. In this survival outing Sega chose to incorporate regenerative health, as a means of lessening the difficulty of the game. Though it is appreciated the whole tension of survival horror is managing your first aid supplies, AND managing weapon inventory, or perhaps that’s just how I feel. Utilizing a first person view, Nightmares has a full range of motions keeping the game play fresh with surprises thrown in throughout the game. With both feet beside each other, in order to move forward you simply place your left or right foot in front of the other, and to move backwards you place one foot behind the other. To stop your forward or backward progress you place both feet side by side. Turning is done by turning your shoulders in the direction you want to go. Though it works, it does take quite a bit of time to get used to as you will overturn, over correct and miss the point of interest your trying to navigate to. It would have been nice if you had the option to run…you know…seeing as how you are trying to survive and all, it would have been a much appreciated addition. A very helpful alternative to the sometimes clunky navigation is the auto navigate option you have, that moves the character for you with fair precision and no errors. However, in order to prevent you from abusing the auto navigate function, Sega forces you during action sequences to rely solely on the precision of your movements and quick reflexes.

Combat, for the most part, is handled adequately enough to assist you in the surviving the treacherous creatures that await you throughout the game. Various household items such as vases and pipes are scattered in the game to use as effective bludgeoning tools, as well as typical survival horror fare such as axes, machetes, scalpels for throwing and even ice saws. In order to pick up weapons you simply walk to the highlighted item and place your hand over it until the interactive icon picks up the item. You can either equip it with your left hand or right hand, being totally left up to your preference. Depending on the weapon, vertical and horizontal slashes are the standard flavor for attacks, while chainsaws and knives offer different (but not many) angles of attack. Attacking and fending off creatures is a fairly easy task and at times very satisfying.

While confronting one creature is simple enough being surrounded by three or four is quite difficult with the only means to turn around is by moving your shoulders. There’s no quick 180 degree turns in this game unfortunately so a vital part of your survival hinges on you effectively managing your surrounding space. If you do happen to be cornered (and you will) you have the ability to kick an enemy to create enough space to escape and readjust your attack. To heighten the sense of urgency, each weapon has a limited amount of uses before it breaks and is rendered useless. The current weapon your holding is highlighted at the bottom left of the screen. Over time with repeated use the weapon begins to glow red and continued use causes it to break. This forces you to resort to fisticuffs and brings me to one of my gripes with the game. You can only carry one weapon at a time, while yes, it does add a layer of survival to the game Sega could have at least gave us a knife as a default weapon. Using fist to fight the onslaught of enemies is grossly ineffective, exhaustive and extremely frustrating. Bare hands are realistic sure, but much like your choice of attacks you’re limited to a jab attack which IS NOT very realistic. Having an uppercut, neck snap, kidney punch, hell even an eye gouge would have made bare hands fighting a very satisfying experience, one that I would have chosen over using a vase to attack enemies.  Another thing that would have been awesome would have been the ability to dual wield weapons. Outnumbered? A machete in each hand would greatly even the odds. Other actions include crouching to avoid danger, balancing, climbing, and quick back steps. For a while the game and actions are fun but everything gets repetitive and cumbersome after a while, in particular avoiding enemies and certain areas that require precise movements

Graphically speaking Nightmares has average visuals, nothing mind blowing or sub par, with the character models being the bright spot in the game. The levels themselves are very bland save for the torture rooms and one or two other locales throughout the game. If Sega really wanted to scare the daylights out of us, they should have beefed up the environments with more detail and objects thrown in the way. The sound department churns out some decent effects such as the undead walking and moaning. Some of the voice acting is really good, while other parts of the voice acting are flat out awful. There were a few scenes where the voice acting didn’t match the tension of the moment, but more often than not it’s bearable. The music fits the game nicely upping the fright factor when enemies are nearby.

Any game optimized for Kinect will, for the first few years, be new and innovative. Moving throughout Nightmares is fun and entertaining, however only for the first play through. Once you discover the good Dr.’s motives and witness what happened to the small band of survivors there is little reason to pop the disc back in. There are cassette tapes scattered about that gives the accounts of different characters in the game to provide a little insight and back story as well as Taro cards that provide a little novelty. A huge blow for this game is the fact that it is in doubt a Kinect game, meaning games for the Kinect need a lot of light in order for the sensor to read the movements. The problem? This is a HORROR game, and a game in this particular genre mood is killed by playing it in a room full of light. As it stands, Nightmares is a decent effort. Not a buy; a rental at best. SEGA has a lot of work ahead of them!