Rise of Nightmares for Kinect is a game that sets a few milestones, both globally in terms of being the first M-rated Kinect game released and personally in terms of being my first real foray into Kinect gaming. The game is published and developed by SEGA and touted as a survival horror videogame - certainly an interesting approach to the Kinect controller considering that almost every other Kinect game presently available is geared towards family entertainment.

First impressions of the title are certainly very promising. From the horrific box art to the solemn game menus, you get a very tangible sense of foreboding from the nature of the control interactions and the unearthly undertones prevalent throughout the menu system. The inexplicably unnerving introduction to the game compounds the expectations that you are in for a bumpy ride as you’re thrust head-first into a tutorial chapter which serves a dual purpose as both an introduction to the game environment but also as a plot element.

Although fairly brief, the introduction achieves its purpose and by the close of the chapter I was left suitably shocked by the surprise turn of events and also completely familiar with the general tone of the game.

Subsequent to the introduction chapter, I became ready to experience the full flavour of the game’s graphics and controls and begun the actual storyline. Although I’ve never played a Kinect game besides family-friendly downloadable titles, I found the approach to a first-person control mechanism in Rise of Nightmares innovative and reasonably effective. There is obviously always going to be a challenge to incorporate freedom of movement in a game that requires you to keep your eyes on the screen while turning your body from side to side but to Rise of Nightmare’s credit, the controls for turning, walking, ducking, fighting, kicking and interacting with the environment are intuitive and simple enough to use.

In addition to Rise of Nightmares allowing players to have complete freedom of movement there is also an option for auto-moving which essentially places the game on rails and moves you from one plot point to another. The benefit of this approach is that players will not be bogged down with unnecessary navigation but using this feature prevents players from searching areas for additional weapons and clues.

The first noteworthy disappointment in Rise of Nightmares is the lacklustre graphics which are significantly dated for an Xbox 360 title and would seem far more at home - with absolute respect to the Xbox’s little rival - on the Nintendo Wii. Having said that, however, the graphics are not so poor that they will single-handedly detract from the experience of the game, but there are other elements that ultimately spoil the experience

Rise of Nightmares is a survival horror game, and as with any survival horror, the game’s lifeblood is fear. If players aren’t suitably on edge almost constantly then the game fails its primary objective. Good survival horror games make effective use of a multitude of elements to enhance the overall experience, ranging from sights, sounds, tones, and story. Disappointingly in almost all of these categories Rise of Nightmares doesn’t quite reach the level it aspires to.

The game clearly pulls out all the stops to create a visually grotesque environment full of horror and gore but the impact of this visual saturation is somewhat limited by the poor graphics. The plethora of allusions to gruesome tortures and deaths still effectively conveys the foreboding sense of pain and suffering, which in itself creates a very powerful presence of fear and trepidation, but the story suffers from feeling a bit erratic at times and is almost completely undone by atrocious voice-acting and the general linearity of the game.

In addition to generating fear, there are some basic rules that survival horrors must follow for success: they should be terrifying because of the plot, not only because of the gore, and the game must draw the player into the character’s life by trying to make sense as a believable substitute for reality. The plot of Rise of Nightmares is reasonably straightforward - your girlfriend is kidnapped by a mechanical ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’ and taken to a Transylvanian castle. You are determined to rescue her from the clutches of a mad psychopathic doctor who seems to be resurrecting human corpses into mechanical zombies, using sickles and scythes as substitutes for limbs. Sounds fun!

The other human characters you’ll meet on your adventure are infuriating in their lack of emotion or any hint of humanity. At one stage of the game a survivor is swallowed up right in front of a group of people, but no-one screams or freaks out - everyone just calmly continues to the rally point, at which point they complain about how ‘nature sucks.’ Like the game’s presentation, these sorts of logical anomalies in Rise of Nightmares end up posing a barrier to complete immersion, which is key to effectively convey fear.

As a survival horror title goes, Rise of Nightmares is more akin to the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ or ‘Saw’ franchises than it is to ‘Alien’ or ‘Nightmare on Elm Street.’ There’s plenty of gory deaths, gruesome discoveries, creepy goons and wicked weapons. Choosing to dismember a ‘zombie’ with a chainsaw or an ice saw is just one of the many tasty choices you’ll have to make as you struggle to escape the nightmarish dungeon that you find yourself trapped in. Rise of Nightmares will keep players engrossed more through the morbid allure of wanting to know how it ends rather than from the calibre of the game.

The game focuses almost exclusively on torture and gore to keep the player on edge and to its credit, it achieves this effectively. The control mechanisms are innovative and intuitive in the context of the Kinect controller, but I did find at times that my neck and back started to ache from all the twists and turns I had to perform while keeping my head squarely focused on the screen. The sensitivity can be adjusted but finding the right balance is a mini-game in itself.

If you’re a sensitive gamer or prefer not to indulge in too much gore, intestines, torture, eye-gouging, or the like, then I strongly advise avoiding this title because that’s about all you’ll get out of it. If you’re a fan of movies like Saw, however, then you will find Rise of Nightmares the perfect fit for your addiction.

The Good:

- Torture fans will love it
- Promising innovations to the Kinect games stable

The Base:

- Atrocious voice-acting
- Graphics are not cutting-edge
- I don’t find the gore and violence all that appealing
- Too much happens on rails

Purchase: