Diabolical Pitch

Temporary frustration (and upper-arm pain) will fade as you mow down hordes of blade-throwing rabbits and hammer-toting elephants. Diabolical Pitch may not be a perfect game, but it's definitely an All-Star effort.

Fun, furious, but difficult. [July 2012, p.83]

Diabolical Pitch is a fun game, but sadly it lacks originality and after some time the game becomes boring. The multiplayer is the best part of this over-the-top baseball game.

It is not the perfect Kinect game, as it share some implementation flaws with several other games that use motion detection, but it is an original and fun game which will make you relax and laugh.

There really isn't a whole lot to Diabolical Pitch - it's over in a few hours, and every level functionally feels the same. Your mileage may vary, but personally, I had a ton of fun with it. While it doesn't have nearly as much charm as the typical Grasshopper game, it is still enough to scratch that Kinect itch that's been raw since Gunstringer.

Diabolical Pitch is a game that is best played over a few sessions. After playing for a while my arm started to get sore. The strategy of deciding what order to tackle enemies keeps things interesting, but not enough to completely overwhelm the "been there, done that" feeling I had at times.

800 Microsoft Points isn't much money. Suda51 has a eccentric and crazy proposal for you, as always. Now you must throw baseballs to kill monsters in an amusement park. Plain and simple, nothing more. Like it? Buy it.

At two hours, it's pretty short. [Issue#85, p.104]

Not the home run we'd hoped for. [June 2012, p.96]

At its core, Diabolical Pitch showcases how a smaller game should be structured - with regards to both the game idea and distribution channels. But at the end of the day all you can do is play locally with a friend and aim for the leaderboards, and that's simply not enough. A promising idea isn't enough to automatically be a homerun.

In what's turning out to be a regular Kinect refrain, then, try not to think of this as a flawed game so much as one that's been quietly and consistently undermined by its hardware.

The messy clash of themes, gameplay, and controls in Diabolical Pitch undoes everything. Brief bursts of entertainment occur only early on, and they're almost exclusively a result of the self-aware absurdity in Grasshopper Manufacture's presentation.

I so wanted to love this game. Hearing the story, seeing the visuals, I was ready to campaign for all to download this immediately given the creativity of concept alone. Then I hit 'start.' Sadly, the sketchy controls ruin this game.

We frankly expected more from one of the most original developers around, but alas, Diabolical Pitch ends up as an indifferent waste of time.

A mediocre experience, even considering the relatively affordable $10 price of admission. It's a novel distraction at best – hardly a sterling example of why Grasshopper has such dedicated fans.

Throwing a thunder ball often took multiple attempts, while calmly aiming for a headshot felt much more accurate and satisfying. Ultimately, as great as Diabolical Pitch's zany concepts are, the inconsistency of the controls dulled the overall experience -- and my pitching arm.

With sub-working core gameplay, Diabolical Pitch ultimately becomes little more than an exceptionally creative example of the limitations of Kinect. On a more effective control medium, it could have been a beautiful, if small, take on Suda51's every gaming hallmark. Instead, it is an elegant symbol of the Kinect's weaknesses. Even big fans of Grasshopper Manufacture should wait until they've played the demo multiple times before buying, even at 800 Microsoft points ($10). In as many words, this was a swing and a miss.

Fundamental control niggles mean very few players will persevere to unlock everything DP has to offer. [Issue#122, p.104]

Concept and artdesign are not too bad, but the game suffers from bad movement recognition.

It's a mechanically flawed game that takes two hours to beat - though it's going to feel like it takes much, much longer.

It's a great idea, and filled with some top grade Suda51 weirdness, but Kinect is nowhere near accurate enough to make even such a simple game work properly.

Diabolical Pitch feels like a minigame that belongs in a larger collection of minigames, but sadly it's not, and this is all you get for 800 Microsoft Points for two hours of gameplay. It's a shallow experience that even if it did work properly at all times it still wouldn't be that much more exciting or fun.