Rise of Nightmares

What's truly shocking is the fact that there is a real, substantiated horror experience tucked behind its Kinect veneer.

Rise of Nightmares is the first proper core game for Kinect. What the game lacks in the story- and graphics-department, it more than compansates for with innovative and intuitive gameplay. This bodes well for Xbox 360s motion sensor.

Rise of Nightmares is flawed fun.

It's important to remember, however, that underneath the trite atmosphere and awful writing, there lies an experience that allows you to physically sift through a pile of skulls and, later on, toss explosive spheres of arcane energy at your enemies.

It's fun, but faulted. Kinect does its job, but there are a few drawbacks that you must come to terms with to be able to appreciate this crazy adventure. Given kinect games' price, it's well worth a go if you have had enough of animals, sports and cute things.

A game with mixed results. It uses Kinect like never before, it is well executed and it marks the way for other games to follow, as it is one of the few "traditional" games adapted for Kinect-only gameplay. But it also has it flaws, and sometimes it is difficult to go back, turn or pick up weapons, and this harms the enjoyment of the game.

Rise of Nightmares is a decent horror game with great ideas and a spooky atmosphere but is let down by clunky movement controls.

Rise of Nightmares is an interesting attempt to bring something new to the Kinect, and for that it gets my vote. Though it stumbles along the way, it's a unique experience to play through, fighting off the undead and sprinting from abominations without a controller in sight. It's got its flaws, but if you got an interest in the horror genre, and a Kinect, take a stroll through a haunted landscape in Rise of Nightmares.

Overall, Sega's Rise of Nightmares makes valiant attempt at a creepy matured rated action horror game for the Kinect.

It's hard to recommend this one at full price, but if you're pretty patient I have a good feeling you will enjoy the experience Rise of Nightmares offers. If you're pretty sick of Kinect already, this is not going to be the game to sway you over.

It's an arse-ugly game to watch, but not without charm. [Dec 2011, p.]

Once over the control issues there is a pretty decent game to be played. However, it is hard to get over the feeling that the game could have been better off removing the movement controls and having a story driven fully on-rails hack em up type game.

It may not be perfect, but the hardcore gamer should be optimistic about the future.

Being the first true hardcore game for Kinect, Rise of Nightmares falls short of the challenge. Its b-movie aesthetic and nice combat system quickly gets tiresome due to the... nightmarish movement mechanics.

Movement and combat never really come together in a cohesive matter. When you're overrun by the undead or your weapon suddenly breaks and you need to defend and retreat, it becomes painfully obvious that the game can't handle multitasking or movements made in quick succession, and will perform only one (and sometimes none) of the many actions you need to survive.

Kinect has confused the gaming cosmos. Rise of Nightmares certainly isn't a good game - but just about passes for a good Kinect game.

Rise of Nightmares is a missed opportunity. The idea of a first person horror game made more immersive thanks to motion controls is a very good one, but it fumbles in the controls department due to a clunky exploration system and a too simplistic and repetitive combat system. It deserved to be better thought out and developed.

The use of Kinect in Rise of Nightmares is both its strongpoint as its weakness. It immerses you in a great survival-horror experience that has enough twists and turns to keep you entertained. But at the same time, the controls deliver so many frustrating moments that we can't really recommend it.

Awkward motion controls and shallow combat make Rise of Nightmares a frighteningly unremarkable adventure in zombie killing.

Rise of Nightmares is an interesting idea, an ambitious project followed by a catastrophic implementation. Walking on 3D locations sounds really promising, but its charm disappears after 10 minutes because of a too twisted control schema: considering this was the first horror hardcore game for Kinect, we can only hope for a brighter future for this genre.

Could have been properly ace if it has used Kinect and a controller in tandem. [Dec 2011, p.95]

It's a shame that a title that actually tries out some new ideas for Kinect doesn't manage to leave a better impression. For once though, the blame shouldn't be put on the motion sensor, but rather a lack of attention to graphics, sound and story.

More time in the oven (it may be years yet) may prove a glorious revolution. For now, the heinously awkward movement controls are as low-rent as the storyline.

It's not awful and, in a House of the Dead-while-standing-up kind of a way, it's acceptable, but only really worth buying if you have nothing else for the Kinect that you spunked money on and you've seen it going dirt cheap somewhere.

It's a mediocre survival horror game that demonstrates a lot of ambition on the part of Sega, but it clearly needed some more time in development.

SEGA deserves some respect for trying, but this fails (again) as becoming "the Kinect game for hardcore players".

Rise of Nightmares is gross, linear, ugly. Kinect does a good job in recognising movements of the videoplayer, but the control scheme is simply ludicrous and not functional.

Sega shows that they understand exactly how to make interesting Kinect challenges. Unfortunetly, the controls just doesn't cut it when the action get to hectic and in the end, Rise of Nightmares is a letdown.

Instead of embracing the technology on its own merits, the game is actually more an exercise in forcing Kinect to ape the functions – sometimes for good, but mostly ill – of a standard controller.

It's repetitive and full of admirable yet ultimately failed experiments, and there are many better titles worthy of your attention.

For better or worse, Rise of Nightmares doesn't support a standard controller. Even if it did, the game would still be just as guilty of blandness. Combine this sin with the constant control struggles, and it's tough to recommend this game for even the most desperate Kinect owner.