23.30
style
The businessman walks away from the cave into the forest and is killed by something off screen. Panicking, the survivors run deeper in the cave until they fall out the other side into a swamp. While making their way out the other general is pulled under and killed, causing the survivors to panic. After escaping the swamp and walking through the forest, they come upon a cemetery where they meet up with another group of survivors. The student wanders into a cellar and is heard screaming. Josh runs to help and finds her panicking, saying she saw a corpse move. Josh investigates and the corpse, along with several others reanimate and attack. The girl runs away and Josh fends them off before pursuing her. Josh exits the cellar and finds that all the survivors have run off due to the zombies. As Josh makes his way through the cemetery, he hears a scream and watches as Monica is decapitated and then thrown at a wall, the attacker being Ernst, his wife's kidnapper. Ernst then subdues Josh, who loses consciousness.
Josh awakens to find that he has been tied to a chair by Viktor, the mad scientist responsible for the zombie infestation. Max is tied up as well, but is soon killed by Viktor. He is about to kill Josh when he gets a phone call and exits urgently, leaving a zombie nurse to finish the job. Fortunately, Josh is rescued and freed by the Romanian who told you of Kate's letter, and they attempt to find their way out. The two make their way though a hall when the survivor inspects a fresh bloodstain, only to end up bisected by a trap. Josh fights his way through a horde of zombies and encounters Jane, but she is kidnapped by Ernst. He later comes across a ringing phone. Josh answers and hears Kate begging him to help, followed by a woman's voice telling him that he will never find her,and a projector shows footage of a webcam with a mysterious woman next to Kate, who is captive in a torture chair. He continues to find strange bedrooms, of which is a crib and a doll making sounds of crying. He then finds a sewing room, filled with dresses and mannequins one of which strangely looks like a zombie, casting a bit of paranoia to the scene. He advances to a cave to find the two Russian ballerinas now zombies. The strange woman from before traps him in with the zombie twins. After he defeats them, he wanders outside to a courtyard.
In the courtyard, he hears someone asking him to help him out of the shed. The man (Fido) is suspiciously calm and claims to have been Viktor's employee once, also claiming to know how to release Kate. He has Josh search for the key and when freed, Josh is surprised to find that his head has been sewn to the body of a small lapdog. Fido tells Josh that he will only help him if Josh helps return him to his human state. After being restored, he gives Josh the key to the tall tower and tells him there's a surprise at the top. Josh then wanders to the top of the tower to find the raver couple, now resembling marionettes. He kills them, and then is transported to a cave, where he picks up a mystical weapon, Azoth, that attaches to his left hand.
Josh eventually finds Kate, but she is strapped to a table with Viktor and Ernst next to her. Viktor tells Ernst to kill Josh, but Josh defeats him. Near death, Ernst becomes more human, and lets Josh and Kate escape. In a fit of rage, Viktor brutally murders Ernst. Josh and Kate run into a forest, but Kate is entranced by a sudden music that starts playing, and she wanders into a sacrificial site. Viktor is there, but in the body of a woman. He opens up a portal, but Josh destroys the towers that created it, and Viktor is burned to death. However, before he can reach Kate, Marchosias, or Fido in his human form, knocks Josh unconscious.
Josh wakes up to find that he is strapped to a vertical table, with the bodies of Viktor and Ernst present too. Marchosias reveals that he was fascinated by Viktor, and will use Josh in order to reincarnate him. Out of Viktor's corpse he pulls out an eel- like creature, and inserts it into Josh's mouth, making Viktor take the body of Josh.
Josh then reawakens to find himself in a prison cell, in the body of Ernst. He sees Kate walking along with Viktor, who is now in the body of Josh. Kate now believes that Viktor is Josh, and that Josh is Ernst. The two leave Josh/Ernst in his cell. Soon, Josh hears Aaron and Katja, who have escaped from their cell, an event that happens at the start of the game. They open all the cell doors, and Josh tries to follow them, but they scream and run away because they think that he is Ernst. Aaron and Katja run into a trap, and are crushed by two walls. Josh escapes, and also has the advantage of Ernst's two chain hands that can kill an enemy from a distance.
Josh runs after Kate, and sees her walking off with Viktor in Josh's body. He follows, and meets Marchosias. He then reveals an altered Jane, and tells her to kill Josh. Josh overpowers her, and she goes into a mental breakdown. As she starts to burn up, she jumps onto Marchosias, and they both burn together. Josh staggers out into the forest, and collapses.
He wakes up to see Yeli dancing in front of him, saying that before Josh can kill Viktor and claim back his body, he must enter the dream realm to learn why everything happened, then she stabs him with a dagger that sends him back to the train, but in his imagination. Josh can also hear what the other passengers were thinking at the time, before all of them turn into a blood- like gas.
He encounters the man who told him of his wife's letter, and he thinks briefly about how he hates travelling through the cursed forest. Josh then sees the student, who is thinking about how her parents will hate her once they find out that she dropped out of school. When Josh sees the two ballerinas, they both are thinking that without the other, they could be stars. Then he sees the four going to the rave. Aaron first thinks about how he doesn't like 'love and peace', Monica is thinking about how she loves Europe and how lovely Max is, Max is thinking about how to use Monica to smuggle drugs into America, and Katja is lamenting about how Monica is being used as Max's puppet. Josh then meets Jane, who is thinking about her next project, and how half- dead people can be used. She then snaps out of her dream, thinking that she might need counselling. Next, Josh sees the two Romanian generals. One is thinking about how he lost his friends in war because his gun jammed, the other is thinking about marrying the woman he loves and setting up his own business. The next man he sees is the ticket collector, who is strangely thinking about the train derailing. Unable to see Yeli, Josh then sees the German businessman, who wants to embezzle his company's funds. Lastly, he sees Kate. She is thinking about the fact that she is pregnant, a fact Josh didn't know. Viktor then appears by her side, saying that she is the same as his wife Mary. Kate then turns into gas, Viktor sees Josh, and he runs away.
Next, Josh is led to Viktor's memories with Mary. At first, Mary and Viktor were happy because they could have a baby, which was actually Josh's. Then, Josh learns that Viktor tried to make the baby perfect but accidentally killed it, and Mary shouted at him. He strangled Mary to death mindlessly, and then he vowed to learn how to resurrect the dead to bring Mary back. He then sees Viktor dressed in Mary's clothes, and then Josh goes into Viktor's dream world to defeat him. Viktor scolds Josh, saying that his baby is gone, before Viktor suddenly turns into a complete robotic being. Josh finds Yeli's dagger, and stabs Viktor in the heart.
Josh wakes up to see that in real life, he has stabbed Yeli. Not only that, but he is in his own body, and not Ernst's. Josh coughs up Viktor's eel, and it dies. Yeli then tells Josh that Kate is at the ritual site, and she charges his Azoth. She then dies next to the body of Ernst. Josh proceeds to find Kate, and he is teleported to a staircase where he can hear Viktor and Mary. They are arguing, with Mary saying that Viktor killed their baby. Josh then arrives in Mary's dream world, a mystical land of floating islands. Josh finds Mary tending to his unborn baby, and she battles him. She is actually a massive demon that flies, with another head in her heart-like body. Josh eventually kills her with the Azoth, and she perishes. Josh then takes back his baby, and the dream stops.
In a post- credits scene, Josh and a pregnant Kate are leaving Romania on a train. As Josh leaves, he bumps into a man, his face and body badly burned and bandaged. The man sits down near Kate, and opens his suitcase to reveal three small phials with the parasites in them. The man then laughs, and the game ends.
Review
A good survival horror game can suck you in, maybe more than many horror films. You sit in the dark, tension rising as you peek slowly around every corner, wondering what new terror awaits. You desperately hope there's ammo in the next room, and not the corpse of your wife. And then you pretend you're swimming and take a step back because the camera can't sense you. Wait, what? Oh no, that's this stupid horror game, Rise of Nightmares, that does that last part.
Rise of Nightmares puts you in the shoes of Josh, as he tries to save his wife Kate from the clutches of a painfully generic mad scientist. You take control of Josh in a first-person survival horror beat down. It's a first for Kinect, both in terms of its super violent M rating, and a game where players have full range of motion.
The motion controls serve as Rise of Nightmare's greatest strength, and ultimate weakness. At times they work very well, better than most other Kinect games. Hacking the limbs off zombies, kicking open doors, and sidestepping attacks feels natural, and, admittedly, a little satisfying. But then I tried to walk in a straight line and discovered that Josh is either drunk the entire game (a possibility because he does have a drinking problem), or he's even clumsier than the hordes of the undead he fights. Trying to maneuver the endless hallways of the creepy castle you're trapped in involves pivoting your shoulders and taking one step back or forward. And as fun as it is to pretend to be a backup dancer in a Fat Joe video, it's certainly not scary. The option of an auto walk feature, while nice, is basically a neon sign on screen at all times that says "Our game doesn't work!"
Even the best part of the game, killing the crap out of every zombie you see, gets old after a couple hours. Rise of Nightmares attempts to spice up the game with new types of zombies, but it's too little too late, and by Act 4 (of 10) I was just plain tired. The boss battles are the most disappointing part because they're just normal enemies that have a couple attacks you need to dodge with a quick time event like ducking or sidestepping. It's too simple to be challenging or interesting. Repetitive games are bad enough, but when you're using your entire body to play you physically feel the strain of doing the same stuff over and over and over.
Everything about the motion controls serve to make Rise of Nightmares as unfrightening as possible. The game forces you to literally step back from the experience, and as such you can never fully immerse yourself in the story, an essential component of any good survival horror game.
And what a story it is! See, even if you take away the motion controls, Rise of Nightmares is still a ridiculous, laughably bad horror game. It's Bad Writing 101. Every character is one dimensional (bickering main couple, asshole business man, raver youth, ballerinas), and every line is something along the lines of "Aaah zombies! This is f---ing scary!" The story starts off like some House of the Dead meets Hostel thing, but goes completely off the rails towards the end. It takes itself so seriously that the few moments of comedy clash and weaken the plot. Oh, and try not to laugh when the super sexy gypsy says her tearful goodbye to her lover-turned-monster before she stabs him in the balls.
Outside of murdering the mad scientist's army of servants (Seriously, how many identical French maids did you employ, dude?), Rise of Nightmares mostly consists of walking to a door, discovering it's locked, and pulling a switch located 3-6 feet away. That's it. That's the game.
Posted in: Adventure
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