As you may recall, I like fighting. I still haven’t started or been in a fight but I still love MMA.
One of my favourite MMA fighters was a coach on season seven of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) and recently a friend was kind enough to lend me the series.
Wow. What a series.
For those of you not in the know with TUF, it’s a reality show whereby 16 cage fighters live in a house for six weeks and have to train and fight each other in order to win a three year six-figure contract with the UFC.
Series seven is the first time they changed the format so that 32 people started at the show and they all had to fight each other in order to win a place in the competition. This ensured fighters were keen to get into the house and wouldn’t pull out for some poor reason eg I haven’t seen my girlfriend in two weeks or my last fight made me bleed and now I’m not pretty (that last one didn’t happen but they are all poor excuses for experienced cage fighters).
The system worked. Everyone who got into the house delivered throughout the series, with a number of fights reminiscent of cartoons, gaming and Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.
Outside of UFC or TUF, never have I seen two live men pummel each other the way they do here. It’s literally like when you play Fight Night, UFC Undisputed or even Wii Sports Boxing and you go way too hard at it.
Fists would connect with heads but instead of dropping to the ground, some fighters would just shake it off virtually unphased and continue throwing punches, hungry for a win and desperate to be one step closer to winning the contract.
With this love of blood sport in mind, I’m keen to try Fighters Uncaged for the Xbox 360 Kinect. Actually I’m a little torn about the decision to try it. Like an evolved Wii Sports Boxing, Fighters Uncaged is a single player brawler that utilises the Kinect camera to fight in a 3D environment.
The camera will recognise a number of your actions and translate them into fighting moves including kicks, punches and elbows within the game.
While in concept it has the potential to be a fighting game of choice, unfortunately it has also had a large number of fairly disappointing reviews and the developer is being sued by the UFC for use of their catchphrase. Also, I’m fairly sure when Gamespot awards a game Worst Game of 2010 it’s probably not the best of titles to spend money on. Metacritic gives it an uninspiring 38. I didn’t realise games were rated this low...
For now it might be safer to stick with UFC Undisputed for a technical and visually appealing fighter, and leave Kinect and its fighting catalogue until the technology isn’t so fresh so developer.
I bought Carly Kinect and Dance Central for her birthday. The technology is pretty impressive, and at least for the first few days Carly was hooked on it. Unfortunately it went the way of the Wii, and the sensor is amassing a bit of dust.
ReplyDeleteI don't own an XBox, and I already have a Wii (which like Tristan's Kinect, is collecting a fair amount of dust), so there is literally no point for me to enter the new "sensor" gaming market.
ReplyDeleteNone of the games really look that inspiring (outside of Time Crisis 4 and possibly KZ3 with Move functionality). I would prefer to just sit down and play a game.
My Wii is only used on occasion when people who don't have one come around and are happy to play Wii Sports. I still haven't picked up Donkey Kong or Super Mario - everytime I think about buying it (even renting it) I just question if it's going to be good.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you Grimy; I think I should just sit down for traditional gaming... atleast until the tech/programming has improved significantly.
There isn't enough incentive to play these games at the moment. There is no real hook to get involved in the game.
ReplyDeleteFPS (well, at least decently executed ones) provide me with an avenue to test myself against others online on a reasonably level playing field; sports games allow me to live out all of my sporting fantasies; fighting games allow me to do what I would not do in real life; driving games allow me to thrash cars that I will never be able to afford and do disgusting things to them; and RPGs allow me to enter worlds or garner abilities that I don't think anybody would ever have.
What do motion capture games do for me? Make do the action of shooting a basketball or swing a tennis racket. I can do all these things if I want, you know, outside of the house. I don't want my games to emmulate reality. I play games to escape it or provide me with the opportunity to do something that I would never do in my life.
Rubes got a Move at launch and I am so happy that I didn't follow suit. Time Crisis: Razing Storm was so fucking disappointing, plus most of the launch titles had a Wii-too feeling about them.
ReplyDeleteI'm a lazy man at the best of times, so I pretty much need to game while sitting down.