Fighters Uncaged

UbisoftXbox 360

Xbox’s first hardcore, not-kid-friendly experience with the Kinect device is so awful that if you play it long enough you may find yourself punching the TV screen in frustration. There is not a single positive thing about this game, apart from the calories you may burn trying to figure out the unresponsive swinging motions, but if that’s what you’re looking for in a video game experience, try Kinect Sports. From the sound, the graphics, the “story,” to the aforementioned controls, Ubisoft’s Fighters Uncaged misses on all cylinders.

The game does a terrible job of providing any context – read the instruction manual for the point of it all – but basically you are a character named Simon who is trying to fight his way through illegal tournaments to save his dad from a crimelord. None of this is ever mentioned during the game, so if you didn’t pay attention to the cinematic opening, you’d think you were just some jerk going around fighting people for no reason.

Understandably, the game has you carry out a tutorial before getting into the game. Unfortunately, the tutorial drags on forever and is unskippable, forcing you to try a move three times with each limb. That in itself wouldn’t be so terrible if there was a point to it; however, you soon find out that the lag is so bad that it hardly picks up your movements at all, no matter your best efforts. The game preaches being precise, but those who like to button-smash will have more success by translating that into a constant swinging of arms and legs here.

To add to the frustration is the need to score a certain amount of points to progress through levels. It doesn’t even matter if you defeat your opponent, you just have to score a certain amount of points in a round. What makes that an even more terrible idea is the game never tells you how to get more points. You assume connecting with a roundhouse would give you more points than a few jabs, but you never really know for certain. Such a system means you have to go back and re-fight an opponent, something that gets real old real fast.

You’d think that they’d at least make an effort to make the game look good knowing the combat system was not up to snuff, but sadly, it almost seems like less time was spent on the graphics. The characters contain no emotion or depth, looking like avatars you would see before the first Xbox. The backgrounds are even duller as they lack any detail, let alone animation.

But perhaps the most inexcusable part – aside from the broken controls – is the complete lack of multiplayer mode. All fighter games are supposed to come with at least a 2-player option, that’s the unwritten rule. Sadly, Fighters Uncaged won’t even give you the satisfaction of fake-pummeling your friend. Then again, perhaps Ubisoft was wise to leave this out after all – the need to flail your limbs madly to get results may not be the best idea when having to share the floor with someone else.