Fighters Uncaged is a bit of a weird one. From it's concept, it sounds like the kind of game that may actually work quite well, especially using the full body tracking of Microsoft's Kinect Sensor. A beat 'em up, in the vein of Dead or Alive, Tekken, or any one of a number of similar games, Fighters Uncaged aims to be a grittier, more serious version of other beat 'em ups. Claiming to allow you to use over 70 moves taken from the world of Mixed Martial Arts, it certainly sounds the business. But is it up to the task?
The answer is both yes, and no. If you're looking for a serious, gritty, Mixed Martial Arts trainer, than Fighters Uncaged definitely isn't for you. For the rest of us, however, if the idea of standing in front of your TV, swinging and flailing all of your limbs wildly as you attempt to take down a biker, or some gangsta wannabe, then read on.
Lean back to dodge, punch to punch - it's pretty straightforward.
The basic idea is quite simple, and as the tutorial takes you through the basic controls, everything seems to make sense. You punch by punching, kick by kicking, and can duck by - you guessed it - ducking, as you would do in real life. The height of your kicks in real life relate to the kicks your character does, although you're never required to basically do the vertical splits to kick your opponent in the chin, as the game does a bit of guess work for you.
Strangely, while most of the moves seem fairly logical, there are a few that you'll simply need to remember certain poses to pull off. Having to put your one foot behind the other, and lean forward in order to pull off a roundhouse kick is a bit of an odd thing to do - although we don't really see what the alternative would have been either.
Countering is an important part of the game, as it's basically how you get a window to attack your opponent - as they stumble away from your counter, you can pounce and, well, sting like the proverbial bee. In the tutorial, whenever your opponent attempts a move on you, the whole game slows down, as the guy's fist/knee/head start glowing, to give you plenty of time to see the move coming. As soon as you begin the game proper, however, you're given much less warning of the incoming moves, which makes blocking, reversing, and laying a fist on your opponent a lot harder.
The tutorial gets you up to speed - but then the game accelerates away...
As you progress through the single player game, you'll have to take out a number of opponents, with seemingly no rhyme or reason behind it. The quicker you beat your opponents, and the less health you lose, the more crowns you'll get for winning - and if you collect enough crowns, you move up to the next tier of fighters. The problem is, it's so hard to lay a blow on your opponent, and so tricky to get the game to realise what move you're trying to throw, that it doesn't really work, and we're sure many will struggle to get past the first tier. We know we did.
If the idea of having a digital sparring partner in Kinect held some appeal to you, we'd advise holding off until something a bit better comes along. As we mentioned, the idea is fine in theory - it's just the execution that's been botched. Maybe next time, eh?
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
