3. Fighters Uncaged
UbisoftThere was sparkling excitement in the air as the industry prepared for the Kinect launch. So much had been promised, and now we were to see if the games would live up to our lofty expectations. And then we're roundhouse kicked in the face by this extremely unpleasant game. In fairness, we took a lot of hits that day - many of the launch titles were severely disappointing. But Fighters Uncaged delivered a slice of motion gaming so wretched that it was enough to turn many off the whole Kinect idea altogether. Aimed at the core gamer, as apposed to the rest of the cheerful fluff that came out at launch directed at the casual gamer and younger audience, Fighters Uncaged should have been an empowering brawler that made us feel truly connected to the on-screen action. This should have been the answer to our prayers - assuming that your prayers were to be transformed into a ruthless thug who spends his days pounding his fists into people's faces. We saw the opportunity to live out our Street Fighter fantasies, kicking and punching a tornado through our living rooms. Instead we got this rancid mess, a shockingly bad beat-em-up, flung at us like monkey faeces. This was a sinister molestation of the phrase "motion control", since there was precious little about Fighters Uncaged that felt like it was really under our control. We threw our uppercuts with gusto, we lashed out wildly, wide-eyed and hopeful€ but it was not to be. This putrid game had no intention of making sense of our inputs - dodge attempts became directionless headbutts, rising knees to the face were swiftly misinterpreted as backsteps, while clever footwork would usually see our character stumble directly into the path of an incoming fist. And then people wonder why the Kinect library is crammed with simple sugary garbage for children, not grown up games for grown up gamers. We're just not as forgiving when it comes to releasing blatantly unfinished games.