I’ll be quite honest. When I first heard about Wipeout, I thought it was going to be one of these lukewarm game shows, along the same lines of Million Dollar Drop (yawn) and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader (yikes). But upon viewing a few episodes, I found it took a different approach, along the same lines as the kooky Japanese game show Takashi’s Castle, converted to U.S. form as MXC. See, on the show, contestants have to compete on an obstacle course filled with a number of physical dangers, but nothing life threatening. We’re talking about bouncing across huge red balls, dodging punching gloves that are coming out of walls as you move along a conveyor belt, and swinging padded pistons that could easily knock you into a waiting pool of water. All of these activities are challenging, but the real fun comes from watching folks disastrously bite it almost every time…though it is encouraging to see someone make it to the finish every once in a while.
Activision has effectively recreated the atmosphere for this TV show with its upcoming Xbox 360/Kinect game Wipeout: In the Zone, which looks like it’ll fare much better than the Wii-licensed game that came out last year. That’s because, this time around, you use your entire body to get in on the action, running in place to move along each of the nine courses and occasionally using motions to get through obstacles. That’s a far better feeling than trying to get everything done with a dinky remote. We recently went hands-on (er, hands-off?) with the game, which Activision showed at a recent event in San Francisco. Despite some odd feelings at first about playing the game in public (with an open bar close by, no less), we found ourselves getting into it rather easily, and competing against others in four-player off-line competition. (Online isn’t offered, but for a game such as this, it isn’t entirely necessary.)
The goal is to get from point A to point B on one of nine obstacle courses, each one taken from or inspired by the TV show. That means a number of familiar activities are included here, such as the punching glove wall, the swinging pads and the rubber balls. You’ll need to use every bit of your physicality to get through the games, or you’ll be eating fresh water and/or mud as a result. Unlike a few lesser third-party Kinect games (see our Kung Fu Panda 2 for an example of how it’s done wrong), Wipeout: In the Zone works quite effectively with the Kinect. Like we said, you run in place to move your character along, occasionally using your arms to reach up for coins (the more you collect, the higher your score) and move along beams and platforms to avoid dangers. These include a huge spinning beam with padding attached along its sides, as well as swinging bars that can knock you off course.
This feature preview concludes on the next page, please click Page 2 below to see our final impressions of Wipeout: In the Zone.
