Wreckateer Review

Wreckateer hit XBLA during the Summer of Arcade promotion, touting its extremely responsiveness using Xbox Kinect. The fact is – I don’t care much for Kinect, but being the only one on the site that owns it – I had the chance to play this game. Here’s what I think about this newest Kinect offering.

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I went into this game not expecting much, and that’s definitely the way to go.  The best way to describe the game to anyone is to call it Microsoft’s version of “Angry Birds”. You man a catapult and with it you have to destroy various castles that have been overtaken by goblins. Yes – that pretty much covers the main aspect of the game, but yes there’s a little more depth than that.

As you progress in the game you’ll unlock new types of shots including ones you can totally control using your whole body, or shots that you can break into multiple projectiles after firing the initial shot. The responsiveness of Kinect works surprisingly well in Wreckateer, but I feel like the game itself has too many limitations when it comes to angling your shot. The game physics feel broken at times too as falling pieces of a steep tower don’t fall the way you would expect, and sometimes an expected chain reaction does not occur for some unknown reason.

The tutorial characters that help you early on the game never really stop annoying you earlier – let go of my damn hand and let me learn to play. That’s what I felt like saying to them. It never really lets you become fully independent and it was frequently getting on my nerves because of this factor.

Wreckateer takes place in a lightly-themed medieval world, but outside of your target castle surrounded by trees and the odd river, it’s not much to look at. The soundtrack is forgettable if you even notice it to begin with, and the characters are mindless drones that are there just to add detail. Presentation never was the strongest feature in a game like this though I suppose.

It sounds horrible, I know, but it’s not. It offered me a couple hours of decent fun, and I might even play it again sometime. Kinect works surprisingly well, but it’s brought down by limitations in the game itself. When the game hits a 400 :MSPoints: pricepoint, it’d be worth a try if you like Kinect.

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