Developers, Ubisoft, are about to take the fighting game genre and take it to the next level with Fighter Within thanks to the power and might of the Xbox ONE. Tapping into the detailed motion detection that the updated Kinect sensors on the new generation console, it takes character control away from the flick and twist of your thumbs on the controller and turns your entire body into the device of destruction.
Fight it out with buddies for everything from who gets the girl to who gets the beers. Hopefully it’ll inspire similar control capabilities in other fighting games like Tekken, Street Fighter and Soul Calibur.
Release
Fighter Within was released today on the Xbox ONE launch day (22nd November 2013), so it’s available from day-one on the Microsoft next gen system. It’s another big console launch offering from the French game developers, as they also start out with Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and Watch_Dogs.
It’s pretty good timing in general though with Christmas on its way as it’s a pretty good keep fit game, especially if you get hooked. With this and the abundance of turkey you could be a ripped up robot come New Year’s Eve. The retail price at launch is around the £40 mark ($59.95 ish in the US).
Gameplay
The gameplay is a pretty simple concept, but it looks like a lot of fun, especially if the controls work as well as they’re touted in the trailer below. Essentially it’s pretty much your standard beat ’em up, but with the added genius of using your body movements. It’s not just basic punches that you can throw, a la Wii Sports Boxing back in the day, but anything and everything from knees, epic kicks, throws, a full range of punch movements, special moves, random shoryuken-like gut slaps and the full force of Wez inspired headbuts.
All-in-all the game recognises forty moves, so there’s a lot of range for devastation.The precision of the movement looks pretty spot on, making a big step up thanks to the added clarity of the new Kinect sensor. You move, your fighter moves with 1 to 1 precision movement tracking.
The down side is that there’s a slightly limited list of characters though compared to games like Tekken Tag Tournament 2 with just 12 players to choose from. However, the biggest limitation of Fighter Within gameplay is that it doesn’t have online fighting options built into it, so you can’t take you skills to the world. This becomes a big issue when you’ve beat up all your mates already and they won’t come over any more and you can’t persuade your other half to join the fray.
Graphics
While the graphics look impressively crisp, utilising some of the added power of the Xbox ONE, they still look quite gamey and don’t necessarily push the next-gen switch as hard as they could do. Although in all fairness that’s a similar story with a number of the launch games where developers have had to crunch certain things to get it completed and shipped in time. This might not take too much away from the potential of Fighter Within it does indicate that in terms of graphics there’s still a fair bit of wriggle room for improvements.
