The Fighter Within Review

The Fighter Without

Take a moment to conjure up in your head all the things you dislike most about gaming with Kinect, and there's a great chance that The Fighter Within does all of them. Practically non-functioning menus? Check. Paper-thin gameplay mechanics? Check. Half-baked gesture controls that make simple, straightforward concepts feel vague and ungainly? Big check! The terribly written gobbledygook of a story merely adds insult to injury for a game that, top to bottom, feels like a flailing first attempt at using a new piece of hardware.

Dis-Kinect

In theory, The Fighter Within is about going toe-to-toe with martial artists from a rival dojo. But your first, and most formidable opponent will be the Kinect-driven menus, which make
even the basic act of scrolling through and selecting things an exercise in frustration. Confirming your choices requires that you hold a floaty, twitchy cursor over what you want, push in towards the screen, and then pull back, all without accidentally leaving the boundaries of what you're trying to press, because if you do, that resets the whole process. It's a borderline-broken system that left me with little choice but to keep a controller nearby at all times. When you're finally ready to switch from fighting the interface to fighting other characters, things improve somewhat, if only briefly. The fundamentals of Fighter Within's system are sound enough, owing mostly to how well Kinect tracks basic movements like punches and kicks. Landing or blocking enough consecutive hooks and straights triggers a powerful combo or counter attack, complete with some snazzy animations and close ups. But unfortunately, they play out as in-engine cutscenes AFTER you've thrown your blows. This separation of action and payoff means that when the best stuff is happening on screen, you're nothing but a spectator.
And that's when Fighter Within is working properly. The second it tries to do anything more elaborate, like throws or finishing moves, it trips over its own shoelaces and falls flat on its face. The gestures are simply too abstracted to feel anything like the moves they trigger, and worse yet, some are so similar to each other that you'll never be sure what's going to come out. I quickly lost count of how many times a throw attempt came out as a hook, or a straight kick got mixed up with a power attack. The result is a haphazard mess that both looks and feels disjointed. At one point, I lost 20 minutes of my life trying to perform the gesture to pick up a stick. Never again Kinect. Never again.

The Warrior’s Path

If its borked controls weren't enough, Fighter Within plops a laughably bad story down on top of them. Meet Matt, a snot-nosed martial artist who wants to join a local dojo because...reasons. He and the rest of the cast generally take themselves very seriously, which means when you hear cheesy nonsense like this (play swag clip) you're more likely to laugh at them than with them. Some characters allude to personal motivations, and a lot of hot air gets blown around, but ultimately, it's nothing but a flimsy excuse to have you fight a long stream of AI opponents who look just as dumb as they fight. And every time things threaten to get even a little fun or spirited, someone starts moaning about mommy issues, or giving exposition about Genghis Khan. Not even making this stuff up, folks.