Diabolical Pitch - The review

As with every review, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Absolute Gaming and XCN (the Xbox Community Network) for giving us the opportunity to review this game which is available on Xbox Live Arcade.

Diabolical Pitch – Kinect Arcade. Where to begin. The story is about a baseball pitcher who is in the biggest game of his life. He’s pitched a fabulous ball however in the process injures his arm. As a result, he is forced to retire at a young age. He can’t believe it and is depressed. “It can’t end this way” are his last words before being involved in a car crash…

He then awakens in “Queen Christines Dreamland – Where all dreams come true”. He speaks to a human with a cows head and has a robotic voice as well (don’t cringe yet please) and is given a Bionical Arm which allows him to pitch again….

The dreamland is more like a circus which has enemies advancing towards him in waves and theres a Boss at the end of every wave. Naturally you are this pitcher and throw a baseball at the enemies (various forms with various animal heads) and you can kick your enemies when they are close enough. Different enemies can throw a ball at you as well which you can catch. If you catch it, you earn points. If you dont, you loose energy.You also get a chance to collect tokens and cards which later on give you various abilities and attibutes. There is also a super pitch called “Diabolical Pitch” in which the pitcher does some super somersaults in the air and throws a fire ball at his enemies which can take out up to 3-4 of them at the same time.

Caught

And that’s about all it is really. The menus in the game are pretty standard. The idea behind the game is not that great really and its hard to have something good to say about it.

The Kinect at first didn’t respond to my throwing actions according to the on screen instructions. And I also realised that the throwing action needs to be done extremely mildly in order for it to know what you are doing and react accordingly. Plenty of times, it threw in a totally opposite direction. I did stay optimistic through the beginning of playing the story line which is one wave after another, but after a short while and the second boss (who was easily defeated by a kick), im sad to report that I switched back to the dashboard to play another game.

In summary, It wouldn’t be harsh to say don’t waste your money or time unless you are only interested in getting Acheivements from it.