Completely broken.

If you thought some of the launch Kinect titles were bad, you haven't seen Wipeout In the Zone yet. I was actually interested in checking this one out, after all IGN had a pretty positive preview of the title that went up on their site recently, and I actually do enjoy the game show quite a bit, it's about the only reality TV style series that I care to watch with my wife. I knew going in that the presentation was pretty similar to the Dorito's Crash Course XBLA title from a few months back (same developers), in that you'll be using Xbox Avatar characters across a mostly 2D style course, which I thought looked alright from the video and screenshots I had seen. But actually playing the game is a complete nightmare, and doesn't do the Kinect any favors when it comes to thinking about what the device can do outside of on-rails shooters and party games.

On one hand I want to give the game credit, I can't think of any other Kinect title at the moment that involves the player needing to do as much movement as Wipeout requires over the course of a single stage or event. You'll be running, walking, holding your hands out to either stop or walk backwards, ducking, and balancing, along with a few other key movements. You're literally causing your character to move across the entire course from start to finish, most of which are intended to be completed in around 2 minutes or so (but in actuality will take upwards of 4). That's really a whole lot of control over your character, while most Kinect games limit the player to standing in place and waving their arms around, or maybe jumping at key points while the game handles the running or movement portion.

However, maybe there's a reason for that which Wipeout might have stumbled upon. Doing all this movement doesn't mean squat if the game doesn't recognize what you're doing most of the time. A couple things to mention first: I've tried calibrating my Kinect a number of times, adjusting the angle to make sure I was getting my full body in view, and that it was recognizing the key points of my body. I gave myself over 10 feet of room to maneuver in, tried different light sources, including natural sunlight from my balcony, large lamps brought in from different rooms, low lighting conditions, the whole works. I also tested other Kinect games I currently own, like Kinect Adventures, Your Shape Fitness, Carnival Games, and so on. Still, Wipeout In the Zone gave me more problems than I've had with any other Kinect title, Sonic Free Riders included.

The game is divided into three difficulty levels, Easy, Medium and Hard. Each of these levels contains a number or events, which must be completed in order to unlock the next event and difficulty. You can choose from a number of already created Avatars, or simply use your own. The presentation makes use of familiar elements from the show, including commentators John Henson and John Anderson, and the on the location interviewer, Jill Wagner. All three are also represented by pretty accurate Avatar representations, with their actual voices being used for the game. Every event is divided into three courses, just like the show, and you'll compete against the times of AI opponents in order to win (or locally against three other players).

The actual courses are also made up of all the familiar elements of the TV shows, and there's actually a pretty big variety to the course design. If you've got a favorite obstacle from the show, there's a good chance you'll run into it here. Also present are the instant replays of your failure, which are usually pretty funny on the actual show, but end up being repetitive and annoying in the game. They interrupt your run of the course as the player, and while they can be skipped, they can't be turned off. They're just too frequent for my tastes, and break up any sense of rhythm I have while I playing. Also, some of the commentary provided during these segments is flat out wrong, such as being told I was smacked right between the eyes when in actuality I just had my legs swept from under me. Also, there are some weird audio hiccups that cause the dialogue to stutter, turning the two John's in Max Headroom announcers.

The constant replays are made more annoying by the fact that the game just doesn't work. I'll run in place to move my Avatar forward, and he'll stand there doing nothing. I'll hold my hands out in front of me, and he won't stop. I'll lower my hands and he'll walk backwards. I'll jump and he'll duck, or I'll duck and then stand up, causing him to jump. Things like this constantly occur throughout the game, making the tough course design (which is certainly true to the game show) unnecessarily aggravating. I even entered practice mode, which will give you visual cues for the movements the game is looking for you to perform to do certain things, and still had the same problems. I tried slowing my movements down to make them more deliberate, and then speeding them up, but could not find any sweet spot to get the movement to register correctly.

Also, there's some severe lag between movements, which I'm sure is tied into some of the problems I had. In the case of jumping, the game does try to give you a visual cue to make up for the lag issue by highlighting a section of the course green and then red to let you know when you should jump and when it's going to be too late to count. I found the lag to actually be a bit worse than the highlighted prompt though, usually meaning that I had to jump prior to the green section to be successful.

Other problems I had with the game involved actually getting stuck on the sections of the course. One moment in particular involved a course with the Big Balls, where right before you jump on them a big block will come swinging down to hit your character from behind if you don't jump, propelling you forward. This big block actually fell before I hit the Big Balls, and literally blocked my path so I couldn't move forward at all. I had to restart the course to get it to reset, and this happened at other points throughout the game.

The game does make allowances for the difficulty of the game, which means that if you find yourself constantly failing either due to the course being hard, or the controls not working, you can toss your hands up in the air and skip ahead. There's a penalty of 60 seconds added to your score, but at least it will get you through the course. You'll never win doing this, the AI times are usually consistent and close together on any difficulty, and using one of these easy outs will really hurt your time. You don't have to win to unlock the next course though, just finish.

Overall, the game just doesn't work. I can imagine that kids might not care about the control issues, and still have fun with the game. In fact, my wife's nieces and nephew were over recently and had a lot of fun with the game, and didn't really pay attention to the bad tracking issues. But, for me and any other adult Kinect owner out there, I'd say you're better off avoiding this particular title. It has way too many control issues to ever be fun for me to play, and I really do think it's a completely broken game, and I have no clue how this got past the testing phase to be a full price retail release.

*Eds Note: Reviewer was notified of a factual error in the review regarding Instant Replays. They can be turned off through the settings function, and he apologizes for the mistake. The score has been corrected to reflect the change.*