PowerUp Heroes Review (X360 Kinect)

PowerUp Heroes is a Kinect game that makes you feel like a superhero. Or, if superheroes aren't your thing, it makes you feel sort of like Mega Man mixed with Ryu from Street Fighter with some Goku from DBZ thrown in. You perform punches and kicks and special moves, and when you beat up enemies you take their powers to use in the next fight. As a kid, I would have loved this. Heck, as an adult it is pretty darn entertaining still. The fun only lasts for a few hours, though, as there just isn't very much content here, but PowerUp Heroes is still worth a look.Game Details Kinect Sensor Required Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Longtail Studios ESRB Rating: “E10" for Everyone 10+ Genre: Fighting / Action Pros: Fun Kinect gameplay makes you feel like a super hero; nice menus and overall presentation Cons: Not much content; not always responsive enough

The story in PowerUp Heroes tells of an evil alien force comes to Earth. A good alien hero comes to Earth but crash lands and gives his special power suit to the nearest human he can find. That human is you, or at lest your Xbox 360 Avatar, so you put on the suit and get to fighting bad guys. When you defeat an enemy you take their suit, which gives you new powers to choose from. You select two suits before every fight and can switch between them at will. Even mid-combo. So, just like Mega Man, you beat up a bunch of dudes, steal their powers, and save the day. Good times.

Unfortunately, there isn't much content here. It only takes a couple of hours to collect all 20 suits and save the world. There is local multiplayer as well as online multiplayer, which does help, but good luck actually finding anyone to play against online. Local multiplayer works just fine as long as you don't get too wild and have a big enough space for two people to flail around without hitting each other.

The gameplay is set up like a fighting game. You and your opponent have a health bar, and the first one to win two rounds wins the fight. The moves you perform are all surprisingly intuitive as you just stand in front of Kinect and punch and kick to make your character do the same. Special moves are different for each suit, but require motions like a quick movement with your hand to throw an energy ball, a "Kamehameha"-type motion for a fireball, raising your hands above your head to throw a big energy ball (sort of like a Spirit Bomb ...), whipping your hand forward to crack a lightning whip, and much more. Defensive moves include stepping left or right to dodge attacks, or QTE-style pop ups where you match a specific motion to block attacks. It is all rather simple, but it does work really surprisingly well and is pretty satisfying to punch and kick and throw energy attacks around like a comic book hero.

For the most part the game is easy enough that even with some hiccups where Kinect doesn't do what you want, it doesn't really affect the gameplay. At least, for the first half of it. Late in the game when you've beaten all of the enemies once and have to fight through much tougher versions of them a second time, though, it can be tougher to react quickly enough or Kinect might read your movements wrong, which can lead to some frustration. It isn't so much that it is terribly difficult, but it is definitely a bit of a jump from how easy the game is the first time you fight everyone. You get used to it.

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