Diabolical Pitch

It’s not often you play an Xbox Live Arcade release that actually feels like it could be an arcade game, offering a simple straight-forward experience based on a single core mechanic with a few embellishments. And yet here we are with easily one of the most arcade-like experiences offered by Kinect – Diabolical Pitch, yet another release from the busy slate of Grasshopper Manufacture, responsible for Killer7, Shadows of the Damned, and recent XBLA release Sine Mora (recipient of an impressive 9/10 courtesy of Danny).

In the game, you step into the (literally) golden shoes of McAllister, a professional baseball pitcher suffering from a career-killing shoulder injury. In a cutscene seemingly made out of photocopied images, we see McAllister’s car swerve into an oncoming truck, finding himself awakening in ‘Queen Christine’s Dreamland’, a peculiar, twisted and decrepit amusement park. Offered a bionic arm to replace his dodgy one by an unnamed helper character (whose intentions may or may not be a tad nefarious), McAllister soon finds himself the park’s star attraction as he must fight for his survival the only way he knows how – by attacking everything that crosses his path with a well-aimed throw of a baseball.

Played in a stationary standing position, enemies appear on-screen in the form of ‘dolls’, anthropomorphic run-down theme park mascot-like creatures that constantly walk or fly toward you in clockwork fashion, damaging you if allowed to reach you. With each doll initially defeated by a simple throw of a ball, later stages introduce enemies that must be hit with a locked-on strike, where you control a reticule with your non-throwing arm, and hold it steady over a doll for a couple of seconds before you throw – a move that becomes a near necessity in the game’s final stages.

After landing a number of successful strikes you charge your titular ‘Diabolical Pitch’, one of several unlockable special attacks that can, depending on which one you have equipped, either clear a busy screen or cause massive damage to a more focused area. Although several are available, once you find one that gels with your playstyle there’s little incentive to experiment with any of the others bar the visual spectacle, which is a bit of a shame as many of them are a sight to behold, such as the Meteor Ball, which sees McAllister summon a baseball the size of, well, a meteor, before flinging it skyward and watching it take out everything in its path.

The game takes place across five worlds, each consisting of three fairly short static stages and a final bonus stage. Once you’ve cleared each stage of its waves of standard dolls, it’s time for a boss fight with such opponents including an elephant riding a UFO, a hatchet-carrying lion and the towering colossus that is Queen Christine herself. In a suitably absurd yet logical Grasshopper-esque way, you’ll know you’re up against a boss because each one wears a crown, obviously.

Perform well and along with your kick-ass score you’ll also earn a number of coins, used to buy baseball cards, with each purchase unlocking additional Diabolical Pitches and score-enhancing buffs, many of which are prohibitively expensive and require a hefty amount of grinding to afford.

And so – the inevitable Kinect question. I played the game in two locations, at work (where we’re developing a Kinect title) and at home, and have so far played a consistently responsive game with only very occasional moments where the Kinect had trouble registering my actions. Throwing balls at opponents carries a significant amount of aim assist, but with enough control that the ball will travel in the direction you throw. Occasionally you’ll have a Kinect equivalent of a Quick-Time Event to deal with where an enemy launches a ranged attack at you, sometimes requiring you to duck or jump within a brief time-frame. The only times I messed any up was down to my own lack of co-ordination rather than being cheated by the hardware.

As I said, it’s not often you play an XBLA game that actually feels like an arcade game, but that’s exactly what you get for your 800 Microsoft Points. The arcade game similarities also extend to the amount of content the game offers however, with each of the game’s five worlds completed in around 10-15 minutes each – that’s right, a skilled player could see off the singleplayer campaign in around an hour, if their pitching arm is up to it.

Compared to the amount of game you can get for the same price, this will be enough to turn off some players to Diabolical Pitch’s short-but-sweet charms – in short, this would be an essential Kinect purchase if it were 400 Microsoft Points. You can consider the game’s longevity doubled if you have a friend who’d be up for the local-only twoplayer campaign, with any further replayability solely focused on beating your previous scores and climbing the leaderboards. A task which also requires you to grind and unlock a ton of the baseball cards to stand a chance against the top scorers.