PixlBit

As with anything that comes out of Grasshopper Manufacture, Diabolical Pitch is an interesting specimen. Taking use of the Kinect, the title melds gesture-based gameplay and your traditional gallery shooter, and tops it off with a bizarre story and setting. Rather than a shot out of the park, the spotty controls make this baseball-themed game a shallow shot to the outfield.

Diabolical Pitch stars McAllister, a once great pitcher who has since injured his arm beyond repair. After a car accident, the former pro-baseball player finds himself in a dark and foreboding theme park in the company of a man wearing a suit with a cow’s head. This odd character reveals that McAllister’s once crippled arm has been restored with a special prosthetic, allowing him to pitch again. And pitch he must, as he’ll be attacked by a variety of enemies through each section of theme park.

Split into five worlds - each containing three core stages and one bonus stage - players must hold back the attack forces with well-placed throws. Despite the fact that your arm is your weapon, Diabolical Pitch plays out just like a light gun shooter.

With a simple throwing motion you’ll send a ball flying in the intended direction… most of the time. As the experience progresses, you’ll also perform defensive maneuvers, like catching a thrown ball or jumping over/ducking under enemy-thrown saw blades. This also works… most of the time. Furthermore, you can activate your special move, the titular diabolical pitch, with a gesture… most of the time. And this is the true shortcoming of Diabolical Pitch; nothing seems to work with the absolute accuracy the arcade-style gameplay demands.

When things are working correctly, Diabolical Pitch is a fantastically fun experience. Because the gesture of throwing a baseball is practically the same with or without a ball in hand, it feels very natural and visceral to dismantle your attacking foes with well-placed pitches. The dark aesthetic makes the game equally visually appealing, resembling the likes of last year’s Shadows of the Damned. Even the soundtrack channels the sport well, while acknowledging the bizarre setting of the game.

The progressively ramping difficulty and intricacy of the levels is also appreciable. Eventually you’ll even have to build a strategy to avoid tiring your arm while still taking out the onslaught of attacking foes. Combine this with the need to stay on your toes in order to defend yourself and there’s a lot more than meets the eye in this gallery shooter-like experience.

This is especially true with the inclusion of the diabolical pitch itself. You can arm yourself with a variety of different pitches, some causing explosions when thrown, others allowing you to self-hit a number of balls at threatening foes. As you progress, collected coins will allow you to unlock new moves and power-up existing ones, both providing replay value and an extra element of strategy based on what pitch you decide to equip.

The boss battles that close each level can also make for interesting encounters, as they too require the proper strategy to succeed. Being that these bosses behave differently than the standard foes, you’ll sometimes need to take aim using your non-dominant hand and pitch the ball to hit with pinpoint accuracy. Again, this too is quite satisfying to perform.

But it all comes back to those controls. In order to achieve any degree of accuracy, I found it necessary to place my left hand (non-dominant) behind my back; that way my right hand was detected properly. Certain diabolical pitches didn’t seem to trigger on cue and worse, the game would sometimes get stuck assuming my left hand was pointed outward (activating a reticule) when it wasn’t even in view. As you can imagine, this makes you vulnerable long enough to get hurt, which subsequently eliminates any multiplier or bonus you had been building. As a score attack driven experience, this could be devastating for your attempt to place higher on the leaderboards.

Thankfully, the vast majority of the issues were relegated to specific rounds and not rampant in each and every attempt at a level. As you play more, the shortcomings of the controls become more evident, allowing you ample time to rectify the situation, thus preserving your building score and health.

Though a mostly shallow experience, Diabolical Pitch is truly one of a kind. In spite of the finnicky controls, this is a Kinect game worth playing.