Michael Phelps: Push the Limit Preview

Michael Phelps is off to a slow start in China (with a recent defeat at the hands of Australia in the Men’s 4x100m freestyle relay), and it looks like his new game, Michael Phelps: Push the Limit, is right on track with his performances.

GameZone had a chance to preview the new Xbox 360 Kinect title, and it definitely pushed us to the limit. I never realized how tiring it is to fake swim from your living room. My sweat literally made me feel like I was in a pool.

You first begin by picking your swimmer and customizing him/her anyway you want. You are next instructed to hype the crowd by repeatedly raising your arms in the air. This really gets the crowd going and gives yourself a maximum dive boost. After getting the crowd to make you feel like a superstar, you begin the motions of swimming. This entails crouching into the right position on the starting blocks and quickly moving your arms up to the dive position to see how quickly you’ve reacted when you hear the start noise.

After that it’s a straight up swimming motion until you reach the end. By then, your back is sweaty, your arms are sore, and you’ll probably be stuck staring at a “too slow” screen. At least that’s what happened to me, as the game constantly struggled to pick up my motions. Now, I’m going to give Michael Phelps: Push the Limit the benefit of the doubt and say they are still working on fixing some of the technical aspects and making the sensor a little more sensitive to my motions.

The game contains a career mode where you can create a swimmer, online multiplayer, split-screen multiplayer, and a relay race party mode. Kinect games are usually hit or miss, and so far this one is unfortunately leaning towards the latter. It’s a challenging task to try and create a legit swimming game when you’re missing one key feature, the water.