Sony’s answer to the Wii, the Playstation move is available in Ireland from today. I’ve been playing around with the hardware and it’s launch titles for a few days now but keep in mind that the following review is based mainly on from what I’ve seen in its launch titles. Not all of its features are on display yet but in some games by basically dicking around with it I’ve gathered what I think is a reasonable overview of Move’s capabilities. So if in a few months Move is firing toasty ham and cheese sandwiches into our mouths, I apologize in advanced.
The Move works in conjunction with the Playstation Eye which tracks the glowy ball on top of it, this and the hardware inside the Move adds an immediately noticeable extra level of control. . One huge difference between The Move and The Wii Remote is that it seems to have a good idea of where the players entire arm is rather than just the orientation of the players hand. Playing the sword fighting mini games in both wii sports and sports champions really shows this off, while on the Wii the sword stays in the centre and rotates even you stretch your arm out, on the move your character will match the entire arm movement. In fact as the few games that really require any skill in terms of speed and accuracy get tougher it becomes apparent that the Move is more than up the task of fast and accurate response, in other words its not going to be lagging behind trying to catch up with you. All in all Playstation Move lives up to Sony’s claims of it’s accuracy but very few games show this off. Developers still seem to be lacking behind when it comes to actually implementing Motion Control without just creating glorified quick time events. To show this I’ve reviewed three launch titles which range from good use of the Move to just plain terrible.
Sports Champions
Little known fact, upon launching a new motion controller its actually impossible to not also release a collection of Sports based mini games along side it. Once you actually get into it though Sports Champions has a lot more depth to it than Wii Sports, this mainly comes from its choice of games. Table tennis, Volleyball, Gladiator Duel, Disc Golf, Bocce and Archery are all on display and they’re here for a reasons. Far from being randomly selected each of the games has a chance to show off the Playstation Move’s immediately obvious superior motion control. In Table Tennis its possible to accurately put spin on the ball. Sweeping the legs from an opponent in Gladiator Duel is never misinterpreted. Disc Golf allows you to turn the Frisbee on it’s side and roll it along accurately, bouncing it off the ground and into the net never gets old. Bocce depends on subtle spins and throw differences while Archery is all about speed and accuracy. There are minor hiccups here and there but for the most the move seems to pull this off very easily. Unfortunately due to a shortage of Moves we’re unable to play most of the multiplayer and the duel controller enhanced versions of some games. On your own you’ll probably only pick up and play this for minutes at a time but turn it into a competition with friends and the real fun starts.
Gladiator Duel
The Games biggest problem is that though it shows off the Moves capabilities it doesn’t really try and do much else. the games are far too over laden with icons that over lay the sports. A huge spin icon flies around the table tennis ball indicating which direction its turning as it flies towards a highlighted circle on the table, showing where it’ll bounce. The whole point of table tennis is to work this stuff out yourself so once you’ve got the basics this gets old very fast. At the end of the day Sports Champions is still a collection of mini games meaning there’s little variation within each sport. That said of all the launch games its the nly one that truly shows off Move’s potential.
7.5 out of 10
Start the Party
Start the Party uses the move in different way to Sports Champions. Playing the same way as any other Playstion Eye game it shows video of you in real time. The move controller is detected and turned into different objects within the video. If that description was completely useless then here’s some attractive people demonstrating it.
Players take turn competing against each other in different minigames, shinning a torch on ghosts, drawing farm animals piece by piece, shaving hair with a trimmer, swatting bugs, basically the usual EyeToy sort of thing but improved with the more accurate Move now being the focus. Its fun for a while and completely different to any other motion control we’ve seen so far. Again dispute attempts to break it the tools that the Move is transformed into rarely glitch out of position, even keeping up when the controller is flipped up in the air… although at no point does it ask you do this. Though fun for a while it doesn’t come close to Sports Champions and quickly gets repetitive, the selection of games is quite small compared to something like Mario Party and even playing twice with the same group starts to wear the game thin.
6 out of 10
Kung Fu Rider
Kung Fu Rider is basically everything that’s wrong with Motion Control in one game. I’ve really tried hard to find something I like about it but it just isn’t happening, the game plays as a glorified quick time event. You speed down streets in an office chair, dodging triad guys, jumping over cars and ducking over signs, maybe every now and then you’ll kick something. All the actions are done through interpreting gestures that have nothing to do with what’s going on on screen. Moving the controller up and down increase speed, thrusting it into the air jumps, thrusting it at the screen speeds even more and pointing left and right steers, badly. Half the time it can’t tell the difference between speed up and jump while turning is inaccurate and unresponsive. This game feels like something you buy on the Playstation Network for a fiver, play for an hour, then start to miss the fiver. It should be a cheap downloadable title, but its not, its a full on launch title that comes in the same box as every other game does. If it didn’t use the Move at all you wouldn’t give it a second of your time and once More move titles are released and this falls into obscurity, you won’t.
4 out of 10
