PlayStation Move
Last week we had the chance to leave our dungeon of an office at Shoryuken towers and visit a plush hotel conference room where Sony had set up a number of booths for the great unwashed journalist types of Ireland to go and shake controllers in front of webcams. Indeed, Sony had brought PlayStation Move to Ireland.
On September 17, the device wil launch for €59.99 of your eurobucks, assuming you don’t have the Playstation Eye. If you do, the Move controller will cost €39.00, which is actually a rather reasonable price of entry. Is it worth it, though?
The games we’ve seen from Sony before were on show here. Primarily, the focus was on party games. Eyepet was there, with a new way to interact with your furry virtual friend – which feels a little pointless given the whole point of Eyepet was that you can use your hands to interact. Any fans of the game will enjoy the extra mini-games, but it’s all still a bit “tech demo” esque.
Sports Champions is a direct rip off of Nintendo’s Wii Sports. There’s no point in beating around the bush, it’s the same idea but with far superior graphics and utilising the Move a little better. Archery, Frisbee, Sword Fighting, Table Tenis and the like are all available here. While fun, they’re nothing you can’t find on the Wii, albeit in HD. Other games on show included the arcade shooter that reminded me of Time Crisis, “The Shoot” and “The Fight”, which is basically just Wii Boxing but more akin to that awful “Fight Club” game that came out a few years ago.
At E3 Sony announced some major titles to Move, which makes it a more tangable product then Microsoft’s Kinect, or even the Wii, when it comes to addressing hardcore gaming fans with regard to these new input methods. SOCOM, Killzone 3, Motorstorm and more were all announced, but not on show for us. What was on show was the interactive movie style game, Heavy Rain. It plays as well as you imagine, but if you’ve already played the game you’re probably not going to benefit from Move as it merely does the same thing as the DualShock3, but with more flailing.
The device itself feels good and solid in your hands. The more rounded design makes it more comfortable then the Wiimote, and unlike the original non-Motion+ Wii controller, the Move comes with more sensitivity then a stock Wii does. This is apparent in games like Archery or Table Tenis.
The Archery game worked by using your right hand to pull arrows out of a bag behind your back, and the left hand was used to hold the bow. Pull back your right hand and aim with the left. This often bugged out and we ended up pointing at the ground, or desperately trying to get our extended arms to aim upwards as the targets appeared.
Less buggy an experience was the Table Tenis game which I would have bought on its own because it was so fun. It reminded me of the many hours I dumped into Rockstar Table Tenis a few years ago on the 360. So much fun, for such a simple concept. Playing as a rather attractive girl gave my ego a boost, too. I’m still not sure why, though…
The controller works with the Playstation Eye, which detects the ball on the end of the Move. The ball changes colours depending on the usage. If you’re using two, they can be different colours so the PS3 can see them. It’ll also change colours automatically based on your clothing to ensure it never gets lost in the haze of badly lit bedrooms. Furthermore, there’s a Nunchuck Navigation Controller, which was not in use here, but will make more sense with Killzone or SOCOM.
Is this worth investing in? Sure. If you have the extra cash dive into some party games, but what’s more interesting is the long term prospect for Move. Right now it is a bit gimmicky, but with Sony putting a lot of time into developers’ working with Move we’ll be seeing this device in use with Killzone, SOCOM, LittleBigPlanet and other big, AAA titles. This is a huge boost for the device as the software is what’s stopping the Wii becoming a hardcore device, or Natal looking like it has no third party support in its future. In summation, it looks good, but the future looks better. Which is a rarity in a device which is so clearly getting all its ideas from elsewhere.
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