The Move

I couldn’t explain to you why, but I felt compelled this weekend to pick up the Playstation Move. I was pretty content to just wait for the software to come out that makes this a must have accessory. I think I tricked myself by saying “I’m going to want them for Little Big Planet 2 anyway, no reason to wait until then to pick it up”. I have to say though, the precision and it’s application in the titles I’ve tried thus far is really impressive. The comparison to the Wii is inevitable, but I can tell you as a Wii owner, and someone who thinks the Wii had all kinds potential and has fallen victim to it’s on self imposed short comings, this isn’t even close, not even with Wii Motion Plus.

The first and most important difference I’ve noticed between the Wii and Sony’s Move, is that unlike Wii, Move doesn’t rely entirely on gesture controls. Gesture controls for the move do exist when it makes sense, for example, flicking your wrist to toss the ball up in volleyball or table tennis, but when it comes to hitting the ball your position when you are performing the actions are very important. Compared to Wii where you can stand completely still and just time the flick of your wrist, Move had me scampering all over my living room trying to get good angles for my returns.

Also, the form factor on these controls is infinitely better than the virtual brick that is a wiimote, wielding 2 Move controllers, or a Move controller and a navigator, felt good, no risk of soreness from serious sessions which is good! because with the gaming that could conceivably be backed by the power of a PS3 there are going to be experiences that you WANT to play for hours (Red Steel 2 port please, remove doors thank you), including perhaps Heavy Rain which has added move support. I started my second play through of that and the controls were fairly intuitive, though very much a gesture control system. I’m not sure I’ll have the stick-to-it-ness that would be required to get through the game again, as much as I did like, and appreciate it the first time around, there are an awful lot of slow moments, but I’d still highly recommend it to anyone who considers themselves a gamer, as it is truly a unique experience, and even more-so now that it supports move controls. Or perhaps a couple rounds of golf with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 which has also added Move support post release and does a very good job at illustrating my hook.

Getting into the software, I’ll just sort of touch on what I’ve tried here, and focus on the move implementation. I’ll save the more in depth review of the games I’ve purchased for their own posts. Luckily the Move came with a demo disc with pretty much every move title available now.

Start the Party

As you might guess by the title, this is a mini-game collection, the hook here is augmented reality. For those not certain of what I mean by this, Start the Party uses the PlayStation Eye to project the player on the screen, the augmented reality bit is how the game will put some sort of ‘end’ on the Move controller, which you use to play the minigames. For example, there is a mini game where you have to paint templated shapes on the screen, and the move controller effectively turns into a paintbrush on the screen. Similarly, there is a game where you have to swat flies, and the controller is projected on the screen as a swatter. I don’t think there are enough variety in the games to make this game something that you need to have, but it is silly and fun in small doses when people are over, and probably more fun that for or with a younger crowd.

Sports Champion

I struggle to not call this “Wii Sports Champion” often, but I’m having a lot of fun with it. Specifically with the Table Tennis and Archery games. This game really demonstrates the precision of the Move controller. As I mentioned above, when I’m playing table tennis I often have to move around my living room to keep the ball on my forehand so I can better manage the center of the table. The way you hold the controller effects the way the paddle is held, putting authentic spin on the ball. It’s not perfect, there are often places on the table where I don’t feel I have a legitimate chance to return it, but it is very rare that I feel I had been cheated by it. The percision carries through all of the games here, and they are all fairly fun, even bocce… One short coming here, and I’m not certain whether or not this a function of the size of my livingroom, which I believe may be a little small for the Move experience, but I find when we’re playing mulitplayer sports games, the system wants us to be standing fairly close to each other and people have been whacked as a result.

Heavy Rain

They added move support in a post release patch, I played the first chapter again just to get a sense of how they implemented Move, and it’s pretty much as you would expect, you use the navigator control to move the character, and instead of button presses, you use gesture controls to perform your actions. I don’t think this makes Heavy Rain a better game since for the most part, the problems lay in the slow story telling segments as opposed to the controls, but it does make it a little more immersive from what I can tell in my short re-sampling.

I have also tried, Eyepet, Tiger Woods 11, and Tumble, but I’ll save those for a subsequent post.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks that part of the reason the Wii is collecting dust on many gamers’ console shelf (assuming they haven’t been pawned off already) is the total lack of confidence in 3rd party developed titles, mostly created by the utter and complete lack of quality control on the hundreds of crap mini-game compilations available for the console. Your branded games like Burger King, and Chucky Cheese titles, and the miscellaneous “<insert unique word here> Games” titles I’m sure appealed to some poor gullible/uninformed parent or grand parent trying to do something nice for their (grand) child, and throwing $40 down on something that had no business getting out of development.

I mentioned a while back that I think Playstation Move has the potential to be very successful with some support from the 3rd party developers, as long as they don’t fall into this same trap Nintendo did of companies simply trying to cash in on the fact that something is new and interesting. Fact of the matter is I like to believe that the PS3 user base is significantly more educated/aware than the Wii user base. It’s no secret that Nintendo marketed to families, and casual gamers, and was very successful in doing so. Sony however, is ~now~ marketing to that same audience (right or wrong strategy, remains to be seen), but they already have a huge user base in the core gamer. The thing is that it is also appealing to these existing users, and perhaps specifically ~their~ families and the casual gamers there in. Hardcore gaming fathers buying move setups for their kids for example (same logic may apply to Kinect as well, but for the sake of this article I will stick with Move).

Now the reason I wanted to write this article is because today there has been a steady stream of Little Big Planet 2 videos released as the result of the non-disclosure agreement for the beta expiring. Huh?… what does LBP2 have to do with this?… good question. LBP2 has the potential to replace any and all mini game collections by way of it’s user content creator. As long as the “educated” ps3 user base does well at informing their Move motivated families… What I saw in these videos is a collection of self-motivated game designers creating what look to be fun little distractions, that will be freely available in the play-create-share model that LBP is known for. Since LBP2 supports Move, there is absolutely no reason that any number of simple little mini games using motion controls will be infinitely, and freely available to the entire Move user base presuming they are well enough informed to buy LBP2.  I see no reason for since even on it’s own it’s an incredibly charming platform game with an adorable leading character and a great reputation.

While the launch titles for PS Move did not appeal to me at all, and I don’t have the device, I’m really hopeful that this will act a deterrent from would be minigame compilation creators and allow for Sony to build a strong relationship with 3rd party developers that will perpetuate to it’s users by way of some truly amazing, and unique experiences that integrate motion controls that Wii has been unable to deliver thus far (Honestly if Ubi were to port Red Steel 2 and get rid of half of the doors we’d be talkin’) .

Good luck Sony

Despite some heavy, heavy urges to pick up Move last week, I didn’t. I’m not sure where these urges came from since I’ve been convinced they didn’t have the launch titles to support it (sadly), for some time now. I’d like to give Tiger Woods a crack with Move (the game, not the human), but the cost really adds up more than you’d think at a glance. $99 for the kit, then you’re going to need a second Move for $50 for those games that just make more sense with 2, and I’m the kind of guy that would need to have a couple navigator controllers, and a charging dock. We’re talking $200, + $60 for the game I want to play. That’s the cost of a console, it makes no sense, especially for one game. So while I want to try it, I’m going to wait for the killer app, I’m really disappointed that there weren’t more compelling titles available, and it’s hard to believe that this launch could be successful.

Sony has themselves in a very weird position in having to wait for a piece of software to release to sell the hardware. That gets exponentially more difficult when they missed the boat on the impulse buyers like myself.