Gut Reaction: PlayStation Move

by jjweatherman

I got to play PlayStation Move today, yay! My brother bought it, so it isn't really my own. I did play around with Sports Champions a good while though. I don't even know what to call the controller. The wand? The Move stick? The Ice Cream Cone? I think it's called the Move Controller, but that's no fun. Squishy orb is squishy Picking up the Ice Cream Cone for the first time felt pretty good. I...

Squishy orb is squishy Picking up the Ice Cream Cone for the first time felt pretty good. It feels nice in the hand, and the glowing light from the ball is kinda cool (surprisingly bright). At first I had a hard time keeping strait where the classic face buttons were located, but I got used to it. One thing I didn't expect was the glowing orb is squishy, not hard. Probably a design choice to prevent injury when you inevitably smack yourself in the face. But anyways, I like the trigger. It feels more like the 360 controller trigger than the Dual Shock 3's trigger. Then there's a large Move button that basically takes the place of the large A button on the Wiimote. I had no idea that was there for some reason. I guess I didn't watch enough Move videos from E3. The precision of the Ice Cream Cone is pretty impressive though. Table Tennis specifically shows how accurate the controls can be when you are trying to perfectly angle your paddle and put a good amount of spin on the ball. Overall I'm impressed with the hardware. Maybe not so much with the camera as the picture quality seemed poor, but it seemed to work well enough. We were playing in both low and high light situations and it picked up all the movements. I should say though that I was only using one Ice Cream Cone as opposed to two. Some games seem like they'd me more fun with two, but others were just fine.

This is totally the best game I haven't actually read Jeff's review of Sports Champions yet, but I remember him saying at one point that Table Tennis was easily the best game of the bunch. It is a good game, but I actually had more fun with the Volleyball game. Volleyball was definitely one of the games that would benefit from two Ice Cream Cones, but it was still the most fun of the bunch with only one. You can choose to serve either underhand (which seems like the safe option), or overhand for more power. Depending on how you move the "Cone", you can bump, set, spike, block, and even dive for stray balls. The motions are simple, but I think that helps the game feel responsive; you're not going to be swinging wildly trying to make contact. The way the people move around the sand is also kinda hilarious. They move their legs like crabs at times, which is pretty entertaining.

The only games I'd say need two "Cones" to be fun are archery, and the Gladiator Duel game. Those both just feel like super dumbed down versions (Which they kind of are) of what the games are meant to be. The Gladiator game specifically just feels very cheesable (at least on the lower difficulties). It's entirely possible to just slash at the opponents legs until they're dead. Disc Golf is fun, but a bit dull.

My overall impression after playing though was that "this works". I had a few doubts about the camera's ability to keep up with the Ice Cream Cone--especially in poor lighting or bad angles--but it seems to keep up really well. Sure, you have to calibrate before every game, but if it's necessary to work well, then it's not a problem. I look forward to seeing what kinds of games come out of this tech in the future. The potential seems great.