It has been four years since its launch, and the Nintendo Wii has been dominating the motion-gaming scene with no competition at all. Come autumn 2010, and Nintendo is back where it started – Sony and Microsoft strike backk with their offerings!
Till last year, the Wii was the only option for you if you wanted to try motion gaming out. Then earlier this year at the E3 expo held at L.A., Sony showed off the Move add-on controller for PS3 and Microsoft demoed it’s Kinect for Xbox360 – giving you more ways to fool yourself into believing that you play tennis/golf every day!
The first of those competitors, the PlayStation Move, hit the stores on Sept. 19, promising to mate the wild popularity of motion gaming with the blistering processing and graphical prowess of the PlayStation 3. But can the PlayStation 3's Move motion controller set itself apart from a console which has made motion gaming so seemingly ubiquitous?
Guess what? Move did exactly what it promised to do, and so much more! From Sony’s mouth, “The PlayStation Move uses the colorful Move controller to let you interact with video games on a totally new level. The Move works with the PlayStation Eye USB camera to track your every move as you fight, play sports, or dance the night away in one of many different Move-enabled games, many of which are being developed to be fun for the whole family.”
The Hardware
On unboxing it, you’ll find an industrial-looking webcam-like device called the PlayStation Eye, the Move controller with its signature soft white rubber orb, the PS Move Starter Disc (more on that later), and THREE exactly same English manuals in different forms – one notebook-like, one newspaper-like and one quick-start guide that’s just as elaborate as the main manual! Goes on to indicate how desperate Sony was to get the Move to the market :P
The build quality is as good as any Apple device (yes, that’s a complement) and the PlayStation Eye sports 4 hypersensitive microphones lined on top too.
The orb on top of the Move controller is plain white and doesn’t shine until you start a game, and that’s when it’ll make the girls in the house go oooh with its show of lights!
Don’t be fooled though, it’s not just for show…the PlayStation Eye tracks your exact location in the room using the light in the orb.
The Test Drive
You’ll need to connect the Move to your PS3 via the bundled USB wire the first time you use it. Once you do that, you can use it wirelessly. The first time you use the Move, you’ll be surprised no matter how many or for how long you’ve used any other motion controller before. The thing is an absolute BLAST to use! Navigating the XMB menu with the Move will have you smiling from ear-to-ear, even as you realize it’s a tad too sensitive (nothing you can’t get used to, though). Press the trigger, flick your wrist, and the menu goes trrrr!
PS Move Starter Disc:
The disc is full of game demos (9 of them) that you need to install before you can play any of them. You’ll find this irritating, because each game takes about 2-3 minutes to copy – and this is not good if you’re itching to see how the Move performs in-game.
Drool-worthy demos: Sports Champions, Tumble, echochrome II
These deserve a mention: Start the Party, The Shoot, EyePet
Others: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, TV Superstars, Beat Sketcher
Featured Games:
Sports Champions: Even though it initially looks like a Wii Sports rip-off, the similarity between the two ends there. 3 years back, Wii Sports was the reason I used to flunk in my class tests. After about a year the effect wore off, and I never thought playing a sports game will ever excite me again. It’s 2010 now, and after buying a copy of Sports Champions, I’m scared about my semester results.
• Disc Golf – Golf played with your hands and a Frisbee: total time-pass.
• Table Tennis – it’s real…like crazy real! If I twist my wrist by -25.725 degrees, my avatar in the game twists his wrist exactly -25.725 degrees. If I take 2 steps closer towards the corner of the screen, the punk inside goes 2 steps closer to the corner of the table! The gameplay is fast-paced, and as real as virtual Table Tennis can get. All this super-sensitivity translates into super-realistic gameplay, meaning you’ll be able to give that perfect spin, or point that smash in the exact direction you really meant it to go! One of the games that truly show what the PS Move is capable of.
• Gladiator Duel – Do you like kicking some ass? You won’t be let down. Moreover, this thing is supposed to be played with 2 move controllers for maximum fun…one becomes your shield and the other, sword. Mind you, this can get really tiring!
• Archery – another tiring game, but fun nonetheless! Again, needs 2 controllers for max effect, but just as in Gladiator Duel, it can be managed just fine with one also.
• Bocce – The weirdest and the most engaging of the lot, you need to throw a wooden ball at another wooden ball kept down the field, preventing your opponent to do so in the process. And don’t ask me how to pronounce the name. I call it boxie just for kicks:P
• Volleyball – Involves a LOT of jumping and throwing your hands around. Looks and feels pretty solid, but then, I’ve never really enjoyed volleyball in real life.
Rating: 9/10
Tumble/echochrome II: I have nothing to say about these genre-defining gems – just that I had purchased Tumble from PlayStation Network even before I was completely done with the first level of the demo (echochrome 2 releases on December 21). Had these not been there, the Move’s lifespan would not have exceeded 2-3 years. You really need to FEEL them. Go to YouTube, and search for “Tumble Move PS3” and “echochrome 2 move”.
Rating: 100/10
Start The Party/The Shoot: Perfect party-ware. Start the party is full of small, comical mini-games that will keep everybody entertained. The Shoot however, is more of a solo act, but is addictive. You play the ‘hero’ in several B-grade Hollywood films, riding horses in the Wild West and shooting bad guys, vultures and oil tankers made of cardboard using the Move controller like a gun. Sounds lame, feels fresh.
Rating: Start The Party: 6.5/10 The Shoot: 7.5/10
Some of the heavyweight titles which are already out/coming out:
• Heavy Rain-Move Edition (Same as before, but to be played with Move only!)
• Resident Evil 5 - GE
• Infamous 2
• Killzone 3
• LittleBIGPlanet 2
• SOCOM 4
Performance
In short, it’s fast & accurate enough for you to do brain-surgeries. For a detailed account, read on.
Absolutely crisp translation of physical movements of the controller on the screen instantly puts the PS Move in front of the competition. Over and above that, there is (almost) no lag. Games such as Sports Champions, Start the Party, echochrome II, which will kill the fun if there’s any kind of lag between your movements and the game, don’t have any lag! Some games are not so considerate, though. The Shoot, for instance, would have been there, at the top, had the coders made it a wee bit more responsive.
This irregularity just implies that if the game is coded properly, the hardware is more than willing to oblige. A perfect example here would be PGA Tour 2011 which shamelessly exhibits EA’s infamous incompetence with PS3 coding.
Fortunately, this is not the case with most of the games that the world is looking forward to (unlike KINECT, which in its current state, can only be regarded as a disaster of absurd proportions – anything that takes 2 seconds to understand my moves, doesn’t deserve my $, or my time).
As far as graphics are concerned, they’re typical PlayStation 3 maal. The demos work at good 720p, but the full Blu-Ray versions really show the Wii its true place in the console hierarchy, with maximum eye-candy at Full HD 1080p! Point to be noted here is the Disc-Golf in Sports Champions – the first time I played it, my heart skipped a beat! Amazingly stunning level design coupled with marvelous ambient sound - :EPIC WIN:!
Final Verdict
• If you don’t have a motion gaming console (yet), rush out and buy the PS3+Move now! Never been a better time to buy a PS3.
• If you own a Wii, I’d recommend you hold on a little longer as Nintendo is hard-pressed to come out with something better anyway, and your current game library would also be supported.
• If your dad loves you way too much, tell him to get a Wii for you to play Super Mario Galaxy, and a PS3 for some serious action in Heavy Rain and Sports Champions :D
