PlayStation Move Demos – Is it fun?

My first impressions of PlayStation Move are pretty similar to the first time I played the Wii, to be honest. It’s fun, there’s a good variety of stuff to do and it’s bloody knackering if you play marathon sessions. You run into the limitations pretty quickly but good game design means that it doesn’t really matter.

Well, our FIRST first impression was pretty terrible. The starter kit arrived with a faulty PS Eye camera, so we spent far too much time plugging in, unplugging, twiddling with cables and generally not playing. Once we figured out the problem and got a replacement, it all got much better.

Popped in the starter disc – every demo needs to be installed before you can play :( Cue ages of press install button, go do something else, come back, press button for next demo. 30 minutes later, we were finally up and running.

I’m impressed by the tracking. It’s everything that we expected the Wii to be. The PS3 knows where the pointer is and the direction it’s pointing, which opens up lots of good melee weaponry opportunities. But hey, we’re the voice of the average gamer over here. If you want a thorough deconstruction of the tech, go read a tech blog. Nick and I are here to tell you if it’s fun. In between building our new games events site, we’ve been playing through the available demos this weekend:

Are they any good?

Echochrome II is booooring. Wave a torch around and watch the shadows form new shapes. Ooooooo, mind-blowing! Not. Yes, I appreciate that you probably need quite a bit of expertise to build good challenging levels, and there is a design mode for those of you who like that sort of thing. We both got bored playing within minutes.

Tumble: This is a very nice demonstration of the finesse and accuracy that developers can achieve with the PS Move tech. I, however… got bored within minutes on the Build Up levels where you stack blocks to reach the target height. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m just playing with virtual children’s blocks. That being said, Destruction mode was quite fun. You get 3 sticky mines to strategically place on a tower. Hit the trigger to blow them up, spreading the blocks far and wide for extra points. It’s not quite enough to make me buy the full game, but Nick quite enjoyed the Build Up challenges. Hmmm…. Tumble or Demolition Company?

Kung Fu Rider has a crazy concept – push your speeding office chair down the street to escape the Mafia, duck or jump obstacles and use roundhouse kicks to destroy anyone in your way. Sounds like it could be fun. In practice… yup, you guessed it. Booooring. Maybe I was doing it wrong and I should have been sitting down like I was actually in an office chair. The fact is, I simply don’t care enough about this type of game to give it another go. Might be a good party game. I’ll revisit next week after we get a load of friends round to try it out.

TV Superstars actually wasn’t boring, but it was a little disturbing. The character faces freak me out – they have real-looking photo heads but expressions are animated South-Park style. It’s creepy. Aside from that, there could be potential here. The concept is a bunch of TV gameshows – you control your character through the two shows available in the demo; Frockstars and Let’s Get Physical. Frockstars supposedly a catwalk show – in practice it’s a rhythm game, tracing patterns on the screen like you would in Elite Beat Agents. Not bad but with my puny delts and poor attention span, each round went on for about 45 seconds too long. Let’s Get Physical was more fun with a variety of Takeshi’s Castle/Total Wipeout style stunts. Definitely a promising party game but with only 5 television shows, I don’t see either of us playing it on an evening home alone.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 crippled me. I have chronic lower back pain, normally nothing too serious but 5 minutes with this game has made me practically couch-ridden :\ I realise that I’m probably doing it wrong so golf fans should try this one out for themselves. It’s a little annoying that you need to use a normal controller for menu navigation but gamewise… well, I’m crap with a golf club and crap with a PS Move golf sim, so it seems representative to me ;)

The Shoot is brilliant fun. I really enjoy this game. It’s an arcade-style shooter on rails, loosely tied together with a film-set concept. Rather than shooting the bad guys to save [insert worthy mission here], you’re the one responsible for making action sequences look good. Blow up the scenery, get power-ups for slow-mo or other effects and generally cause carnage. Great fun and I’m seriously considering buying the full version.

Right, I’m off to further aggravate my back with a spot of painkillers and Sports Champions Archery. We’ll get a full review up later in the week and cover the rest of the available demos.

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