Move® It On Over

After receiving Playstation Move for xmas and spending a few hours flailing my arms like a demented air traffic controller, here are some of my impressions so far. I hope this really moves you. Hurr de durr dur *fart*

Before I start I will just have to say that whoever designs buttons at Sony is a moron. The trigger button is marked with an upside down T, and the top button is some kind of wave thing. What the hell is wrong with marking them A and B? Or keeping with their stupid shape theme, trapezoid and rhombus? Anything would be better than "Press upside down T button to continue."

Anyway the first game I tried was Sports Champions which came with it. This was a really good choice for showing off the Move's capabilities. There are various sports like archery, ping pong, bocce, volleyball, sword fighting and frisbee golf. All of these games use the controller in different ways and show off just how accurate the motion tracking can be.


They are all very entertaining and fun, with the exception of frisbee golf which is like punishment from God. Just when you think you've got a good handle on throwing the frisbee, the game pulls down its pants and lets a big juicy fart right in your face. Thankfully the AI seems as baffled by it as you are, on easy difficulty its like watching a warm up match at the special olympics.

Volleyball is more of a quicktime event, as you don't really control your guy, but you have to do the gestures at the right time to hit the ball. That's ok with me because I am fat and all this movement tires me out anyway. Many people don't like it though. Damn volleyball purists.

Archery is a lot of fun, but when using the 2nd controller to aim the bow I always have issues getting the game to detect it properly. I always have to aim it way up in the air and it's super uncomfortable. Bocce and ping pong seem to work the best and are probably the most fun of them all. The in-game characters are all well modeled and animated versions of your favorite ethnic stereotypes. I prefer playing as Dallas, but Giselle has got the serious ghetto booty.


The other game I tried was The Shoot. It tracks the movements and gestures of the controller very well, but is otherwise a rather shitty game. Instead of shooting bad guys and robots, you are actually only shooting fake movie cowboys and robots. It's pretty lame, but also very meta when you think about it. You have to unlock 2 player levels by collecting poster pieces in the levels, which is retarded when you just want to play with a friend from the get-go.

So overall I am impressed by the capabilities of the Move. It's easy to set up, and very simple to calibrate. You just plug in the camera, turn on the controller and aim it at the TV. I am somewhat disappointed by the software so far, but I sort of expected that. I am excited to see what games will be released as we move into the future.