Hands-on with PlayStation Move

Every Move game played and rated

Painting tech demo

Okay – it’s not strictly a game but this tech demo highlighted the Move’s accuracy better than any other software we saw. Notice how Sony’s own Richard Marks has enough control to line his own handwriting with slightly thinner handwriting. To change colours he just needed to dip the glowing sphere into the palette at the bottom of the screen.
Potential: 5/5

Augmented reality tech demo

This tracked our torso, head, and emulated the movement of our arms without any noticeable lag. The Move kept everything in perfect perspective, even when we squeezed the trigger to distort our massive robot hand. The demo got us excited about the Move’s future and made us feel guilty about our presumptive Wii-comparisons.
Potential: 5/5

SOCOM 4

Using the pointer to aim our red dot and the navigation controller to move, SOCOM 4 gave us an idea of how enthusiasts might use the Move for ‘hardcore’ games. Picking off enemies worked well, but it felt counter intuitive aiming our remote at the sides of the screen to turn. Lead Designer, Travis Steiner, reckons that testers using the Move end up pwning DualShock 3 kids. Hmm.
Potential: 3/5

Motion Fighter

This is actually a gesture-based game like the majority of Wiimote fighters. It was a bit disappointing not getting to use one-to-one control, but we were informed that it was a design decision based on the poor street-brawling skills of gamers as opposed to technical limitations. The build was just 20% complete but it felt responsive and looked stylish.
Potential: 4/5

Move Party

A varied selection of casual games, Party is a turn based affair that’s already looking polished but not as thorough as we’d have liked – it’s hard not to question the long term appeal of cutting a monster’s hair or swatting flies with a virtual tennis racquet. It did use the PSEye to take a profile picture of each player and record a soundbite though, which was a nice touch.
Potential: 3/5

Sports Champions

We got to sample two minigames from Sony’s answer to Wii Sports. It lacked the charm and accessibility of Nintendo’s title but had superior motion controls. Table tennis was reassuringly button-free and Gladiator Duel (where you hold a sword and shield and go one-on-one with an opponent) combined one-to-one-control with gestures to good effect.
Potential: 4/5

The Shoot

Another underwhelming Wii-alike, The Shoot is a light-gun game with a few gestures bundled in to perform special moves. It used the PSEye to detect your body position (allowing you to dodge projectiles) demonstrated the pointer’s accuracy, and got us excited about the next Time Crisis.
Potential: 2/5

TV Superstars

Map your face to an avatar and go on the steady rise to TV stardom (if that’s your thing). This casual title has you performing mediocre minigames (use sweeping gestures to make your character dance) and dress them up in ‘funny’ outfits. One for the ladies then. The ladies with bad taste in games.
Potential: 1/5

Brunswick Pro Bowling

This felt worse than the bowling minigame in Wii sports. It was a bit of a glitchy mess but we were supposedly playing on a pre-alpha build. If this had been the only game on the floor we’d have smashed up the Move and left feeling very sad indeed.
Potential: 0/5