First Looks// PlayStation Move Controller

Now I’ve played a bit of Wii Sports Resort with Wii Motion Plus but this just felt a lot better. I can’t really describe why it feels better (which is a somewhat debilitating trait for someone writing this mini preview to have.) Holding down the trigger beneath the Move controller and letting go as my arm reached the top of its arc isn’t a new feeling – we’ve all had Wii bowling for a while – but this just felt right. The motion felt right, and the weight of the throw felt right.

Minutes later and I had beaten Paul 7-0. A good result for a Bocche first-timer, sure. But my thoughts as a Move first-timer? I’m impressed.

Very impressed.

Thanks Mat. So, an impressed Xbox 360 fan. Let's see what SPOnG boss and long-time Playstation afficianado (although he currently owns two Xbox 360s, fat and slim) Marcus Dyson makes of the Move.

The PlayStation User
By Marcus Dyson

Although the Wii is doubtless genius, and has made Nintendo a metric fuckload of cash; and was responsible for many many wasted hours in the SPOnG Underwater Castle, it is, it must be said, frustratingly vague.

It's a vagueness that we have all tolerated for the novelty of motion sensor based gameplay. But it's a vagueness that, while acceptable in golf and bowling (both of which we are notably vague at in real life), is completely unacceptable in House of the Dead style gun games, or in most other styles of game to be frank.

Nintendo tried to address this obvious failing with the MotionPlus but the result was suspiciously unsatisfactory. It made some fun games too exacting, and rendered little noticeable improvement on others.

That's why our Wii, while an utterly indispensable part of the party gaming armoury, has never found its way to the core of our gaming hearts.

However, while many have been swift to label the Wii a fad, it has continued to sell in numbers that have rendered both Sony and Microsoft's eyes a very emerald shade indeed. So, it is hardly surprising that eventually one (in fact both) of them should unleash a motion controller to compete for the hearts and minds of Wii owners.

Sony's motion controller, the Move, is first to hit the streets, and is arguably lower priced than Microsoft's Kinect - though you may, in fact, have to spend more if you have many siblings/friends and you all want to play two handed. Move is also the most Wii-like of the two because Microsoft's Kinect appears to be more like a version of Sony's venerable EyeToy camera.

Move does not seem to aspire to do anything notably different to the Wii's Motion Controller, it just appears to do the same stuff much, much more accurately. The annoying lag that often accompanied the Wii's on-screen cursor is conspicuous by its absence here. The result is Motion Control gaming as we always imagined it could be; it is at once familiar and excitingly new.

Unfortunately, although Sony were good enough to let us have hardware nice and early, the software has not started to flow yet, so most of our experience has been with the bundled party sports game, Sports Champions. While the title evokes visions of great sporting events like The US Open, The FA Cup and whatever happens in rugby, in reality it's a motley selection of also-ran sports to be sure.

The game includes Bocce (Italian for Petanque, the younger, more European version of coffin chaser's fave - Bowls), Archery, Beach Volleyball, Frisbee Golf, Table Tennis. As with all such compendia, we quickly developed our own favourites, so while I am sure that Beach Volleyball and Table Tennis are excellent games, I am in a far better position to tell you about Archery - to my mind the best example of the Move's responsiveness, and Bocce - a testament to its accuracy. Frisbee Golf is enjoyable too, but the design of the courses and the stupidity of the other (AI) players limit its longevity.

Played with two Move controllers, the Archery game is fabulous. You “nock” (fit to the bow string) arrows by moving one hand to your quiver, and then to the front of your bow. The strength of the shot is determined by how far you pull back, aim is simply a matter of the relative positions of your two hands; almost exactly like real world archery. The result is spectacularly enjoyable. Of course the game is spiced up with all sorts of fanciful gameplay tricks and gee-gaws, many of which may appeal to the attention deprived or merely stupid. But the simple underlying purity of embedding shaft after shaft into a selection of moving targets makes the game a joy.