PlayStation Move has been floating around in near final form for a few months now, at least over in the US. It’s not due out in the UK until September, but we got to test out the magic wand with a few upcoming games today. Is it just Wii HD? Read on and find out with out first impressions and photos.
You’ll know we were quite smitten by Kinect at today’s Ubisoft press event in London town, so the PlayStation Move had a lot to live up to, but sadly, at this (not final) stage, it didn’t quite.
That’s not to say that the technology itself is flawed – we saw glimpses of genius while playing two titles the French publisher has planned for the PlayStation Move. We just hope other developers have made a better stab at using it for a wider range of game genres.
The PlayStation Move controllers themselves are striking, but not especially polished, sticks, and we can’t honestly say we prefer them to Nintendo’s simple Wii remote. The molded plastic feels cheap, and while most buttons are easy to press, the Start button is incredibly difficult to reach on the right hand side.
PlayStation Move dated for the UK
We tried out Ubisoft’s Racket Sports with a PlayStation Move wand first, and ran up against a lot of problems. The game code we played was clearly far from final: we had to calibrate repeatedly by pointing at the PlayStation Eye, and swings often didn’t trigger at all during a two player game. A sense of direction was most noticeable when serving, as you could quite clearly place the ball in the corner of the box you chose – but there was so much delay between swing and the character’s response that much of the fun was destroyed. As it stands, it’s no more enjoyable than Wii Sports, but that could change come final release.
Much more impressive was seeing real time strategy game RUSE working with a PlayStation Move wand – here the integration was much more subtle. RTS games have been a tough sell on consoles without a keyboard and mouse set up, but from the demo we were shown, it looks like Ubisoft has struck a decent balance. This isn’t a game to be played with arms akimbo, rather than subtle gestures from the sofa.
And they work: panning and rotating the map by twisting the PlayStation Move wand was seamless, with no visible delay, and the problem of exactly pointing to small icons from several metres away is solved by an auto lock, which brings the cursor over to the settlement you’re aiming for pretty smoothly.
This, we could get used to: where as so many Wii developers have made the terrible mistake of adding “waggle” controls in just because they can, PlayStation Move controls on RUSE were enjoyable, and importantly, not really noticeable. We could easily see it making the PS3 the go to platform for RTS games, along with the PC, whereas Kinect couldn’t possibly do the same for the Xbox 360, as impressive as it is. Is that enough though? We’re not sure, but it’s early days.
Have a look through the PlayStation Move UK hands on photo gallery right here, and stay tuned – we’ll be bringing you plenty more on Sony’s super peripheral in the run up to launch.
Out 17 September | £varies | Sony
