I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction - Aneurin Bevan
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Sony PS Move motion controller review
Product Playstation Move
Website http://uk.playstation.com/
System Specifications none
Price £29.99 including VAT or £39.70 for starter pack
JAPANESE ELECTRONICS GIANT Sony announced the Playstation (PS) Move back in 2009 with much fanfare. The company didn't have any titles to show off - it still doesn't, really - but it was wowing the crowds at games expos with the lag-free and responsive motion controller.
Sony had previously made promises it couldn't keep at E3 with games demos that proved to be tweaked engines rather than games running on the fly. So the tech demos it ran for the PS Move looked very impressive but were taken with a healthy lump of salt. Then Sony started demoing titles for its upcoming PS Move and the same lag free responsive motion controller.
Those games demos weren't a trick of the light. Sony got the press interested with talk of magnetometer gyroscopes, accelerometers and pin-point accuracy. As usual, Sony got the edge with advanced technology after spending five years watching its market share drift to Wii punters.
The company also recently launched ahead of Microsoft's rival Kinect technology, hitting UK shelves a month before the Vole. But, as usual, Sony hasn't landed a killer blow with a decent array of titles to support the PS Move and entice the great unwashed. There are a couple of patches for good titles like Heavenly Rain and a rerelease of Eye-Pet. There's even a rejigged version of another old PS2 title that used the Playstation camera as a cheap augmented reality trick, now called Start the Party. But there's no killer app to sell PS Moves by the truckload, which is a shame. We think those big glowing orbs have much more potential than the Wii, and the jury is still out on Microsoft's Kinect.
Sony sent The INQUIRER two PS Move motion controllers and an array of launch titles, including Start the Party, Kung Fu Riders, Eye-Pet and Sports Champions. We had to purchase the Playstation Eye camera separately but it can be bought as part of the Starter Pack. The pack will only set you back about £40, which is about £80 less than Microsoft's Kinect, so it is a much cheaper option.
Installation is simple with the PS3 automatically picking up the camera. The controllers need to be plugged in via USB before they are recognised by the system but the USB cable only needs to be plugged in again for re-charging. The controllers have a claimed ten hour battery life, not bad given they also have to power the glowing orb light and vibration control. We did run out of battery life which meant trying to use the PS Move with the controller disconnected - not recommended. Because the camera picks up so much depth of field in some games like table tennis on Sports Champions, you need a lot of room to move. As most games support up to four players, it left us wishing the PS3 had more than two USB ports to recharge controllers. The camera connects to one port, which leaves just one USB port available for recharging.
In fact, we also stuck to Sony's rigid set up instructions to make sure the game play experience was optimised for the PS Move. Like Kinect, Sony's control system requires a large, clean and tidy room that's well-lit. For one player at a time it's not a problem but Sony obviously thinks we're all millionaires living in huge houses. We needed at least six to eight feet of space from the TV with another six feet either side. This proved most difficult on Eye-Pet where I tried to fit myself, two children, one cat and one augmented reality virtual pet into a tight space on the floor. We also had a real problem calibrating the controllers for this game, which seemed to be more chance than anything else.
The PS Move controller is, on paper and in hand, a great piece of technology. The big ball at the end lights up to provide a point of reference that the camera can track. That's not just very tight tracking left, right, up and down, but tracking backwards and forwards as well. The controllers automatically assign a different light when another is connected for each player but there are many colour changes that are used for different functions in different games to add to the gameplay experience.
The ball can also be converted using Sony's tech voodoo to anything you can hold in your hand. In this review and with the help of my boys, we held a sword, bat, torch, axe, Frisbee, swatter, hammer, fan, hair shaver, bow and pencil to name but a few. All were rendered with Sony's superior graphics engine, increasing in size the nearer we moved to the camera and decreasing as we moved away. But it was the lag free playing that held our attention. Try as we might, spinning the controllers in our hands, we couldn't catch the PS Move out so there's not even a millisecond of lag to report.
Aside from the glowing orb, the controller has a huge PS Move button in the middle, a trigger button for your right finger and Sony's traditional square, triangle, circle and cross buttons around the large Move button. There's also a small select and start button on the left and right hand side. The main buttons sat naturally underneath our fingers and most of the simpler games like Start the Party didn't use any other buttons.
But the square, triangle, circle and cross buttons were a little harder to track, especially on manic games like the awful Kung Fu Riders. With so much time devoted to holding down the PS Move button in some games, a move to another button at the side takes some getting used to. This might be more of a problem when Sony finally releases some headline titles like Socom 4 or other FPS games. Where quick fragging is of the essence, that vital move to the side buttons could cost valuable milliseconds.
The layout feels very comfortable to use and Sony has done itself a favour by making the controller slender and robust enough to take a few whacks by frustrated players throwing it across the room. I was also pleased that my kids only suffered shattered egos rather than skulls when beating each other up in the gladiator duels in Sports Champions. Without enough space to move, both boys spent more time actually hitting each other with the spongy ball rather than landing virtual blows.
But that all important game play mechanic with the controllers is, unequivocally, fantastic. Sports Champions lacks the cutesy charm of Nintendo's Wii Sports but we'd rather play its table tennis game than anything the Wii has to offer. The PS Move adds so much depth and control that the gameplay of table tennis opens up. You can orchestrate smashes on Wii tennis with a dainty flick but the PS Move asks its players to actually perform a smash. Ditto for lobs backhands, slices and topspins. The 360 degree representation of the bat meant we got full control over gameplay, giving some games richer depth than we expected.
Start the Party is a cheap and dirty post pub five minute knee trembler. We enjoyed it thoroughly at the time but you might regret it in the morning. You are not asked to think beyond following the mighty Bruce Campbell's instructions to whack, stab or swat something on screen. It is an old PS2 idea with the camera displaying our mug on screen in a virtual world and picking up our controller movement. The idea is enhanced by the PS Move and it proved to be my kids' favourite.
Eye-Pet is also a revamped older title but has been given the Move makeover. Calibration was awful. Sports Champions has a much more complicated calibration process because the games asked a lot more of the PS Move but it worked every time. Ditto for Start the Party, which only required us to point the controller at the camera once and press the PS Move button. But Eye-Pet's calibration hardly worked even though it should've been relatively plain sailing.
Kung Fu Riders is a terrible launch title with a one trick pony idea extended to an entire game. Performing Kung Fu moves on a chair while getting points for style moves is a neat idea badly executed and the game should never have seen the light of day. Even my normally forgiving kids didn't rate this one well.
In Short
It is so hard not to judge Sony's technology in a land where content is king. Without a killer app to use this great technology the PS Move could be over before it begins. The company's hyperbole is bang on the money for us, however. It is truly a marvel to play with and we didn't think we'd enjoy it as much as we did. µ
The Good
Affordable price for motion control gaming, lag-free precision controllers.
The Bad
Launch titles aren't going to entice the masses, side buttons are hard to find.
The Ugly
PS Move has to be more than a technical demonstration that Sony won't fully support if punters don't buy in to the idea.
Bartender's Score
8/10
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I was not implying that the game manufacturers keep producing game last gen systems what my point was is that microsoft completely stop within 6 month of the release of the 360 but it took till just recently for some game manufacturers to stop on the PS2 and tha is because Sony did not stop supporting that system they even created s new bundle system with toy story 3. I trying to explain that Microsoft completely stopped supporting the regular Xbox, not only with games but they also stopped phone support unlike sony who still today supports the PS2 all I dm saying is it seems to be all about the money with microsoft no matter what they make weather it is a game system of new OS to replace one that was released only few years earlier plus they should consider that not everyone can afford there new system but that is neither here nor there but it dotes seem that Microsft bullies consumers into buying there newer products if you still want support.
Hi Russ, no apology necessary, healthy debate is a good thing. However i must disagree wholeheartedly with your rationale, would you by Crysis 2 now and expect it to run on an old pentium 3 with a 6800?? it might but it would be unplayable. The fact that 'game designers' produce games to run on the newest most powerful hardware (at the time) is hardly M$'s fault, whilst they have their own games studio they don't dictate the platforms the games are produced for. Market forces and a drive for profit in all business mean that older products are eventually shelved for newer more powerful versions, never more so in the IT industry. i have a reasonable decent spec PC, at one time it was to quote "total ninja bast" but time has moved on, and whilst she still plays the current crop of games they don't run quite as smoothly as I would like. Should I call up the games companies and demand they make games tailored to my system? how dare they make games that run best on newer hardware? For all Sony's laudable efforts to make their games cross platform are you seriously telling me that Fallout or Cod:BO will run on PS2? I very much doubt that, if you want the latest games you have to buy the latest hardware and that means PS3. Demanding that games should run on old consoles is to demand the stifling of innovation by that dint we would not have progressed from the days of ZX spectrums and C64's. I haven't had a chance to give the kinect a go yet so I cannot and will not suggest taht what you say about lag issues is in any way untrue however I would suggest that if that is the case then there is no doubt a patch on the way in the same way that the move has no doubt had a patch or two since release date to tweak didgy coding issues ;)
I have played the kinect because my sister owns one so what I am saying not just a rahash of other peoples reviews but they are from actually playing kinect and their games. I know thatthe space issue and the extreme lag often make the games hard to playbecause when I move the game has a slight delay. I will tell you why I have such a problem with Microsft and that is because I used to own the original Xbox which I traded all of my PS2 games and console for about 8 months before the 360 was released and after the 360 was released I starred to notice that new release games stated to not be made for the original Xbox so I called Microsoft and asked them why some new games were not available and what I was told is that if I wanted to be able to play new release game I would have to buy the 360 because Microsoft will only be supporting their current gem system I proceeded to tell the lady that I could not afford the 360 and I would like to be able to buy new release games for the my Xbox but the person I spoke to said even after I told her my story is that new release games will only be coming out on the 360 and to just buy the 360 because it is the best system for sale and the only way to play new release game on a Mocrosoft gaming system. After that I swore I would never buy another Micrsoft gaming system again because when Micrsoft decides to make a newer system than the 360 I would have to buy that because they would no longer supper the 360 and I do not have the money to keep buying new gaming systems. What Microsoft needs to do is take s page from Sony and see how they handled the PS2 which you can still buy new release games for so I hope you understand my position with Microsoft and I do apologize for my rudeness in previous articles but I can get a little worked up because of articles like this because it always seems like everyone either is brainwashed orjust so finaticle over anything Microsoft makes. If the 360 was so great why did it take Microsoft 5 years to finally fix the 360 and stop the RROD and the e74 errors that would also be another reason for not buying a 360. So please accept my apology for very rude in my first response.
My apologies for my seeming inability to type the word "Write" in my previous diatribe :)
The move has been out a month or two now so I think it's fair that INQ have left it a while before reviewing the product, I would say it's only fair that the Kinect is given the same treatment. All products on release are glitchy and somewhat buggy and no doubt either need some bedding in or at least a patch, it's nothing new. I'm wondering though as a self confessed PS3 fanboi where you are getting 'your' info from regarding the kinect's capabilities? I'm assuming (no doubt correctly that you do not own one) so i think it's safe to assume that your comments are based upon reviews hastily rushed out and by the sound of it you are cherry picking the bad parts from said articles. I have no problem with what you right IF what you right comes from a position of impartiality rather than sounding like a whining Sony sycophant. As for the Wii knock offs, prey tell what would Raquet sports and Sports Champions be if not shameless wii clones? (yes i have played both ps3 and Wii)Before you ask no i don't own a Kinect, i do own an Xbox, I don't hate PS3, I might get a kinect after christmas. If you are going to diss one platform at the expense of another at least have the decency to play both. finally this is a review FOR the move not a comparison against the kinect, when the review comes round for that we'll see what there is to be said If you don't like what i arite, please feel free Not to read my comments ;)
I was not asking why he did not review the kinect in thi article but what I was saying was if he really wanted to feel space limitations he should review the kinect in his next article that he could really see that space limitation on kinect are ridiculous along with all of the launch games are just WII knockoffs and really do not work that good. I want to make the point that the Move really does not need that much room but the kinect does and I also wanted him to see that although the move launch games may not be that good but neither are the kinect launch games so my point in my first comment was is the the person who wrote this article going to review the kinect this way he can give a comparison of the two add on controllers. If you do not like what I write than don't read my comments.
I think he was referring to grown adults using crapbox360 as a noun (i happen to agree but that's by the by)
Why didn't he review the kinect as you ask? because it's a review for the 'Move' you plonker! if you want a kinect review then wait for one, gawd 'fanbois' of all types do my head in. The review did not present 'false facts' (I usually call these 'lies') they presented facts as the reviewer encountered them, just because you have a different experience does not make them lies. I still have my first X-box360 bought 3 years ago, it's still going strong, do i call those who say they break liars? no. Get back in your box Sony aren't going to give you free stuff just because you defend their products.
@LPF
Please stay in church the word crapbox360 is not bad but I guess if you belong to a cult and get brainwashed it might be but in my world it is not considered bad. I can say what ever I want because this is a free country and I also state facts because when you spend all that money on game system it should work and not break. Microsoft new of the problem yet they still released the 360 so on my opinion they should have to pay all the people that have had there systems break a full refund or r atleast replace it with one that does not break. You may think is ok for a company to do what Microsoft did but I do not. I was just stating in my first comment that what the person who wrote this stated nothing but false facts but I guess you think being lied to is ok and not a crime so you yourself should continue being brainwashed by false reviews and continue buying a system that continually breaks. I also believe that you should not preach you religious beliefs to people when not everyone likes being in a cult that also brainwashes you to give money to person that run a church I feel that learning about god could be taught at home without all of the cult BS so if you do not like either one of my comments you can just stick it in your backside.
You are the father of two children and you use words liek crapbox 360 and call yourself a fanboi ???
Jesus wept your kids need to be taken into care for their own protection!
The person who wrote this article must be a fan of the crapbox 360 because all the things he said about space is totally incorrect. I live in a very small apartment with my two kids and only have at best 4' to play in and I have yet to encounter any issues. As far as eyepet goes calibrating the move controller is really easy and both my daughters and I play with no problems. The author does say that the move is actually good but he also says that space is an issue I know I already said that but if you are going to review something atleast do it correctly because all of the bad things you say about the move at totally not accurate and I feel you just wanted write something bad about the move because you are crapbox 360 fan and the kinect is getting all kinds of bad launch game reviews as also with space issues and you figured why not bad things about the move just because you can because you are a journalist. I think you just stick to reviewing thing that you understand better which I feel you do not understand video game systems. One more thing why don't you test kinect and review that because then you will really see what space issues really are and you will actually see launch titles that are actually really bad. To all all that do not agree I am letting you know that yes I am a fanboy of the PS3 because I actually like having system that does not break. I really bitter towered 360 because I at first had one and I had to have fixed 6 times so I just traded everything in bought a PS3.
I bought a PS3 a couple of months ago for blue ray playback and PVR functionality (in the form of PlayTV), and the move bundle came with the console.
I have to agree with the artical, I've got sports champions, and do feel that it's a hell of alot more acurate and responsive than the Wii. The interaction feels far more connected (and the visuals are obviously far superior on the PS3), overall I do like it.
I totally agree on the USB port front. Why oh why didn't Sony put USB on the back of this console? Even if it was just one port. I've connected a USB hub to mine, and tucked the cable as tidily away running behind the console as possible (so the cable for the camera, and playtv is out of view), but it's a shame that I can't plug the hub in the back of the thing.
It's this lack of thought, following through on the software side, and their marketing doing meaningless adverts rather than promoting any features of the console, that really lets Sony down.
I've been playing EyePet with my daughter and have to say calibration is easy peasey japaneesey for us so not sure why the author had probs.
Oh cool a black Wii controller........hang onnnn.