E3 2010 Showfloor Preview: Sony PS3 Move
June 21st, 2010 | Written by Anthony Perez | Topic: PlayStation 3
One liner: The beefed up Wii-like wand feels less compelling than when it was first announced, especially in the wake of the 360 Kinect.
Yes, we got to play all of the big technology innovations at this year’s E3 (Xbox 360 Kinect, Nintendo 3DS, and PS3 in 3D), and the most disappointing was (sadly) Sony Move. On its own, Sony’s PS3 Move is Wii Motion Plus with amazing graphics. If that’s what you’re looking for, then you should be excited. If you were looking for something more groundbreaking, you’ll probably be disappointed.
We actually had the chance to play a couple of PS3 Move games. One was a short tech demo called Shooter. We played the western “Bandits” mini-game, a rail-shooter set in the West, where we chased down robbers and shot them. It played very much like rail-shooters on the Wii (think Rayman Raving Rabids). We pointed at targets, shot them, and ducked when necessary. That’s essentially it. Nothing about the experience felt all that new or even interesting. We walked away from the demo conflicted: it was either nothing more than a juiced up Wii or a bad example of what the technology was capable of.
Our next experience confirmed the latter. Shortly thereafter we got the chance to play John Daly’s Prostroke Golf. It played like you would imagine any golf game on the Wii or PS3 would play. You point the Move remote at the floor, lined up your shot, swung, and played. It was hard to gauge how hard we were hitting the ball – a problem we’ve had with Wii golf games – and this caused us to have a hard time our first time through a hole. In fact, we shot a 12 (for the non-golfers out there, that’s terrible). We shot a 6 on our next try, which was much better, but there were many times where we sliced shots even though we thought we held the wand straight.
Ultimately, we walked away from the PS3 Move unenthused. It looked like, and worse yet, felt exactly like a souped-up Wii. We just wish there was more that made the experience standout from that of the Wii. In fairness, we only played two PS3 Move demos so it’s possible that we didn’t see the best examples of what it could do. Still, we find it somewhat telling that the buzz on the show floor was all about the Nintendo 3DS and Xbox 360 Kinect, with very little talk about PS3 Move.
Comment by ChrisSelogy on the June 22nd, 2010 at 2:04 am
Sounds like you played two of the worst Move games from what I've seen. The demos I've seen of stuff like Sports Champions, Kung Fu Rider, and the new Time Crisis looked pretty cool. Stuff like The Shoot and The Fight looked like the most tech demo-like of the bunch that couldn't get beyond that to become a fun game.