Moved

As a Ready Up reviewer and general games player, I figure this makes me pretty hardcore, as far as gamers go. I write for a website about games, and I’ve even been on a podcast about games. This, I reckon, makes me hardcore. I like games. I know my way around a games controller – I don’t need gaming to be simplified for me.

Two years ago, I bought my girlfriend (who has since become my wife) a Nintendo Wii. We played it. A bit. Then we got bored of the innovative control system and went back to normal games. The Wii was genuinely (no joking) not even plugged into the mains for a year.

This, to me, was the curse of the Wii, and I was determined not to fall foul of it again. Waving my arms around to control a game? I’m not falling for that again. No chance, not likely.

A couple of weeks ago, though, I saw the Playstation Move starter kit in my local Sainsburys for £40 — this consisted of the Playstation Eye (of Sauron) and one Move controller. As someone who thought that Kinect for the Xbox 360 was too expensive, this seemed affordable enough for a punt – I had to have a go. I bought the controller, went home, and wondered if I’d ever hold in my hands a more unbelievably phallic icon — except, perhaps, for my own cock.

It vibrates, and it has a glowing pink bulge at the end. It’s like Sony had an internal contest to create the filthiest looking thing they could and try to sell it for giggles. If it doesn’t succeed as a games controller I’m sure they can sell it late night on QVC as an “internal massager”.

My biggest problem with the Wii (but l admit, I never went back after Motion Plus was added) was that whatever I did with my hands, the game didn’t seem to care. Amongst my friends there is a now infamous story of the night we all played Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games and I utterly failed at every single event. I did as well as I would actually manage to do at the real Olympic games. It was that bad. I would have had more chance of winning if I had just ditched the Wii controllers and started head butting the Wii repeatedly.

Move isn’t like that at all though. The combination of gyroscopes, accelerometers and ball-tracking (hee hee) means that the PS3 incredibly accurately tracks exactly where the controller is, which way around it is, and where it is pointing. The accuracy is astonishing — as long as nothing is in between you and the Eye of Sauron. It’s incredibly impressive. Not as impressive as Kinect, sure, but then you don’t need two mortgages — one for Kinect, the other for the new house you need to play it.

I’ve played a few games using it now. The demo for the new Time Crisis was fun — a lot of loud, shouty arcade bollocks. Classic Time Crisis, and the Move controller made an excellent impromptu gun. I’ve got a promotional copy of The Fight too (review here) — and with a Move controller in each hand, it tracks your fists really well. My favourite though, is Tumble. Tumble is a PSN title that is best described as inverse Jenga. Build towers as high as you can, by gently placing blocks on top of each other. Every block twists, turns and moves into and out of the screen exactly as you move the controller.

The really good thing about all the games I’ve played so far, though, is that none of them feel like a load of rubbish mini-games thrown into one package, as is so popular on the Wii.

Oh wait, I forgot about Start The Party!. Bugger.