I remain unMOVEd

This started out as a review, the review was for a collection of games entitled “Move Mind Benders”. I didn’t have a Move at the time and this provided me with a great excuse to fill this seeming gap in my hardware portfolio. GAME had a second-hand wand in stock and HMV were able to furnish the requisite PS-Eye at a reduced cost so I was a happy tech-head as I walked back down the hill to my house ready to plug in, charge up and wave things around.

Installation being complete, updates to PS3 done and wand charged up I was ready to go. Now, as I’d agreed to take on the review our Editor-in-Chief, the big cheese, the Grand Pooh-bah, the boss… Dan, sent me down a few other promo titles which use Move and as I went through them I came to the conclusion that these words here, the ones you’re reading, were actually better spent on the experience rather than walking you through games and how they work in my usual slightly too-technical yet oddly gushing way!

So here I am, my arm is aching, there’s sweat running down my brow and I’m in dire need of a couple of beers and what do I have to show for it? Well frankly not very much and here’s why I feel this way:

Move Mind Benders.

A collection of three games on one disk:  Tumble, Lemmings and Echocrome ii.

Tumble seems like nothing more than a technical demo of Move, as all you really do is stack blocks on top of each other in interesting and challenging ways. The engagement factor for me was zero once I’d mastered that twisting my wrist made the block twist too! Yeah, not a huge learning curve there.

Lemmings was frankly a disappointment. I loved Lemmings on the PC and I’ve played a few variations since, but the Move controls felt clunky and lashed on and the enjoyment was far less than it should have been for this title. I’m pretty sure that most of you with a PS3 will also own a PC or Mac of some description. If you want to play Lemmings, get a copy for those instead, use a mouse and have LOTS more fun.

EchoChrome ii is the best out of this bunch with the use of the wand as a light source being well rendered and the controls nicely fine. It’s just the rest of it that feels clunky using the wand to control menus and sliders, etc. It’ good, but would I spend the thick end of £60 for hardware to play it? Well, OK, strictly speaking I did, but the reality is that, no you wouldn’t.

Next disk!

Medieval Moves.

I enjoyed playing this one, it gave me the above-mentioned sore arm and perspiration but it was fun. But a couple of times as I played through the opening levels I found myself thinking who is this for? See, the graphics are nice, friendly and cartoony — we are dealing with a boy who’s been turned into a skeleton and is guided by the ghost of his long dead ancestor here — so the kids will like the look of the thing, but the gameplay itself can involve quite a lot of control switching and the use of the various tools / weapons at your disposal is, in part, reliant upon the position of the Move when you press the relevant button. I got lost on a couple of occasions and sometimes the right bit of kit simply wouldn’t appear for me. Perhaps my calibration was out, perhaps I’d moved too close to the camera, perhaps… but that’s my point: kids don’t care about those things. If it’s too hard or doesn’t work they’ll get bored and move on. The audience then for this is perhaps a little mixed and therefore lost.  BUT, the Move did seem to do what it was designed for and this game took advantage of the design well. I particularly liked the idea of hiding the glowing end of the Move from the camera while pressing the ‘T’ button to light a stick of dynamite, it did feel like I was protecting a flame of some sort. This is a title you’d consider for purchase for an older young’un who’s happy to learn the nuances of the controls, but again not one you’d actually buy the hardware for in my opinion.

Next disk!

Carnival Island.

Now this one really is for the kids or those who don’t mind being a kid for a little while. And this is really where I felt the Move was working best for me. Odd isn’t it that the simple things seem to make the biggest impact? Anime-type graphics will have the young-stars hooked in from the start and the characters, especially the big Panda, are immediately endearing and accessible. The controls using the Move are intuitive — make sure you’ve firmly attached the wrist strap by the way! — and the rewards you get are visual and fun. There are challenges which need to be met, but the simple effort of playing the game a couple of times would enable most kids to move through the various games with ease and enjoyment.

Is this what the PS3 is for, though, let alone a PS3 with additional peripherals?

So I reached a point in my maundering when I asked myself “who’d buy Move” and here’s the conclusion I’ve reached:

• You’re a gamer who likes solid HD games content and puts a reasonable amount of time into them.
• You’ve chosen the PS3 as your platform of choice. It seemed the best deal at the time and it’s a decent BluRay player too, plus all of your mates with 360s have had them fail at some point!
• You have the aforementioned PS3 in the living room, so your other half is cool with you gaming, or you’ve got a proper ‘den’ with enough space to jump around in.
• You’ve got kids. At least one, but more than likely a couple with 2-3 years in between.
• You’ve got a PS-Eye. Probably to put your face onto a character in a shooter

Then and, in my opinion, only then is it worth getting a Move. You’ll enjoy the titles that transport you to being a kid again with your kids and the titles which you, your other half and some mates can play when the kids are in bed or you’ve shipped them off to a grandparent/uncle/aunt.

There’s only one other category of gamer who will buy a Move and that’s me. I acquire tech hardware like it’s some sort of compulsion and will do so on the thinnest and most tenuous of reasoning. Like reviewing a game which isn’t that good but I’m getting a promo copy of for free. See? Thin.

When I first got hands on a Move it was at a PR preview of a Golf game. I liked that it was more accurate than the Wiimote and felt ‘right’ for the game. Then I played a few games with Kinect and I wondered what Sony was hoping to do. Whatever it was, I don’t think it worked. My Move is going into the box labelled “PS3 stuff” and I might drag it out if I have another game to review which uses it, but I don’t have kids, so apart from reviews I don’t have any other reason to use it.