PlayStation Move Hardware Review

01 Sep 2010 at 16:03:58 by James Chalmers
Systems used to review this title: (PS3)

Ever picked up a peripheral and felt it just melt into your hand? That’s the first impression I got when I picked up the PlayStation Move. My fingers seemed to fit easily around the base of the controller and before I knew it I was happily exploring the different menus on the XMB and playing Volleyball on Sports Champions.

Now while the IncGamers team is eagerly awaiting the postman to deliver Kinect, we’re still waiting Microsoft, Sony has been kind enough to send through a brand new PlayStation Move with Eye camera and two Move controllers. After spending countless hours of the past couple of weeks swinging my arms around while playing a variety of launch games and also testing the hardware out to the limits, it’s my privilege to bring to you the PlayStation Move review. Hopefully this will help make up your mind on whether you should be picking up the new motion-controller come September when it launches.

As you read from my preview earlier this summer I was impressed after the couple of hours I got to spend with the new technology. Thankfully after two weeks of playing around with the glowing stick I can safely assure you that my initial reactions have been solidified 110%. I adore the PlayStation Move. There seems to be something with the motion-controller that makes you feel as if you’ve been playing it for years. The ease of setting it up, the effortlessness of using it and most importantly the enjoyment you get from it after playing around on games for a couple of hours. Fans of the WiiMote are going to get on with Move like a house on fire but this isn’t just a Nintendo rip-off. You can clearly see Sony has worked on this technology for the past few years to execute the very best user experience for PS3 owners.

There are a few minor gripes when it comes to playing games though. As with each time you select a new game to play, Sports Champions for example, you will need to calibrate the Move controller with the PlayStation Eye. Selecting a brand new sport within the game will once again require you to calibrate the controller by moving it to your shoulder, down to your side and then into your midriff while the camera works out the size of the player. It’s not that noticeable at first but after doing it for what must’ve been the twentieth time it soon became mundane and annoying. It would’ve been nice for the PS3 to recognise who the player is and where the Move will be for their height, but I suppose it allows multiple players to take turns one after the other with just a quick calibration at the beginning.

Once the calibration is out of the way it’s down to playing the games. Gameplay is free flowing with true 1:1 movement and with the variety of games on offer there wasn’t any noticeable lag between the controller’s movement and its replicated action on-screen. This true movement adds so much to the experience of playing a game and truly immerses you into the action. Having to stand up for most games was a little annoying and after a while you can find yourself tiring in your arms or legs as you move about and stretch out in different directions but overall the Move is there for a couple of hours gaming a day and then having a break or reverting back to the Six-Axis controller for a while.

While games can be played in the dark, with the camera picking up your body illuminated by the TV and the glow of the ball on top of the Move controller, it can be extremely difficult to initially calibrate yourself. The camera relies heavily on being able to work out where you are standing and how far away you are from the TV but it cannot do this if the camera cannot see you.

Even when it does pick up where you are the motion controller sometimes suffers from struggling to pick out where you are aiming. On a few occasions playing archery in Sports Champions my shot on screen was being aimed in a totally different location to where I was aiming with the controllers. However this only happened once in a while and for the majority of the time I was happily aiming straight through an apple and landing a bulls-eye on the moving target.

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