Sony PS Move motion controller review

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