Playstation Move [split topic]

[jutl]

Digital Foundry on Playstation Move GDC demo.

[MojoJojo]

I think the problem with the weighting is that it almost punishes people for being good at the game. What's the point in being first for the entire race when you'll likely get knocked out just before the finish line by any number of pretty-much-unavoidable power-ups fired from someone who may be 8th... but is less than 20m behind you. In versions like the SNES/N64 (which I played the Hell out of) it was never as bad as that and knowing all the little tricks to a level could give you an advantage but never that much of one.

What's even worse is the blue shell. It doesn't help the sod who is last since he's way back, it just screws up first place.

What's especially annoying is that as the games have progressed, they tend to have made the tracks more punishing for minor mistakes - e.g. swampy bits that take for ever to get through if you lose turbo. The first game didn't need much rubberbanding since the tracks were all small and tight, but since then they've made the tracks bigger, they punish mistakes more harshly, and they've chucked in a increasingly powerful powerups to try and keep the pack together.

[AsparagusTrevor]

You can be tactical when you've got a blue shell chasing you. If there's anyone around, just slow down and try to get close to them, if the explosion manages to take a few people with it it's much less devastating to the first-place guy.

Also when you're ahead, you tend to only get the seemingly shit powerups like bananas, but they can be quite useful to block red/green shells fired at your arse.

[chand]

Sony start the fanboy baiting...

Playstation Move commercial trashes Wii and XBOX Natal

[jutl]

Digital Foundry have a stab at quantifying Playstation Move demo lag

Spoiler alert

~133ms, not the 'less than one frame' claimed

[close]

[Slaaaaabs]

Digital Foundry have a stab at quantifying Playstation Move demo lag

Spoiler alert

~133ms, not the 'less than one frame' claimed

[close]

Isn't that around what Natal was discovered to be on the recent press showings?

[jutl]

Isn't that around what Natal was discovered to be on the recent press showings?

This, which I think has been posted already, suggests that Natal has a greater lag than Move. This could be down to the rumoured decision to move all processing to the Xbox hardware and dump the (again rumoured) onboard processor.

[Still Not George]

Sony start the fanboy baiting...

Fucking hell that was funny.

"Real boxers don't go... eh.... uh.... eh...." (flails pathetically)

That said, historically trash talking doesn't work well as a strategy.

[Slaaaaabs]

That said, historically trash talking doesn't work well as a strategy.

Especially when your product is such a direct rip of the market leader.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I don't see a problem with them copying the Wii, if they manage to do it better.

[Slaaaaabs]

I don't see a problem with them copying the Wii, if they manage to do it better.

It is a big 'if' though considering what they have shown so far. Getting cocky about it before they do is just silly.

[The Boston Crab]

Getting cocky about it four years late is odder still.

Still, faintly amusing reductive PR aside, the software running in the background really looks like a game-changer...[/smirk]

[Nik Drou]

Right, I have vouchers for Game.  I tend not to buy software till it hits the £10-£15 mark, so it's an opportunity to get something more substantial that I wouldn't, in my right mind, bother with. 

I'm aware that almost all of the line-up for the Move so far leaves a lot to be desired, but the hardware itself seems fairly promising.

[chand]

I've been playing around with this, it's good fun. Doesn't feel like the future of gaming or anything yet, but it's a fun distraction.

Sports Champions is definitely worth getting. The table tennis game is really responsive and very addictive, they've really nailed the ball physics so it's quite satisfying to hit all the proper spin shots. Didn't really get on with archery and bocce ball is a bit boring, but beach volleyball is ace, especially with two controllers. Frisbee golf is great fun too. There's a gladiator duel game which is the most physically demanding one as you're constantly blocking and then trying to hit as hard as you can.

Played the Kung Fu Rider demo, it's entertaining but I'm not sure if I'll buy the whole game. Tumble is interesting and cheap at £8, the physics of that are really good and you do feel in control of the various blocks you have to stack.

Looking forward to the full Echochrome II especially though, the demo is really good. I love the original Echochrome, in this one the Move controller functions as a torch and you aim the light around the screen at different angles trying to locate a path for your character, it's a really good idea and it's nice to see something using the technology in a less obvious way.

[The Boston Crab]

Whereas software developers basically had to accommodate/make use of the Wii controls if they wanted to develop for it, there's no good reason for them to develop games for what is essentially a peripheral - unless it takes off to a massive extent. This is extremely unlikely given the main reason for the Wii's landslide hardware sales success was the pure novelty. The majority of motion-sensitive games were/are shit.

[jutl]

Whereas software developers basically had to accommodate/make use of the Wii controls if they wanted to develop for it, there's no good reason for them to develop games for what is essentially a peripheral - unless it takes off to a massive extent. This is extremely unlikely given the main reason for the Wii's landslide hardware sales success was the pure novelty. The majority of motion-sensitive games were/are shit.

If Sony pack in a Move to all PS3 packages then it could take off. Remember that analog controllers were introduced after the PS1 launch, but became firmly embedded as a necessary peripheral for the system. Also important is the fact that both Sony and MS seem to be treating the new control systems this Christmas as a new console launch, and no-one expects a PS4 or Xbox 3 for at least a few more years.

[The Boston Crab]

True dat, true dat. I accept they're both treating this as a system reboot/second wind as opposed to a simple add-on.

The question then is 'are gaming consumers interested in motion stuff?' I do think it was the pure novelty (and accessibility) which sold the Wii to the casual/family gamer. Given that the 360 & PS3 are marketed as more 'gamer-oriented' machines, I wouldn't expect that particular (lucrative) Wii demographic to switch. 'Are gamers that interested in motion stuff?' might be a more pertinent question.

[jutl]

True dat, true dat. I accept they're both treating this as a system reboot/second wind as opposed to a simple add-on.

The question then is 'are gaming consumers interested in motion stuff?' I do think it was the pure novelty (and accessibility) which sold the Wii to the casual/family gamer. Given that the 360 & PS3 are marketed as more 'gamer-oriented' machines, I wouldn't expect that particular (lucrative) Wii demographic to switch. 'Are gamers that interested in motion stuff?' might be a more pertinent question.

There are all those 3rd party Wii developers sitting around with failed Wii titles that they could port over to the PS3. The Move really does function exactly like the Wiimote+Motionplus, and the power differential between the PS3 and Wii should make the porting easier. Whether a second go at an audience more used to paying for third party titles would actually work I can't say, but it's got to look like a good option for cash-strapped studios loathe to develop 100% new content.

[chand]

The question then is 'are gaming consumers interested in motion stuff?' I do think it was the pure novelty (and accessibility) which sold the Wii to the casual/family gamer. Given that the 360 & PS3 are marketed as more 'gamer-oriented' machines, I wouldn't expect that particular (lucrative) Wii demographic to switch. 'Are gamers that interested in motion stuff?' might be a
more pertinent question.

I guess we'll find out soon enough. But the Move will be incorporated into a lot of the big PS3 titles; Killzone 3, LittleBigPlanet2 and Infamous 2 are all using it, as does the HD re-release of the Sly series so they're trying to aim it at the tradional Playstation userbase too.

[Papercut]

Hope no one minds me reposting this from another forum, but this is what I thought of Move. I bought it to get my Wii controls back for RE5, for which it does a fine job, but otherwise... poor.

After a days play the camera seems like a weaker design choice than IR. The light at the end is a distracting gimmick that I would rather wasn't there. Having each Wii Remote track the IR sensor separately is also a more reliable idea for multiple controllers.

What has irritated me about the press coverage of Move is the idea that it is somehow more accurate that the Wii Remote + Wii Motion Plus - this seems to be a total myth.

The pointer accuracy is equivalent, and in my experience the Wii does a better job of sensing depth movement (distance between IR spots vs. width of the spherical lamp).

Where the Move does something different appears to be in software only - if the camera loses sight of the ball, then it guesses where you are pointing based on movement data. A lot of people theorised the Wii Remote would do something similar, but in fact very few Wii games bother to do this; this is not a feature of the system, or enforced in the SDK on the Wii.

The Move position guessing doesn't work well enough and is fairly pointless. Another aspect of Move is that games tend to freak out if they can't see the light ball, whereas Wii games do not.

I imagine both of these are Move software requirements set by Sony, who are trying to solve a problem that isn't really there.

Move 'calibration' seems to link the light ball position to the movement sensors, which every game has squirrelled away somewhere, and needs to be performed when starting any Move game as far as I can tell. In practice this means having to recalibrate every time you shift from your initial position, which is in fact a poorer solution than the Wii manages to implement.

These are the only significant functional differences, and are purely software implementation choices. Nintendo do not seem to mandate this kind of behaviour, whereas every Move title I played behaved in this way. This must be why the press are suggesting the Move is more accurate, but this is superficial and misleading.

Less important changes...

• Move controller has fewer buttons, so cannot really be rotated for different types of games (like Excite Truck etc.) as the buttons aren't there.
  
• Button layout is poorer on the Move controller, the main move controller is too tall and too deeply set. Trigger buttons are over-engineered seemingly just so that they look different, and aren't as pleasant to use.
  
• Built in rechargeable batteries are nice, but makes charging a bit of a mare. Its a pain in the arse to charge the main and sub controller separately, you can see why Nintendo made the Nunchuk wired. The non-wired freedom is nice though.
  
• Making the sub controller wireless causes other problems, as the PS3 is limited to 7 wireless bluetooth devices only - 4 players cannot all use a main and sub controller.
  
• The main Move controller feels a little too large and a little too heavy compared to the Wii Remote, but is a better 'size' compared to Wii Remote + Wii Motion Plus.
  

EyePet Move Edition
Very similar to the camera only edition, it has been polished up a little more so some tasks are less specific and irritating, which is good. The original version used a magic card that the camera would recognise, which could only sense rotation on one axis. This is replaced with the Move wand in the Move edition, which allows virtual objects to be rotated more freely, a nice improvement, but no deal maker. International versions of this were delayed for Move controller support, which is now required in this edition.

Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition
The only game I played that made Move seem worthwhile. An exact replica of the RE4 Wii edition controls, no more, no less.

Tumble
Hmm. This a less fun version of Boom Blox, but competent enough. Absolutely horribly sparse but cumbersome Sony Europe presentation (how do they do it?) and a medicinally calmed instructional voice over. The game itself makes more use of the movement sensors for slower tower building sub-levels, which is the main distinguishing feature. Camera controls are dreadful and irritating. I'd had my fill after completing the demo, but it isn't without merit. The main problem is the presentation and plodding pace, which sucks the fun out of it.

Sports Champions
Pretty bad. The demo has disc golf and table tennis. disc golf manages to be poorer than the same in Tiger Woods Wii Motion Plus, and table tennis is equivalently irritating to the Wii Play version. Presentation is horrendously yank-centric. This is no where near challenging Wii Sports based on the demo, it's dreadful.

TV Superstars
Awful, feels tech demo-y and unfinished. This attempts to make use of the camera by pasting your mush on a 3D avatar thing, and throwing you at a series of mini games that revolve around riffs on members-of-the-public type TV shows. The presentation is appalling and embarrassing, the animated 2D faces are disturbing, and the mini games are poor clones of various Wii games. I can see this never being released, if Sony had any sense.

Echochrome II
This is more interesting, but could have been done just as well with Sixaxis motion control I reckon. You shine a light on suspended 3D cubes to cast a shadow behind them. The 3D blocks are placed such that a 2D platform can be created with the shadow that your little dude then trundles across. No system seller, but enjoyably diverting.

Racket Sports
Wii Sports Tennis with a ka-billion different game modes. Better than Sports Champions, but no where as well designed, or as much fun, as Wii Sports. There doesn't seem to be much point to it.

R.U.S.E
Nice motion controls on a visually interesting strategy game. The game itself might be a bit average, but the controls worked well, and are nicely intuitive.

Start the Party!
This is really just Eye Toy updated, and offers nothing over that other than grating presentation. To the point where I couldn't stand it after 5 mins. Sony are really getting that casual/family gaming shtick horribly wrong with all these games.

Kung Fu Rider
Quite nicely designed characters, crazy plot, fun sensibility - atrocious controls. Kart racer, but the steering is imprecise and no fun whatsoever. Like the worst initial Wii third party racer you can imagine.

The Shoot
A very average light gun game. The premise could be interesting, but as implemented comes across as a bit shoddy. There is a rudimentary combo system, which seems to be at odds with exploring what parts of the environments can be destroyed. It is HD, a little bland, and slowly paced.

Heavy Rain Move Edition
This is a strange one. The original release had a constant stream of QTE styled button presses, which were unintuitive and a little annoying. You would think translating these to motion controls would be a step in the right direction, but it doesn't quite work. The movement icons are a little too vague, and the movements required are too precise, so it is even more frustrating to play. It is hard to judge whether prolonged play would improve this, as potentially you could learn each icon and how precise each move needed to be. The end result either way seems to have been to increase the barrier to input QTE commands, rather than reduce.

There is a real schism between Sony trying to ape Nintendo's Wii games (a failure every time), versus some slightly more original ideas that half work (Echochrome, Tumble to a degree, EyePet to a degree).

Overall: embarrassing/10.

[The Boston Crab]

I want one!

[falafel]

I just went and bought a starter pack and an extra controller, and NEITHER of the controllers' lights are working. Particularly fucking annoying after a five hour charge. Cuntbags.

[jutl]

I just went and bought a starter pack and an extra controller, and NEITHER of the controllers' lights are working. Particularly fucking annoying after a five hour charge. Cuntbags.

I'm sure you're aware of this, but the bulb only lights up when a Move-supporting game has detected it... It'll work on the cross media bar without the bulb lighting and that's normal...

[falafel]

Yes, it's odd. I can navigate the XMB with the wiggling so the sensors are fine, the buttons are working, but then you get to the calibration screen (both on the XMB and various games) and... Nowt. Just suspicious that it's both but I suppose it's not impossible that they're both shot.

[jutl]

Yes, it's odd. I can navigate the XMB with the wiggling so the sensors are fine, the buttons are working, but then you get to the calibration screen (both on the XMB and various games) and... Nowt. Just suspicious that it's both but I suppose it's not impossible that they're both shot.

Could the Eye possibly be broken?

[falafel]

Nope - that's working fine. Calibration fuckup is essentially thus: through the magic of the camera I see myself on my sofa, and I'm told to point the controller at the screen and press a couple of buttons. The light still isn't on. So I fruitlessly point the controller anyway, and press the buttons, which it registers, but obviously it can't see anything useful because I'm just wiggling a bit of unilluminated silicone at the camera. With either controller - it knows it is there because the sensors are working and it's connected via bluetooth, I can see me angrily waving it about on screen, but the bloody light won't go on so I get no further.

In the Echochrome II demo a condescending female voice keeps going "whoops". If I ever get this thing working I am going to hunt her down and give her a massive virtual slap. That's £100 worth of "whoops" I'm looking at right now.

Serves me right for shopping at Dixo... sorry, Curry's Digital. I think I'll pop in for a switch-up tomorrow. Failing that I guess there would be something implausibly specific wrong with my actual PS3 itself, which seems sort of unlikely, so hopefully it's just two controllers from a bad batch or just some other such unfortunate accident that landed me with two overpriced bluetooth dildos.

[buntyman]

I had a go of the Move at the weekend at a friend's place and the controls feel no more accurate than the Wii, maybe even less so than the motion plus. I had a go of Heavy Rain and that Wii Sports equivalent, the former feeling like it would be a lot more enjoyable with a normal controller and the latter having a not very fun mix of games (Bocce was the most fun but almost impossible to gauge the weight of throws). I'd be very surprised if anyone's playing with these in 6 months.