The Playstation Move has inertial sensors built into in, including an acceleromoter and a gyrometer that senses motion on three axises. It also has a glowing ball that helps the system track movement better (it’s an upgraded version of the science of the light-refracting NES Zapper). The aforementioned science talk that’s already used to death by Sony’s PR and marketing team (that also justifies the, er, “unique” aesthetics of the controller) mean that it’s suppose to perform better than the Wiimote in terms of responsiveness and flexibility.

So, does it? To be frank, I only spent about two hours or so using it during last Wednesday’s Sony Playstation Move event, but I’ll just say that it’s a decent effort from Sony. Not mindblowing, since motion controller technology in videogames did that thanks to the Wii four years ago, but an admirable feat nonetheless.

As you can see from the pic above, the Move button’s on the front and centre of the controller and the trigger is at the back. The Start and Select are on the right and left side of the controller respectively. Just picking up and getting familiar with the layout is easy, even if you happen to be a gamer who hasn’t touched a Wiimote in your life (to which I say “really”?). The controller’s pretty responsive from where I was standing (about three feet, I believe), and even if I was playing games while standing slightly to the left or right side, it still registered my motion gestures correctly and without fail.

But hey, the controls don’t mean jack if there aren’t any games to play with, right? These are the titles I manage to test out during the day.

Sports Champions

I manage to test out Table Tennis and Volleyball. The former requires just one Wiimote Move controller while the latter requires two. Regardless of which game you play, you’ll have to do a two-player calibration routine to determine your position when playing. It’s kept short, so there’s really no break in flow. Best of all, you can restart the same activity you picked without going through the calibration again, unless you go back straight to the game’s main menu.

Table Tennis is standard fare; you swing the controller upwards to launch the ball, then swing downwards to strike. Your left and right swings as well as the strength of your swings matter. It’s also a bit refreshing that even if you accidentally twirl your controller around (which makes the in-game paddle face the wrong way), swinging the ball still registers as a hit as the in-game paddle “auto-corrects” itself.

It’s also cool that you have to use two remotes per player to almost simulate the actions of a volleyball player; all of my passes and catches are spot-on, while doing a momentary save is easy (if you’re fast enough). Still, it’s a bit of a gimmick just to get unwary people to shell out more money for more controllers. Even if I didn’t play the rest of the minigames at the time, I still believe that if you’ve played one sports-themed tech demo, you’ve played them all.

Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition

I manage to finish this game twice, so playing the Assembly Hall segment of the game (the one where you meet the Majin Executioner the first time) here shouldn’t be too difficult even with a new control scheme. How wrong I was; within mere moments, I was struggling for dear life to aim at zombies while on the move.

I also had to keep in mind that Chris Redfield here has to stop when aiming; pressing forward on the navigator while aiming with the Move controller will tilt the camera upwards accidentally. Switching weapons and accessing the backpack still makes you stay put in the game; with my unfamiliarity with the controller and navigator, playing this simple part of the game feels like an exercise in futility in the end. So I did what every RE5 n00b does at this part; run away like a little bitch until the helicopter came down to reign fiery hell onto the screen.

In short, playing RE5 with a motion controller takes a lot of time to get used to. Unfortunately, time is what I don’t have at the event.