Ape Escape

My favorite demo of the bunch. Even though there was an attendant guiding me, I knew how to control the game a few seconds after knowing what is what. The Move button lets me change my weapon; at the time I can alternate between a capturing net and a dart gun. The capturing net snatches any ape and monkey coming after me; all I have to do is do a quick Move swipe and they’re disposed of. The dart gun required me to aim and shoot monkeys. It doesn’t dispose of them outright; rather, the gun stuns them for a fraction of a second and also beckons them to come after you.

If the screen is overwhelmed by apes, you can press and hold both the Move and trigger buttons to unleash an ape-sucking vacuum cleaner. This requires the use of your batteries, which you can collect as the stage progresses. You aren’t confined to what’s in front of you. By pressing the Square and Triangle buttons, you can shift your viewpoint to the left or right respectively.

This sort of title is perfect for showcasing the Move’s strengths: responsiveness, intuitiveness, and one-shot on-rails fun for gamers of all ages. I do wonder if the game will support multi-player; it’s not so fun catching and shooting retarded-looking simians all by your lonesome self.

Time Crisis: Razing Storm

Good god, it’s been ages since I’ve touched a rail shooter that let me take hold of a pistol. In this case, it’s a Move controller placed inside a gun attachment, and it feels really good. In fact, halfway through the game, I used my index finger on the trigger for rapid fire power to mow down nameless terrorists on-screen. I played on two levels in the game: one on a warehouse where I came face-to-face with a towering mech with multiple gun turrets, which happen to conveniently be the mech’s weak points, and on a skyscraper where I had to snipe some fools.

Both parts of the game dealt with different methods of shooting enemies. For the former level, I can go all out mowing down enemies with the heavy machine gun and rocket launcher with nary a care to the game’s destructible environment.

In fact, you have to target enemies through cover at times before they take a shot at you. The latter level however requires me to aim and focus for a split second before taking the shot since the sniper rifle takes a while to reload. Going trigger-happy will result in you taking unnecessary damage.

Luckily, pressing the Move button on the controller lets me pull up a riot shield to deflect certain attacks. This is Time Crisis’ dodge mechanic taken to a new level; while dodging shots in past games means a bit of recovery time before you can fire your weapon, pulling up the riot shield feels instantaneous.

The sniping segment was capped off with a barrage of terrorists and armored rocket-shooting goons assaulting the rooftops, a giant spider mech which traverses around the skyscrapers a lot which needs taking down, and a barrage of missiles that need to be shot down in order to protect the main character’s sergeant-type leader. Coupled with the fact that it comes with multi-player options and two older games bundled up with it, I definitely see Time Crisis: Razing Storm delivering a forecast of arcade-type awesomeness.

So all in all? Like the Playstation Eye before it, it’s better as a sideline tool that will help introduce your not-so-hardcore-at-gaming friends to get into whatever you have in your library. It’s still up to the PS Move-focused game library to help the motion controller shine like the upcoming action game Sorcery. If September’s list of games are to show any indication, it’ll be a while until the Move actually poses a threat to the current king of motion controlling and accessible gaming.