The Playstation Move

[SharkEnergy]

I love the Move, though rarely use it.

Only game I played for ages was flight control HD, was easier just laying back on the couch "flicking the wrist"

Other than that - Start the Party and the Move parts of Buzz music quiz are great party games when we have guests/young family over.

I also bought LBP2 for the move features......that ended up being a poor mini game and the main features coming out later as a pay for DLC! NICE!

It seems move of Sony's games have move as at least optional control.

Games on my radar - Sorcery, Deadmun's Quest, House of the Dead, Carnival, Sports Champions (still)...and something else I've forgotten EDIT: DanceStar Party! hahaha. Also I may pick up Heavy Rain Move Edition and No More Heroes to use with it.

[Cthulhu Steev]

I've heard the Move support in R3 is a bit poor. However, in Killzone 3 it's great - by far the best thing about the game. I'm currently playing Time Crisis and Child of Eden with Move and works well for both. Definitely enjoyed it most with Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition so far, though - excellent stuff.

R3 is getting a patch this weekend I think, so it'll be closer to KZ3's implementation.

[Dandy_Sephy]

Unless a breakout hit comes along to really throw the spotlight back on it, I think Move will carry on being offered as an alternative to the Duel Shock for certain games, but I don't see it doing much more than that.

Actually, I don't see this as a bad thing. Forcing people to use Move only makes sense if the game has extra care and attention put into it, but offering it as an alternative means that you have much more freedom and can make your own choice. I'd rather have games that offer optional move support but can integrate it well than someone develop a move only game and not make any effort.

[Robo_1]

So the MIA Move darling, Sorcery has just been re-unveiled, and it's looking a bit like a God Of War with spells:

You can view the new trailer on VG247.

Still looks as though it needs a bit of polish, but the fact that it's been developed for the ground up with Move in mind, gives me hope that the spell flicking is only the tip of the iceberg Move wise.

A wealth of info about the game is on the Playstation blog.

PlayStation.Blog: I’ll cut to the chase: Why have we had to wait so long to see Sorcery again?

Brian Upton, design director, Sorcery: Coming out of E3, we knew there were some things we weren’t happy with. We really wanted to re-tool the game’s look, its world. We had the gameplay we wanted, but it just wasn’t ready for public consumption.

PSB: Tell me a bit about the character and quest. What’s changed since the original debut?

BU: The hero is Finn, he’s a sorcerer’s apprentice and a real hothead: he’s always trying to learn things he’s not ready to learn yet. When the game starts, your master’s magical talking cat, Erline, dares Finn into venturing into the realm of the dead. Finn, being the guy he is, can’t resist.

In the realm of the dead, you accidentally unleash something very, very bad. The consequences are dire for you and the entire world, so the quest is to undo the trouble you’ve caused. You also begin to realize the Erline is much more than a magical talking cat: she’s central to the whole problem that you’ve created. You’re cast somewhat in the role of Erline’s protector, you’re trying to get her from the human world to the heart of the faerie world to fix this problem.

PSB: Once I got my hands on Sorcery, I was particularly surprised by the intensity of the combat. What does spellcasting bring to combat?

BU: We noticed that with a lot of motion-controlled games, it works a bit like Simon Says: you’re told to do something and you do it. But that’s not how action games work. Action games let you be creative, to craft your own solutions to the problems you face. So we wanted a game that taught you easy gestures, which became tools that you can use in combat. You can use basic spells in a variety of ways, but you can also layer them on top of each other to create more complex and powerful spell effects.

PSB: I noticed that when I combined the cyclone spell with the fire wall…

BU: Yeah, the Firenado is great. It’s one of the more powerful spells in the game. But there are lots of clever ways to use it: you can pick an enemy up with a cyclone and push it through a campfire to create a Firenado. Or you can cast a fire wall, shoot arcane bolts through it to create fire bolts, and aim them at a whirlwind to suck your enemy in and incinerate him. There’s a whole array of ways to inflict damage in this game.

PSB: Tell me about Sorcery’s approach to motion controls. What’s your philosophy?

BU: We wanted something very accessible, something you can pick up quickly. The very first spell you learn, arcane bolt, is very simple to use because you just flick it forward. It’s like throwing stuff at your enemy. As you keep using it, you start to realize its depth: you can curve bolts and arc bolts around obstacles. When you start using ice magic, you can slow down enemies, or freeze them repeatedly and smash them with another spell.

PSB: How do the gesture-based puzzles fit into Sorcery?

BU: We don’t want you fighting all the time, partly because it’s a gesture-based game and you’d get tired. So we try to mix up the intense combat with puzzles to solve. The gestures are pretty simple: You mend things, move them around. It’s less a question of figuring out how to do something; you might see something you can get on top of, and you’ll wonder how you can get up there, what you can rearrange.

They aren’t intense brainteasers, but it does change the pace in the overall game.

PSB: I noticed that Sorcery employs an automated camera, a bit like God of War. How does it work and why did you take this approach?

BU: We want to keep it simple: If you have to do camera maintenance all the time, it really sucks. We’re not a shooter, but we do learn a lot of lessons from shooters. In a shooter, on a basic level, you want to establish an interesting shooting gallery and let players be absorbed in it. When you encounter a new group of cameras, the auto-camera will shift to focus on them. It’s a function of trying to streamline the game as much as possible.

PSB: Will there be any RPG elements? Will Finn be able to upgrade his abilities over the course of the game?

BU: There’s an alchemy system. As you travel through the world, you’ll discover magical ingredients and you can use them to research new magical potions. There are roughly 56 magical potions in all, and every time you drink one, it gives you a permanent upgrade. You’ll have about a dozen opportunities to do it, so these potions basically become your build tree, your stats, the way you customize Finn. Do you boost your health or your ice powers? Or maybe make your shield bash more damaging?

PSB: Is Sorcery a shooter? And if not, what is it?

BU: As a designer, I used a lot of the principles of shooter design. I have a shooter background: I worked on Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon. Coming from that shooter background, I learned a lot of lessons about how to build an encounter. But Sorcery is not a shooter. Your fire rate is much lower, you have to deal with Mana limitations, you can curve and arc your shots…we used shooter gameplay as a touchstone, but then we took it way beyond what shooters do.

PSB: Earlier you mentioned a shift in the game’s tone since E3 2010. Could you shed any light on that?

BU: What we showed at E3 was largely organized around a dungeon crawl, and we realized we didn’t want that. We wanted a full-blown fantasy world, not a series of tunnels. A lot of our re-tooling involved moving the action gameplay into a more free-flowing space. The E3 version also had a much younger hero, and the enemies were a lot more cartoonish. We though, “you know, we have a game here that would appeal to a hardcore PlayStation gamer…and it looks a little bit like Spyro!” [laughs] We didn’t want people to get the wrong impression, so we wanted to bring the visuals in-line with the gameplay.

Sounds really good actually.

[Dandy_Sephy]

Anyone have a PS Eye holder/stand thingy they can suggest? Strangely I can't find any local stop selling plastic tat of that persuasion even though they used to be everywhere. I've got a fairly thin plasma, so it needs to be quite sturdy.

[Cthulhu Steev]

Anyone have a PS Eye holder/stand thingy they can suggest? Strangely I can't find any local stop selling plastic tat of that persuasion even though they used to be everywhere. I've got a fairly thin plasma, so it needs to be quite sturdy.

I bought one of the £5 Crown ones from Amazon for my mate, it works fine once you figure out how to put it together!

[Ferine]

I just used Blu-Tack to make a little 'shelf' to stick on the back of my screen where the Eye's base overlaps. It was initially a temporary solution, but honestly I've had no call to adjust it.

[sandman]

So, I picked up Sorcery today.

Has anyone else played it?

I seem to be one of the few, thats for sure. To say it flopped big time would be an understatement. Which is a big shame as its by far the best move game yet and a decent game (annoying american voice actors aside) in its own right.

Great fun and miles better than anything I have played with kinnect.

[Sng]

Mine arrived today. £10! Looking forward to it.

[Asura]

Seeing as these controllers apparently work with the PS4, and the PS3 camera is apparently £4 in CEX, I was thinking of grabbing some Move controllers while they're dirt cheap (as they'll probably jump in price if the PS4 takes off).

The platform seemed to die a bit of a death though. Was the hardware itself any good?

[Spacehost]

Yeah, the wands themselves are good, when games supported them (I really liked Sports Champeens and Tumble). But because it's an optional accessory they never took off, and it's all Wii ports these days.