Move-compatible Bluray Titles
RUSE (demo available on PSN) (day 1 patch)
We unfortunately haven’t had time to give this game the review it deserves here at TSA, suffice to say it is currently the best RTS on offer for consoles. Gone are the twitch-happy rush tactics of old; now actual planning and skill is required. RUSE is the first RTS which allows the use of deception on the battlefield via 10 so-called ruses, for example allowing you to send a fake fleet of cardboard tanks out as a decoy, or engaging radio silence to prevent your opponent from knowing what you’re up to. This is a deep and complex RTS with 200 unit types across 6 factions. There is no fog of war per se, and you can build anywhere you like (within reason) from the start. The campaign starts off very slowly and the first few hours are a slog, and the graphics are somewhat sub-par, but once you’ve grasped the nuances of the game you will be able to enjoy some very challenging tactical battles with your friends.
How does the Move fit in? In short, it’s used as a selection cursor, along with a bunch of nifty shortcuts. Selection, zooming and panning around the map are all available and work well, though it does take a little getting used to if you’ve already familiarised yourself with using the standard controller with the game before-hand. While not as good as a keyboard and a mouse, the advantage of a mouse is now slim as my apm (actions per minute) doubled with the use of the Move.
If you have a Navi, you can also hold down a button to enable circular selection. It’s not necessary but it helps. Be aware that it must be switched on before you start the game otherwise only the Move will be recognised.
As long as you understand that the game runs much more slowly than a standard run-and-gun RTS, and is more like chess than a shooter, I can recommend this to any strategy fan, and the Move is a boon for enhancing control.
Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition (free patch for existing owners, Gold Edition only)
Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition seems to be creating a bit of controversy in Move circles. GameSpot and IGN didn’t like it. Most of the people on my friends list love it, but not all. Plenty of people are also unhappy that the original version wasn’t patched, and I had to go out and get the Gold Edition to test it out for review.
It becomes quickly clear why this game over others has been adapted to the Move: movement is limited in the original release. True to Resident Evil format, you can’t strafe and you can’t shoot while moving, which makes implementation easier.
I have mixed feelings. Using the Move and Navi gives with one hand while taking from the other. With only one stick, you can’t look around anymore, so you are limited to seeing what’s in front of you. On the other hand, when you aim, you can move the reticule around the whole screen. Firing is actually quite a chore: you have to walk where you want with the analog stick on the Navi, hold down T on the Move to aim then press the Move button to fire. With other things going on, this can at times lead you to holding down 3 buttons and the stick at the same time, which gets awfully confusing.
Pressing Move to fire is unintuitive. Why provide a trigger button if you’re not going to use it to fire? If you move the aiming reticule to the edge of the screen, the screen doesn’t pan, so you have to stop aiming, turn, then re-aim. On top of that, it’s not always clear whether you should be using X and O on the Move or the Navi.
Although I know the Move support is popular with many, it really left me with two feelings: first, that the limitations of only having one analog stick are already shown in this game even with its limited movement scheme, and second, that I really just wanted to play it again with a regular controller because it’s easier.
FPSs and 3PSs need to be standardized for Move support and I see problems on the horizon. The way it should have worked was to allow you to hold down Move then move the controller to rotate the camera, with a button on the Navi to walk, then hold down the other button on the Navi to aim and press T on the Move to fire. That would have been much more intuitive and would allow for strafing and moving while firing in games which require it.
Note that Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition requires a Navi in order to play when using the Move.
Heavy Rain Move Edition (demo available on PSN, free patch for existing owners)
My goodness, what a let down. Heavy Rain is a perfect candidate for Move support so you could make realistic movements the same as those on the screen. What you in fact get instead is a contrived and frustrating sequence of artificial gestures which more or less ruin the immersion as you mess around trying to figure out how to get the damn thing to work – which some of the time, it just doesn’t. Any time you were supposed to be engrossed in the story and watching the screen, you will be screwing with the controls instead. I was sorely disappointed by this update. Whereas Resident Evil 5’s Move implementation is mediocre, this one is just plain bad, and I got so annoyed with it that once again I just wanted to use the regular controller. I cannot recommend this edition, unfortunately.
Note that Heavy Rain Move Edition requires a Navi in order to play.
EyePet Move Edition (demo available on PSN, free PSN download for existing owners)
So who here was driven mental by the Magic Card with the original EyePet? Well, rest easy, the Move implementation for EyePet is excellent. So good in fact, that I could actually be bothered to play it again from the start. A few things have been notably changed such as the way you make your EyePet’s egg hatch at the start – presumably to overcome limitations of only having one controller – but the rest is the same.
Controlling EyePet with the Move is a breeze, although the camera image is very grainy in the evening when your living room lights are on. Those of you who had problems aiming the shower head in the right direction should have no such issues when using the Move. If you never picked up EyePet and have any kind of passing interest in it, now is a good time to invest – though I’d like to point out that due to the free patch, you can save money by buying a regular EyePet disk pre-owned.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 (demo available on US PSN) (free patch for existing owners)
Receiving generally favourable reviews across the net, PGA Tour 11 is noted as a significant improvement over PGA Tour 10, with new additions such as True Aim and 24-player online custom tournaments. Reports on Move functionality are mixed. One gamer told me the controls are not particularly good and that it is unlike real golf, whereas another who plays golf in real life says that the behaviour of the Move is spot on besides putting. Hooks, slices and powerful drives requiring the same swing force as real life perform as expected. One bugbear is that the Move cannot be used in menus and you’ll need to pick up your regular controller for that. So, opinions seem to be varied and therefore, your mileage may vary.
Brunswick Pro Bowling
Despite a US release date of 22nd September and European release today, little seems to have been published about this title as yet. The original Wii release scored a poor 52% average review on Metacritic, the main problems being cited as difficulty, complexity and overall sterility (so, sort of like Gran Turismo 5 only without the go-karting). A deep, satisfying bowling title would be A Good Thing for the Move so let’s keep an eye out for this one.
MAG (free patch for existing owners)
The mammoth 256-player shooter with some of the worst online multiplayer experiences in the history of bad online multiplayer experiences has received a free patch with Move support. I haven’t had the opportunity to test this one yet so any feedback is welcome.
Other Move-compatible titles out now
Toy Story 3
No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise (Japanese import, ETA for Europe and USA 2011)
Little League World Series 2010 (USA only)
Charmed_Fanatic
The future’s bright, the future’s MOVE
Mickey2010
Sure is im not sure why but that Deadliest Catch:Sea Of Chaos really sticks out for me and i havent even seen any vids or screens yer.
Bladesteel
Make a (reasonably priced, and good) online multiplayer DLC for Sports Champions, and they’d make a lot of money.
tonycawley
Dead right. Some games would be awesome with online multiplayer, Bocce and archery being the main ones, but i think table tennis might struggle a little because any lag whatsoever would ruin it since it’s so very fast. Would definitely love it just for the archery and Bocce though. Actually disc golf would work really well too.
Bladesteel
Good point. Obviously I’d prefer it to work for all the games, given a good enough connection between the players. But all of the turn based games should be possible to make work even over crappy lines.
DJ-Katy
I’ve heard the lag argument with Move online games a few times lately and I don’t really see the problem. The data transfer is no more intense than that of an FPS. All of the games including Table Tennis should work just fine over a broadband connection.
Bladesteel
Yes but awful networking (crap code or crap network) would be more visible in that kind of senario. While the turn based games should be playable over speeds as low as dialup (with a wait before you’re sent the recorded data fromm your opponents move)
As I understand FPS games are loaded with fancy optimisations and tricks like prediction to make lag less noticeable, and those might not work as well for an accurate table tennis game. At the very least I’d expect the turn based stuff to be less work, and thus cheaper and more likely to be created.
DJ-Katy
I’m somewhat inclined to disagree although it’s certainly not clear cut.
Disc Golf, Bocce are turn-based, there is no issue there.
Beach Volleyball is basically a rhythm game like GH so I see no issue there either.
Archery is real-time but the players don’t interact with each other so some score lag will not matter. If two people hit a disappearing target simultaneously an online rule can be applied to arbitrate like it is in other games with that issue.
Table Tennis and Gladiator Duel are real-time player interactions and would surely run peer-to-peer rather than through a server. The connection between the two players will be crucial. Table Tennis can use prediction; the data transmitted would have to be a UDP stream of bat orientation and position. It works for Virtua Tennis 2009 so I don’t see why it wouldn’t here. Let’s say they use two transports, one for the ball trajectory and one for the bat position. The trajectory could be prioritised, then if there is some bat position lag it might look weird but it won’t affect gameplay.
I don’t think Gladiator Duel can use prediction and that would probably be the trickiest.
tonycawley
But i regularly experience lag in fps games, cod’s the worst for it. Sometimes it’s game breakingly bad. That’d kill table tennis, regardless of how many clever tricks they implemented to minimise it. By broadband is a uk average 5 meg.
tonycawley
My, not by!
tonycawley
Shot, not pint. Lol.
DJ-Katy
Yeah, but that’s your connection’s fault or those of your opponents, not the game.
tonycawley
I disagree very strongly with that final comment katy. Yes my connection may not be great, but it’s a lot better than a lot of people’s. Game developers are fully aware there is a massive difference in download speeds around the world, and their job is to make it so that there is as little impact on gameplay as possible. If they’re building a game’s network connection based on the assumption everyone has perfect internet connection then that is a very bad design decision.
DJ-Katy
All I can really say Tony is that multi-player networking code is very complex and can be tweaked infinitely with tons of variables, it is just not possible with the current state of the net to make it work well for everyone, so they/we just have to do the best we can when writing that code. It is better to have the option than not.
Developers do not expect everyone to have a perfect connection but that is a bit like a TV viewer blaming the show production company when the snow comes down and makes the signal on the satellite dish too low to receive the transmission properly.
The problem in both cases is with the service provider: the satellite transmission should have greater power to overcome those situations, and the ISP should be providing a more stable network. No matter how well a team and I sit down and code a predictive algorithm for an FPS, if your ISP gives you occasional 500ms lag spikes there is nothing we can do about that no matter how well we plan it for you.
ISPs are largely at fault for poor multiplayer experiences and it is those who should be pressured to produce proper networks.
tonycawley
Oh katy, we bicker like a married couple sometimes, i love our disagreements though, we’re both very opinionated people so we’re going to have these. We’re going to have to agree to disagree with this one. I think your tv programme analogy is terrible, doesn’t apply at all. Take tiger woods for example. My mrs dad has it, and i have it. We can’t connect to each other for a game, no matter what we try. He invites me. I accept. It tells me the game is no longer available, when clearly it is. There is no good reason for this to happen, ea regularly do it with their games, fifa is always as bad. That is the fault of the programmers, no matter what you say. Telling a 72 year old man to open ports on his router is just not acceptable, he has no idea what i’m talking about and you can’t expect people to have that level of knowledge about something so complicated. Other games don’t require you to open ports or put your console in a dmz so why do ea always do it? Bad programming, that’s why.
DJ-Katy
For that example, I agree. The lobby uses a centralised server for matchmaking. My analogy and comments were regarding after the game session has been set up. Once players have selected each other from the server-run lobby, peer-to-peer connections are established for the actual gameplay usually if it’s a 2-player game. In that phase of gameplay, the ISP connection is what’s important.
Badly coded lobbies are a completely separate matter; if matchmaking does not work properly, it is the game’s fault.
Bladesteel
I’d say in the 500ms lag spike the FPS have a big advantage. It has to happen at an inconvenient time for the player to get really pissed off. Lag won’t ruin the game if you’re crouching behind a barrel. But for a game of table tennis a delay of half a second at any time (except while waiting to serve) will ruin it.
Also while the network should take the blame, it all really comes down to perception. And less technical users will place the blame on the game a lot of the time (as in casual gamers, the kind lots of move games are targeting) . A business decision about including/excluding multiplayer should take that into consideration.
tonycawley
Great write up katy. I don’t agree with everything you’ve written but then that’ll never be the case. This is a very useful resource for anyone that wants information. Really well done, good work.
Gamoc
Excellent, excellent series of articles this, particularly this part. I love you, DJ-Katy.
freezebug2
Tough, Katy is a racer so love off lol.
Rocket_345
This has just pointed out how many games ive forgot about. My MOVE want list has just suddenly increased as there were games that i forgot were recieving the MOVE treatment such as InFamous 2 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2011.
tonycawley
Don’t bother with the tiger woods move support, it’s truly rubbish. So much functionality is lost with it, its a game breaker i’m afraid.
JaffaMan24
Completely agree. I tried the Tiger Woods demo and thought move implementation was shocking and the only time i’ve noticed any lag so far. The graphics looked 5 years old too. Thoroughly dissappointed.
TSBonyman
Great coverage Katy, i didn’t realise there were so many Move compatible games already on the horizon. and this is only part 2?!
I would like to mention a couple of small points.
In Resi 5 if you hold L1 to aim you can turn with the left stick or nav while aiming with the Move.
Heavy Rain doesn’t require a Nav, DS3 works just as well.
Thanks for the tip re picking up Eyepet pre-owned as i’ve been mulling it over.
I really like Tumble but yes the camera is a little clunky, especially after the natural motion of placing a block – if only it operated like the torch in echochrome ii.
I’m hoping that LBP2 allows you to create your own Move mini games.
Looking forward to part 3!
jayjay119
To be honest I feel Resi 5’s review was a bit unfair, the problems of the camera not panning, not being able to fire whilst moving etc are all there in the main version. If this version is anything like Resi 4 for Wii I’m going to love it. And come on, holding down three buttons can get tedious? That’s just laziness!
DJ-Katy
It is just like Resi 4 for Wii – if you liked that, you will definitely enjoy RE5 with the Move :) Hope that helps.
yogdog
Loved resi 4 on the wii, I think I might pick up move, ruse and resi 5 gold when I can.
Thanks katy :)
JigsawPieces
Great write-up, thanks :)
Can’t agree with you about Heavy Rain, though. I’ve just played through the whole game for the first time, using Move, having only tried the demo before. After playing through the first few levels, the visual language of the Move cues became quite natural, the gestures generally fitted what the character was doing on screen, and they felt much less arbitrary to me than those on the DS3 (which admittedly, I only tried in the demo). I thoroughly enjoyed it.
skibadee
great read. totally agree about hustle kings such a good game with the DS3 though.
jayboy31
Nice round-up although i’ve not had any problems with the MOVE controller having to be set on the right port. Tumble is ACE but then again so is Flight Control. I have Sports Champions but don’t play it that much, a combination of not being arsed to get up & put the disk in & not being arsed to get up & play the game. Tumble hogs the MOVE at the mo. I’m tempted by Hustle Kings now