Sony Computer Entertainment New Zealand held its annual PlayStation Night in Auckland, New Zealand last night. It’s a night where the company showcases some of its latest and greatest upcoming releases to local retailers and the media. I was lucky enough to be invited to the event and the main attraction for this year was none other than the PlayStation Move.
The first game I got to play was Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2011 with the PlayStation Move. Naturally, my first swing in the game was utterly useless. I did not raise my hands high enough and the ball went straight into the rough. The Sony PR representative guided me through the controls and told me to do a speedier swing at the ball as the game can track how powerful your swing is. Once I became informed about the game’s mechanics I was a natural. I got to the green fast enough but, I now had to put the ball in. I always sucked at putting using a normal controller, so I dreaded the fact of putting using the move controller. Thankfully, it was a lot easier than I expected. I missed the first hit but I swung the ball gently and got it in on my second swing. After a somewhat smooth experience using the Move controller I felt confident enough to play any other game at the event.
SOCOM: Special Forces was situated right next to Tiger Woods so I decided to play that next. Unlike Tiger Woods, this game requires you to use the navigation controller as well as the motion controller. I personally like the way the game uses both controllers as it feels very smooth and natural. The navigation controller controls the movements of the character while you use the motion controller to aim and shoot. The game itself looks very slick too. You can order your team mates to shoot oncoming enemies or to regroup and retreat. There is also a cover system in the game not too dissimilar to the system used in Uncharted 2. I felt very cool hiding and then picking my spots to shoot the enemies. It is arguably the easiest aiming system I have ever played during a third-person game. The only downside to playing like this though is that my right arm got tired pretty quickly. On a side note, the PlayStation Eye could not pick up the Move controller later on in the night and other gamers struggled to play the game. I was lucky to play the game before the hardware failure happened…
There were 3 displays of Killzone 3: a 3DTV display, a projection display and a standard HDTV display. I only had the chance to play the game on the HDTV display as the 3DTV was very popular. I did get a chance however to witness the game in glorious 3D and it’s looking great. The snow and water effects are one of the most impressive I have ever seen in a video game. As for the game itself, I went to the least popular HDTV display to play it. I immediately chose to play jetpack level (as I was always fascinated with jetpacks ever since I saw Boba Fett use one in Return of the Jedi). The gameplay is still in first-person while you fly the jetpack and the controls are easy enough for any Killzone fan to get used to. It plays very similarly to Killzone 2, albeit the jetpack flying part of course. Graphically, Killzone 3 may have been the best looking game there but Gran Turismo 5 was there too and it looked as pretty as ever.
So that’s where I headed to next. Controllers were out for the GT5 display as there were only steering wheels for us to play on so we would get a more realistic feel of the game. Sadly, it was only a two minute demo of the game and you could only do a single race or a time trial event. I really wanted to see what drifting was like using a steering wheel… Anyway, I chose to race in a Ferrari Enzo and I raced in the Rome circuit. As I mentioned before, the game is looking very pretty and the physics are as real as they come. I’ve never been really good at driving games so I hit the accelerator as fast as I could and I spun out several times. My two minutes were up so I had another go. This time I fared a little better until there was a sharp right turn and I spun out yet again…
Disappointed by my lack of driving skills, I wanted to take out my frustration by playing on the PlayStation Move’s The Fight. This is a street-fighting game where you have two motion controllers for each hand as you try and punch your way to victory. I was not sure if I was playing the game correctly as my punches did not seem to respond effectively in the game. My character was throwing slow, lethargic-like punches. I did win against the AI however and I managed to burn a few calories too as the game shows how many calories you’ve burned after each fight.
That was pretty much the highlights of the night for me. Other games on display were Sports Champions, Heroes on the Move, The Shoot, Time Crisis: Raging Storm, SingStar and God of War: Ghost of Sparta plus a few others. My personal favourite of the night had to be SOCOM: Special Forces. The PlayStation Move really gave a new and unique experience to the game and I would like to see more games use this sort of system in the near future.
Thanks go out to Sony Computer Entertainment New Zealand for hosting an awesome night. Sony will be displaying the PlayStation Move and many of its other latest games to the public during Auckland’s Armageddon Event next month. For more information click here .
For more information about PlayStation NZ visit the official website here .
