This past Friday, while taking my Mom to opening day of the Canadian National Exhibition here in Toronto, I got the opportunity to try out Playstation Move for the first time. My all too brief demo period involved playing a 2 player game of ping pong, which is included in Sports Champions. The game is played with only a single Move wand (two if you're playing two player).
The first thing I noticed after picking up the Move is how light and comfortable it is. The wand weighs what feels like less than half a Dual Shock 3. All of the buttons are comfortably placed, including the rear trigger (which I'd had some concerns about). It was easy to pick up and use, though ping pong doesn't require the use of any of the buttons, so I couldn't really get a feel for how they work. However, just holding the controller with my fingers in the correct locations to use the buttons was extremely simple and comfortable.
Upon actually playing the game, you quickly notice that movement IS in fact 1:1. You move your hand, the paddle moves on the screen. I found it to be extremely accurate (though I did suck at it). It really did just feel like playing ping pong. Serving was more of the same. Flick your wrist up to release the ball, swing to hit. Again, all very intuitive. If you've played ping pong before, you can pick up this game and play it with next to no instruction.
After a quick game (which I lost, I'm bad at ping pong), my demo was over. But I got enough of a feel for how Move works to feel very intrigued by it. The 1:1 motion is spot on (I actually found it to be more accurate than Wii Motion Plus) and, at least as far as ping pong goes, all of the movements are extremely intuitive. That obviously won't translate to every game, but for Sports Champions at least, you can rest assured that if you've done any of the activities on the disc in real life, you should have an easy enough time picking it up.
I'm still not 100% sold on the Move. I'll need to see how it fares with more "hardcore" games, but for now, my brief demo has left me.....intrigued. Playstation Move will be available in Europe on September 15th, North America on September 19th, and Japan on October 21st.
