Last year both Project Natal and PlayStation Move were announced, ensuring that all modern consoles would have some form of arm flailing involved. Back then Natal, now unfortunately named Kinect, looked more promising as the potential of full body interaction beats out flailing those two remotes any day of the week. The Milo demo that Peter Molyneux showed off only cemented the promise the "controller" had. Meanwhile the PlayStation Move looked like a bad Wii knock off with a glowing ball on it.
Well we here are GamingExcellence are always willing to eat our shoes if someone proves us wrong and... well, let's just say I take my sneakers with some Tabasco sauce.
PlayStation Move is more than just inspired by the Wii Remotes, this is apparent to anyone paying any measure of attention. But this isn't what they're going for - Sony isn't just aping what Nintendo did they're trying to perfect it. Surprisingly enough the results are actually rather good.
When you pick up the Move and its second, not-nunchuk, navigation controller you immediately note that their rounded shapes fit more comfortably in your hands than the Wii controller. In addition the button placement is worlds beyond the ludicrous button placements on the Wii Remote. It might make it possible to play the game with the controller sideways, like a NES controller, but it's terrible for using it during a game. This is not the case with the Move thanks to its five centralized buttons. More importantly the controls seem to be much more responsive. Aiming felt smooth, movements never felt like the jerky and it all felt very natural.
To put this to the test we tried out several games but none illustrated the point better than Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition. If you've played Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition then you will immediately be familiar with the controls but they feel noticeably smoother and more responsive. Taking off heads with the pistol or tripping zombies up with shots to the knee quickly became second nature and it was a rare time that mistakes were the fault of the controller. It's easy to imagine the damage someone could do with Sheva's unlockable Long Bow weapon using the accuracy the move provides.
It may not be original but the Move doesn't try or pretend to be. Instead it aims to do the motion controls better than the Wii, on an HD system with a larger library of quality games. Whether it stays a viable, interesting method of control in the future or devolves into the purveyor of crappy mini-games / party collections are up in the air. Only Quality Control can answer that question. Until then the Move is looking better every day.