Monday, October 18, 2010

The Playstation Move

So a couple weeks ago, my good friend Taylor purchased the Playstation Move for the PS3. I am not sure why he did this, but I've learned its best not to question the things Taylor does for reasons I'd rather not specify. Anyway, we (Taylor, Zach, Damian, and I) ended up at my house and played several demos that came with hardware. What follows is not only a review of the Move and its games, but also an account of the many shameful acts that occurred that fateful night.

Sports

I can't quite remember the name of the first game we played and was too lazy to do even a cursory scan of the internet to find out, so I am just going to call it Sports. It's exactly what it sounds like, by which I mean its exactly like Wii Sports/Wii Sports Resort except with less sports, and preset racist and/or sexist sterotypes as playable characters instead of player-made bobbleheads. Available sports includes ping pong, swordfighting, archery, bocce ball, disc golf, beach volleyball, and that's it. We started with swordfighting which is probably the most fun and well-designed. Then Damian discovered a move whereby you continuously spank your opponent with the sword and the game was ruined so we moved on. Next up was archery. It took us about 2 minutes to discover that you could shoot each other across the field and spent the remainder of our time trying to get headshots instead of hitting the targets. We then played bocce, but on a shitty map and I wasn't too fond of the controls which were at best random. However, bocce is great for appreciating the great care that was put in to crafting the asses of the female characters. Ping pong was the next sport. Wait that's wrong. No offense to the Chinese, but ping pong isn't a sport. If it is, then so is air hockey. Lastly we played disc golf, which is just like golf but with a frisbee for some reason. I was ridiculously good at this and I have no idea why. I'd just randomly flick my wrist and somehow it would always go exactly where I wanted it. Taylor wouldn't let us play volleyball as according to him, its stupid. So we moved on to the next game.

Tumble

This is a unique and original game where you stack blocks. They come in numerous rectangular shapes which you layer on top of one another until the tower collapses. In a rather surprising twist, whichever player causes the tower to collapse loses the game. I've never quite seen anything like it. It's so creative and thought-provoking and its reverse Jenga okay. It's Jenga with power-ups and some extra types of blocks. But its also probably the best game we played the whole night. After this, things really went to shit.

Time Crisis

Some of you may recognize this game from the arcade halls of yore. It was one of those games that had plastic laser guns you could point and shoot at the screen. In the arcade it was a fairly fun and decent way to waste your quarters, but on the console where you don't have to pay to keep playing when you die, it loses all meaning. All you have to do is press X when you go down and you come right back to life again without losing any progress. There is literally no tension or strategy. You just shoot at everything on the screen until its dead. I wouldn't have even bothered to use my riot shield if you didn't have to bring it up in order to reload. And the enemies are a complete joke. First you start off fighting terrorists who's preferred method of combat is to charge at you with their guns above their heads and then stand there waiting patiently for you to riddle them with bullets. Somehow a few of the enemies gained access to battle mechs with rocket launchers which actually deal damage to you, but not enough to pose any real threat. We got sick of it after about 15 minutes.

Eyepet

About five seconds after starting up this game, it became apparent that its target audience is ten year-old girls and not twenty year-old males. I regret everything about our playthrough. It begins with this guy in a white lab coat pretending to be a scientist explaining how the Eyepet works. He is extremely condescending and seems to assume that you are completely braindead and are amazed by this insane camera/motion censor technology. He makes you sit on the ground close to the TV and aim the camera at your feet, which makes this game perfect for sedentary people who always wanted to have a dog, but are too lazy to take it for walks. Finally, the Eyepet is summoned forth via a vortex from whatever dimension it is that Cthulu resides. It looks like a cross between a monkey and a dog and I shall henceforth call it a moggey. Taylor played with it a bit because he's lame like that, while I tried inflicting pain upon it, but to no avail. The moggey feels no pain and knows no fear. Then we had to give it a bath and it rolled around playfully on the ground and looked at me with eyes that said, "I will not stop until your manhood is completely destroyed!" Next up was a minigame where you draw an airplane on a magical notepad which then pops into existence for the moggey to fly around on and pop balloons. We achieved the high score with an embarrassing amount of ease and moggey laughed joyfully at how fucking gay we were. But then we began to wonder how strict the game's definition of an airplane was, and if we could turn moggey's own powers against him. We brought up the notepad again, but instead of drawing an airplane we drew a rock-hard erect penis complete with hairy balls, veins, and copious amounts of jizz spewing out the front end, then commanded the game to bring the monstrosity to life. We were delighted to see that it did, and just to put the icing on the cake, the jizz became the propeller. Moggey tried to put on a brave, smiling face as he hopped on the hard-on, but we knew he was dying on the inside. Up he flew into the blue sky amoungst the colourful balloons to the sound of his propeller which took an a whole new meaning given his vehicle. Up, up he soared into the stratosphere, riding that magical dick while he simultaneously descended into insanity with a manic grin on his face. We beat that game. We beat it hard.

TV Superstar

Deciding that we hadn't felt enough shame that night, we ended up playing one last game in the vain hope that maybe it would be good. I don't know why we settled on TV Superstar. Everything about it screamed shovelware but we started it up anyway. The first order of business was creating our avatars which is done by getting close to the camera so it can take a picture of your face. The game then places that image onto an animated body and you can then choose hairstyle, skin tone, etc. Damian went first and was curious as to what he would like if we were a cardboard cutout of a bald, African woman. The answer: abomination. Taylor was next and his avatar reflected his true inner self, by which I mean he came out looking like a creepy rapist with a smile that seemed to say, "I'm a gonna rape ya! I don't care if ur a man, woman, child, or duck. Hurr, hurr, hurr!" At this point, Zach and I realized that maybe it wasn't such a great idea to put ourselves into this already disturbing game, so we abstained and just watched the insanity that ensued. There are two minigames available in the game: fashion catwalk and MXC, except for they gave them way stupider names which would insult the intelligence of even Eyepet's intended audience. Fashion catwalk is essentially a long quicktime event where you follow on-screen prompts to move the controller in a certain direction. Its hosted by a flamboyantly gay stereotype. Damian's avatar was.... I don't even have words to describe it so I'll just move on. Taylor came out dressed as a sassy pirate, making him look even creepier than before which I didn't even think was possible. Thankfully this didn't last long, and we were soon playing the MXC minigame. It was stupid and that's all there is to it. This was followed by a trailer for the full game which did nothing to improve my impression of it. In fact, its even stupider than I originally imagined.

We then turned off the Playstation, unplugged the Move, and looked at our feet, filled with deep shame. Everyone went home quietly without a word. We knew what we had done, and we knew that there was no undoing it. Somehow we'd just have learn to cope with it. I coped with it by talking about it in detail on my blog. Hopefully this will serve as a warning to all of you.

In conclusion: buy a Wii.

Bonus points to whoever can suggest the next best thing to draw in lieu of a penis in Eyepet.

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