Ugh, somebody hand me last week’s article, I need to do some eating…

Yes, it seems humble pie shall have to be placed alongside my hat and words among the stuff I need to consume, because SOCOM 4 has become interesting. Damn. Yes it seems that alongside the announcement of Playstation Move’s name (WOO! WE HAVE A NAME!) SOCOM 4 also became the PS3’s first real motion controlled shooter, thus placing it up there as a point of gimmicky interest, something I said last week it wouldn’t be. Curses.

Damn you SOCOM 4! Damn you and your sudden raised interest!

But enough of my own poor predictions. What of the brand new (but not really new) Playstation Move? Well because I’m not really among the top media of Video Game journalism (yet) I can’t really tell you what it’s like. From what I’ve seen though, it’s a Wii remote with augmented reality. That’s it really. There’s more precision and it can be far more accurate, but overall nothing amazing was shown, certainly nothing that tops anything the Wii has done. There’s your mandatory party and lightgun games (Move Party and The Shooter) your shooter and pet sim (SOCOM 4 and Eyepet) your ports (LittleBigPlanet, Resident Evil 5, Flower, Pain and Aragon’s Quest) your fighting and sports games (Motion Fighter and Sports Champions) and finally your incredibly weird stuff that ultimately returns to “tilt it!” (Eccentric Slider).

So there’s the list, out of all of them I think that LBP, Resident Evil 5 and SOCOM 4 look best, but that’s probably because they are also games that were originally (or will support) classically controlled. I’m beginning to think these motion controllers are a bit of a blind alley. I can see the appeal certainly, a “holodeck” would be great, direct input that makes us feel powerful and completely in control. Sadly, motion controllers will never be able to achieve that. Here are just 5 reasons why:

1. Swords and anything involving “clashing” blades will never ever work properly. No physical contact means no clashing blades means it’s not sword fighting
2. Shooting will never be all that fun because being in the army is hard. The only game that worked was Metroid Prime 3, and that’s because it also included a lock on. Aiming accurately can be really hard, and trying to do it for longer than an hour can make your arms tired and your focus drop
3. My room is tiny. I hate Wii Tennis in here.
4. On the subject of sports, if they’re becoming one-on-one accurate representations, why don’t you just go and play them in real life? It’s a damn sight cheaper to rent a table tennis table than to buy a motion controller.
5. Anything that a cursor has been doing on the Wii and will go on to do on Playstation Move can and will always be easily replaced by a mouse.

So there you go, motion controllers are a waste of time and Sony and Microsoft are being nothing more than cash mongers. Well I guess some things aren’t allowed to change…

Onto more, well, news based subjects… er… not really all that much I’m afraid. The rest of the media got to play a new True Crime game. But I can’t tell you anything they can’t in much greater detail, there’s a Hong Kong setting, a free-running mechanic and no planes or helicopters. But apart from that, nothing of interest really.

What may be of interest to you (but more likely me) is that you know that Monkey Island 2 remake I talked about? Well they’re doing it! Hooray! Anybody out there frothing at the mouth for more puzzles, go play MI2! For the rest of us who love the voice acting AND puzzles, do the same waiting game as me! I might even get this one on iTouch if they fix the controls…

As for Major Releases this week, here is a list below with some commentary. Note these are UK releases (due to my location):

• Final Fantasy 13 is out. I know very little of this series, so all I can say is “Hey look, Final Fantasy 13 is out!”
• Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition has been unleashed. This might convince me to get Resident Evil 5, especially now that it has the motion controls waiting to be activated and all of the content rather than just most of it.
• Yakuza 3 was brought over from the East. Again, knowledge is limited… er… it’s set in Japan!

And that’s all I’ve got for this week! Check out the Zippy Gamer UK podcast for more talk on Playstation Move as well as some chat on Lego Universe and the Halo series.