Benjamin Bloodworth's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘sony’

• Kotaku

New Super Mario Bros. won’t feature online cooperative play, Shigeru Miyamoto told a room full of writers during his developer’s round table yesterday.

New Super Mario Bros. allows up to four players to run through side-scrolling worlds reminiscent of the classic Super Mario Bros. games with up to four people. Players take on the role of Mario, Luigi and two Toads.

I like that Nintendo includes local cooperative play in a lot of their games. I dislike how there’s very little online support. This is almost the exact opposite of Sony’s approach. Sony has a lot of online play, but very little local cooperative play. I wish developers would include both options.

For E3 2009, both Sony and Microsoft unveiled their motion controllers. Both companies offered compelling solutions.

Project Natal

Project Natal is the name for Microsoft’s motion control technology. There are no actual controllers involved at all. Instead a camera tracks your full body motion. If your character needs to punch something, you simply ball up your fist and punch it. There’s no controller to hold in your hands.

Project Natal Goes Beyond Motion Sensing

• It responds to voice commands.
• It has facial recognition.
• You can scan real world objects and use them in game.

Overall, this is a really good concept by Microsoft. It’s important to note the disclaimer at the front of the video, "Product vision: actual features and functionality may vary." It’s obviously a very canned presentation. During the scan real objects demonstration in which the kid holds up a skateboard, he is covering a large portion of the skateboard with his hands. When the skateboard is shown in game, the pattern on the bottom is perfect. I expect that it won’t magically interpret the obfuscated portion of the pattern in the final product. Perhaps with multiple scans of the same object, it will be able to fill in the missing pieces.

Sony’s Motion Controllers

Unlike Microsoft, Sony doesn’t have an official name for their controllers. Also, unlike Microsoft, Sony does have a release date for their technology, March 2010. Hopefully they can maintain that date.

The Sony solution uses two controllers and the PS Eye. It is sort of a blend between Microsoft’s and Nintendo’s solutions. The video notes that the controllers shown are engineering prototypes and not the final product, which is good because waving glowing magic wands around won’t appeal to everyone.

My Overall Impressions

I don’t have any first hand experience with any of the technology, but I’m impressed with both. I like the voice recognition, facial recognition, and real world object scanning in Project Natal, but I think controllers are necessary.

Without controllers, I think Project Natal will be limited to very casual games at best. I don’t see how a game like Ninja Gaiden would be practical at all without any buttons. What distinguishes a sword swing from a magic blast? How do you quickly drink a potion mid combat instead of swinging your sword? I think Sony has the more practical approach.

• Microsoft’s Full Body Motion Controller Revealed?
• Sony unveiling motion-sensing PS3 controller at E3?

I’m not sure how I feel about this. Motion control is good for some games and terrible for others. Motion control for sports games like bowling and boxing greatly enhance the gameplay experience. Motion control for action oriented games distract from the game and make it harder to play.

Good Motion Control Games

• Wii Sports
• Trauma Center: Second Opinion

Bundling Wii Sports with the Wii was the smartest thing Nintendo did in my opinion. Every game makes excellent use of the motion controls. The games also aren’t overly complicated requiring complex motions or sequences to memorize.

Trauma Center’s motion controls add an extra level of immersion to the game that you wouldn’t get otherwise. It feels as if it’s actually you performing the surgeries. A standard controller would feel as if you were controlling an avatar who performs the surgeries for you.

Bad Motion Control Games

• Marvel Ultimate Alliance
• Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal

Marvel Ultimate Alliance is a fun game. The controls for it, however, are very distracting. Activating a super power requires holding down a button and swinging the wiimote in one of five different directions. Alternatively, you can assign one super power to a single button on the wiimote, which activates that super power when pressed. Most players assign a super power to that button and spend the rest of the game spamming that button and using only that super power, which ruins the whole point of having motion controls in the first place. Motion controls only hamper this style of game. It’s actually easier to just press a bunch of buttons than swing the wiimote.

Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal is perhaps the worst offender for motion controls I’ve played. Not only does it require moving the wiimote in several directions, it also requires spinning it in a circular motion while pressing not only one button on the nunchuck, but a sequence of buttons.

Motion Control is Good Sometimes

My hope is that every developer doesn’t jump on the motion control bandwagon. It is undoubtedly what made the Wii the biggest selling console this generation, but it isn’t right for every game.