GDC 2010: Hands-On Preview: Sony Move - SOCOM 4 - Preview
by Nick Pantazis , posted on 11 March 2010 / 5,303 Views
Before I continue this article, I think it's important to note that SOCOM clearly wasn't really ready to be played by the public. There were a lot of issues that needed to be ironed out, and features that had yet to be added. This is not the fault of the game, or the motion controller, or the developers. It simply is a very early demo, but I'm not really hear to talk about that. I'm here to tell you how the motion controller itself functions.
The answer is very well, despite some pretty nasty calibration settings which again I'm sure will be ironed out later. Aiming was just as accurate as the Wiimote, and moving and shooting felt natural and fun. The sub-controller was functional and comfortable, and the game played great with it. The biggest issue the Move had with SOCOM was the calibration for turning was really off. You had to move the reticule extremely close to the edge of the screen to get your character to turn, and even then turning was slow. The developer told me that the size of the turning box and turning speed would probably be customizable in the final build, however.
As far as the game itself goes, it was fun, but incomplete. The game sort of lacked the sneaky special forces feel, but again the developer pointed out that this stage was mostly to demonstrate the controller, and that there would actually be more emphasis on that in this game than in past games. The graphics were solid, but not groundbreaking, but the action was good and explosions with somewhat destructable environments were neat. The standard options are there, of coures. You can order your squad into cover and use it yourself, as well as toss grenades. You were unable to die in the demo, but the enemy AI seemed like it could present a challenge under normal circumstances.
It's obviously a very incomplete game that was rushed into a demo form to give us an early peak at the Move, but it looks to be coming along very well, and is a game that SOCOM fans can look forward to on the PS3 finally after the disaster that was Confrontation.
