Greetings true believers!

Your lil’ pal FooBear408 once again has hopped on the old soapbox to audition for position of town crier. Basically, I’m willing to talk for anyone who’ll listen. This being my first serious review of a game that isn’t all that serious to begin with.  Whether you’re playing as a raccoon who sports a black lone ranger mask complete with newsboy/berét, or my personal favorite: the low budget and not so smug version of Bender from Futurama – Clank – you’ll be kicking ass and taking names in no time. And in conclusion to this first riveting paragraph: there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that this game gets repetitive – fast. And the game, as a whole, leaves something to be desired for the hardcore fans. The good news is there’s no more bad news.

Beginning this game on a school night (which is a weekday night in the adult world), my time was precious and I was hoping against hope for a not-so-long-and-drawn-out tutorial before I actually got to play. Not the case; controls are simple and easy to understand. There’s some announcer that has a booming voice like Elaine’s boss from Seinfeld, so instruction is clear, cut, and understood quite easily. And after the quick and even easier to do calibration for the navi controller and move controller, what was to follow would be a relief. The first level I was thrust into was quite challenging at first, but after several tries, I became pretty proficient.

First things first, though; what hero suits you best? There’s Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper and Jak & Daxter. PlayStation Move Heroes is little more than a series of repetitive mini-games that utilize the not-so-expansive range of the PlayStation Move peripheral to begin with.

Point.
Pull.
Spin.
Shoot.

Rinse & Repeat.

This game seriously reminds me of a motion controlled Spyro the Dragon game, and Spyro was ten times more fun. PlayStation is kind of grasping at straws with the piecemeal gameplay and the shoddy graphics; tons of motion blur abound when action gets fast, and to be honest, it’s not something to be admired when you plunk down 40+ dollars on any game title.

Actually, the whip-based games are probably some of the most mind-numbing fun mini games on this title. You get to destroy monsters with ease and just go plain crazy on them at the same time. All the meanwhile defeating objectives and getting points for critical gameplay progression and level unlocks. The controls get a little sloppy sometimes, but you can usually make up for it by just waving your move controller around like you’re having an epileptic fit or recalibrate your controller if that still doesn’t help.

Now, aside from the general gameplay/graphics/repetitiveness of the game,interesting side note: none of our beloved heroes’ original developers have been involved with this title or the making of character development for the game. It’s like Sony went into a grab bag and picked at random what heroes they were using and told everyone “deal with it.” Kind of disheartening, but I guess Sony owns the rights, so blah, blah, blah.

Overall, not a completely terrible purchase for the retail asking price of $40 USD, but I think we have to hope for some sort of learning curve when it’s applied to “Move” games. Let’s face it, how many games out there that are worth playing for the PlayStation Move? Three? Maybe four? I can respect what Sony tried to do here, but as far as the branded “Hero” game goes…gamers may want to plunk down some of their hard earned cash and something else and skip this mediocre title all together.

This review is based on a retail copy of the PS3 version of PlayStation Move Heroes provided by Sony Computer Entertainment.