SOCOM 4

Many of us here in the office got our first hands-on with the new PlayStation Move today and its (somewhat necessary) add-on, the Sub Controller. There were a number of tech demos on display at the event (look for our video recap for more impressions), whereas the only "real" game on display working with the new Move was the recently announced SOCOM 4. And while I personally won't be hanging up my DualShock3 and trading it in for a Move after my first impressions with the product, it's still an impressive display on what can be done with this new device: decent motion control for a hardcore game.

The PlayStation Move controllers themselves are very similar to the current set-up of the Wii Remote and its Nunchuk: The right-hand controller controls your head/gun/firing while the left-hand controller handles your movement with an analog stick. Each controller has a trigger as well; the left-hand's trigger operates as a "go-into-cover" function, while the right-hand's trigger fires your selected weapon (for the sake of the demo we were only able to use a machine gun). There is even an "action" button in the middle of the Move that, when pressed, would have you look down the sight line of the rifle -- making the motion sensitivity increase.

Click the image above to check out all SOCOM 4 screens.

The motions themselves are also fairly easy to grasp (think Metroid Prime in terms of aiming and firing at enemies), but I don't find that I had to move the controller all that much -- as I mentioned before, the controller is pretty sensitive, and doesn't require much movement to aim and fire at the constant barrage of enemies running at you with little regard for their lives. Don't take this as any indication of the game's A.I., because as I've mentioned earlier, this demo seems intended to give us the quickest impression of how this control set-up could be employed to work with hardcore games.

But beyond button layout and sensitivity, the most surprising thing I learn is the development cycle to bring the Move interface to SOCOM 4: two days. Sure, there was more time after that point for refinement of the product, but that is very telling of how easy it is for developers to implement the controls with a variety of titles for the PlayStation 3, perhaps even as easy as a simple update patch. Uncharted 2 with PlayStation Move? It could happen.

Click the image above to check out all SOCOM 4 screens.

The only thing I'm not fond of is that when using the Move's firing trigger, my hand instinctively begins to tilt inwards. The team notes that it is an issue they are playing with, to find some way to compensate for the natural motion of your hand to make such a gesture (obviously this is still a work-in-progress). And considering most of the stuff we saw today was all in a very early state, it is not too much to expect this to be a much more refined experience once SOCOM 4 hits retail this holiday.

Now this isn't to say that SOCOM 4 will be launching with the Move (no word on a bundle, but if we were to venture a guess: probably gonna happen). We'd imagine that if the Move is required to play SOCOM 4, the gaming community would probably take out pitchforks and fire torches to the castle of Sony. No, it's only an optional design choice at this point. This leaves it open to interpretation that once the new controller launches, and the aforementioned short dev cycle to make it happen, it's plausible to think there will be a number of games supporting the Move on day one. Stay tuned for more impressions of the PlayStation Move and other GDC news here at 1UP.