Sports Champions is positioned as the showpiece for Sony’s new motion controller for the PS3, Move. And a successful showpiece it is, albeit not perfect.
Sports Champions is sold either individually for $39.99 or in a bundle with a Move controller and the Playstation Eye for $99.99. For those not in the know, the Move controller is a wand-type controller with several buttons and a trigger, like the Wiimote except that it also has a rubbery orb at the end that glows different colors depending on the LED light underneath it. The Playstation Eye tracks your movement with the glowing orb for supposedly precise one-to-one tracking in 3D space. The controller also contains velocity sensors like those in the Wiimote so that it can detect whether you are tilting it in a particular direction and how hard you are swinging it.
At the beginning of each game, each player must calibrate Move so that it adjusts for your height and the way you naturally hold the controller. Although it seemed a little frustrating to have to do this for each different game, you will become a pro at zooming through the calibration very quickly after a few times, and it is worth the effort if that is what allows the system to be more accurate. Some games can only be played with one Move controller, but others offer the option of using two Move controllers simultaneously.
Overall, I was very impressed with Move’s technology as it worked within Sports Champions. It tracks your movements much more accurately than the Wii and led to a more immersive experience. For example, in table tennis, you must actually move left, right, forward, and back to hit balls at the edges of the table or either really close or far from the net. In bocce, you can either do a low bowling motion to roll the ball or start low and flick the ball up into the air so with a spin so it does not roll as far when it lands. The impressive aspect of this is that players can adopt their own playing style and are not forced to play in one particular pre-defined way, and the game seems to be able to discern your intention. But let’s move from the abstract generally discussion of Move to how the six games in Sports Champions fared.
Move consists of six games: disc golf, gladiator duel, beach volleyball, archery, table tennis, and bocce. You pick one of ten pre-made players to represent you. You can play individually in a tournament against computer opponents in the Champion Cup Mode. In Free Play Mode, you can play individually against computer opponents, competitively against other players, or cooperatively with other players. Finally, in Challenge Mode, you try to rack up the highest score in a challenge with escalating difficulty, such as hitting table tennis balls at a robot to destroy it or throwing discs or hitting volleyballs through hoops to earn points.
The Champion Cup Mode is fairly robust. There are three different tournaments for each sport, bronze, silver, and gold, each increasing in difficulty. The bronze tournament is fairly casual, but by the time you get to silver, the opponents vary their techniques. The game also introduces more complex control mechanics for some games, especially table tennis, which teaches you advanced defensive and spin hits to deal with your more skilled opponents. Although the volleyball tournament did not capture my interest as much, the other tournaments were enjoyable and satisfying.
The Challenge Mode was less satisfying. Hitting tennis balls or aiming for hoops to get the highest score just did not entice me as much as playing against that one difficult computer opponent in the Champion Cup Mode and finally beating him or her. Then again, I am not an arcade high score chaser, so this mode will likely appeal to many people, especially if they are adept at a particular sport. But if you are competing against another human player, you are probably better off in the multiplayer Free Play Mode so you can compete directly.
In Free Play Mode for disc golf and bocce, you can play with up to four players, each taking an individual turn. In archery, gladiator duel, and table tennis, you can play against one other player simultaneously. In volleyball, you can either play simultaneously against another player or cooperatively on the same team as another player against a computer-controlled team.
Bocce is likely to be the star of any party you might be having, especially with those less video game inclined, because of its accessibility and how well Move tracks your throws. It is also one of my favorites out of the six games. If you are not familiar with bocce, here are the basics. There are two teams, and each team gets four bocce balls. The first team throws a smaller ball, called a pallino, into the court (which is traditionally just a dirt, rectangular area enclosed by pieces of wood). Then each team throws the larger bocce balls in turn to try to get them as close to the pallino as possible. Only the team with the ball closest to the pallino scores, and they get one point for each of their bocce balls that is closer to the pallino than the other team’s closest ball.
Although the game will be novel to many people, once you have played once, the rules are very simple. It’s also very easy to control. You aim your character in the direction you want to throw, you pull the trigger on your controller, swing your hand back, and then swing forward and release to throw. There’s a power meter showing you how much power you would have to use to throw the ball to the pallino so you can do practice swings before you let go of your ball. As mentioned previously, you can throw the ball in any way you prefer. For example, you can bowl it, which is advisable if you are trying to knock your opponents balls out of the way, or toss it up in the air if you do not want it to roll far. You can also add some significant spin, if you are into that sort of thing. The basic court gets a bit boring after a few rounds, but thankfully, there’s a plethora of more exotic locations with ramps, barriers, and holes with which you must contend, including a park with picnic tables, grills, and trash cans. The various courts add significant longevity to the multiplayer experience.
Disc golf is another fun four player option. You throw the he discs through a course in order to get it into a basket at the end, and the game is scored based on stroke counts as compared to par for each hole just like golf. Like bocce, you pull the trigger to grab the disc, pull your hand back, swing your hand forward, and release the trigger to throw. The tracking of how you release the disc is very impressive, allowing you to angle the frisbee to get around, over, or under trees or whatever else might block your path to the hole. The available courses are exotic enough to keep things fun (i.e. the luge course where you slide your disc down the ice to the hole), but short enough that they are not as lengthy and frustrating to more casual players as some disc golf courses in other games. Although that would be disappointing if this were a hardcore disc golf game, it is welcome as a multiplayer, more casual experience.
Table tennis is one of the best technical displays of Move. As discussed above, you have to, like when you are playing the real deal, move left, right, back, and forward to cover the table. The game is also very responsive to how you tilt your wrist, so you can do hits that slow down the ball if the opponent does a slam, or throw on some crazy spin so that if your opponent does not hit it just right, it will fly off the table. I used to be a fairly decent table tennis player, so I was impressed that I was able to employ many of my old techniques and tricks in the game. When you play against another human player head-to-head, you stand side-by-side and the screen splits down the middle so each player sees from their vantage point. Playing against another human player is a great experience and the next best thing to having a mammoth table tennis table in your home (or small city apartment, as is the case with me). Be warned, though: make sure when you go for those wide hits off the side of the table that you do not hit or run into your friend and/or family. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the game, and it happened more than a few times.
Archery is also great. However, it is much better when played with two controllers per player. When you only use one controller, you use do a motion with the Move controller to pull an arrow off the quiver on your back by pulling the trigger, place it on your bow, and pull back the bow. You then simply aim with your one hand and release the trigger to shoot the arrow. When you use two Move controllers, your offhand controller is used as the actual bow of the arrow and must be moved to do the aiming, resulting in a much more realistic experience. To have a two player head-to-head challenge using two Move controllers, though, you would have to shell out for four controllers, which may be a barrier to many. The courses are varied in archery, which makes it a lot of fun. Sometimes you simply aim at targets and try to get as many points as possible. In other courses, you shoot watermelons off of stands and bags of money flying through the air. In some courses, you can actually create a barrier over your opponents target by shooting a special target before your enemy does. The challenge course in archery deserves special mention. There are targets that look like zombies slowly moving towards you, and you have to shoot them before they cross a line closer to you. Simply fun.
Gladiator is a fun fighting game, in which you must employ both defensive and offensive strategies. When you use one Move controller, the controller is both your sword and shield (upon the press of a button). Like archery, it is more fun to use two controllers, where one is your sword and the other is your shield. But the difference in enjoyment is less than that with archery. One of the great mechanics of gladiator is that you build up energy when you block attacks. So, if your opponent is senselessly attacking you while you block, they are actually giving you an advantage because once your energy reaches its maximum, you can perform a special move if you make contact and cause significant damage. This element keeps matches balanced between those who go on attack frenzies and those who like to wait for the right moment. This and table tennis are probably the two best games for a more intense head-to-head experience.
Beach volleyball is by far the weakest of the six games. This is primarily because you have no control over how your player moves around. So unlike the great experience in table tennis where you have to move side to side to get shots on the sides of the table, you are simply doing the hit moves, assuming that your player can get there. You can initiate a dive to catch a ball across the court, but that move just did not make up for the feeling of loss of control. That being said, volleyball is not bad. You use either one or both controllers to perform the three classic volleyball moves: the bump, set, and spike. You must employ traditional spike setup strategies used in the real game and can block your opponents attempts to spike. This game may be the one game that would have benefited from having a control scheme using the optional Move navigation controller with an analog stick so you could control your player as well as what hit you employ.
My main complaint about Sports Champions is the presentation. It’s not the graphics because the game is presented in HD and looks great. The problem, instead, is the character design. All of the ten characters you may choose to represent you are over-the-top caricatures. There’s a cowboy hat wearing somber badass and a breakdancing basketball player who regularly spins various things on his forefinger ( because I guess he really misses basketball and wanted it included in Sports Champions?). It is all just a little too much and becomes a bit grating over time. It would have been better to have more simple characters that faded into the background and did not get in the way if they were not going to include a character create to allow you to personalize the experience.
Although I could do without the over-the-top caricatures from which you must choose your representation while you play, the impressive technology and great games for both four player multiplayer and one-on-one gaming make this the best Move launch title and worth picking up the bundle if you are just diving into the Move experience.
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