Resistance 3 PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter First Impressions

Resistance 3 released this week, and along with the regular retail version, Sony released a Doomsday edition which comes with the PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter. The PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter is kind of like a gun shell, where you place the PS Move and Navigation controller in the shell and it turns into a rifle of sorts. It’s built well, and most games make full use of the peripheral. So how does the Sharp Shooter work with Resistance 3? Not as good as I would have liked.

For those who haven’t played Resistance 3 yet, the single player campaign gets off to a quick start. Within a few minutes of the first chapter, you are already fighting chimera and a mini-boss. During the first four levels I played, there was a constant stream of action, which is exactly what we want from a Resistance game. The only issue is how the PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter worked with the game. Some parts of the Sharp Shooter worked better than others.

Resistance 3 Sharp Shooter Gameplay Footage

 

Moving around and firing from the hip worked seamlessly. It’s always fun to use an actual trigger when playing shooters, and Insomniac made it easy to utilize the various weapon’s secondary fire. The secondary fire button is located right under the trigger, allowing for quick and easy access. The navigation controller is used to move around, and is also where you will find the scope and grenade button. Crouching is a bit tough to reach, since the button is on the other side of the navigation controller, but I didn’t have to use it too much. The biggest issue I had with the Sharp Shooter is calibration and aiming down the sights (scope).

Not every weapon is that accurate in Resistance 3; in fact, most weapons only become powerful when you utilize the scope or aim down the sights. The problem with the Sharp Shooter controls is that once you switch from firing from the hip to aiming down the sights, the controls change, and you move so sluggishly it is sometimes impossible to hit more than one enemy while you are scoping. You can change the turn speed, which helps, but it will cause your turn speed to change when you are not aiming. It’s frustrating, as you can see in the videos, when you calibrate the movement perfect for normal movement and then have to deal with the slow movements once you scope.

Another issue is calibration. Other games like Killzone 3 and SOCOM 4 created a better and more intuitive way of calibrating the PlayStation Move. In Resistance 3, all you have to go by are arbitrary dead zones and turn speeds, leaving you constantly going back and forth from the game to the pause menu. The calibration system they have doesn’t seem to do much of anything, and seeing as the aiming movement is different from your normal movement, this will definitely frustrate people.

Killzone 3 with PlayStation Move

These issues can definitely be fixed via an update, and I hope Insomniac addresses it, but with so many issues with the multiplayer as well, who knows when they will be able to get to it. With so much action in the game, and with the aiming down the sights movement so slow, it does ruin the experience just a bit. The game is still a blast to play with the Sharp Shooter, but right now it’s too frustrating to use just because of the aiming and calibrating issues. The battles will only get bigger as you progress through the game, and not being able to aim smoothly might just frustrate you to no end. If you are set on using the Sharp Shooter, I suggest simply playing just a few chapters at a time, or wait for a fix.

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