CES 2012 Hands On: Sorcery

So one of the first things that was noticeable from the original showing of the game is that the main character has been aged a little bit. Apparently this was due to something about a sorcerer's apprentice looking too inexperienced and violence toward kids. Not that it changes much of the game, but it is worth mentioning because it was something I noticed from the start of the demo.

Now that is out of the way. Time to move onto the actual controls as this is what was being featured in this demo. Just as was shown at E3 2010, the controls are the same. Unlike what can be taken away from watching someone else playing the game, they are exactly like you would expect and want. Outside of some of the conjuring motions, read that as selecting the spell to use, it really feels like you are holding and using a wand to "flick" spells into the game world. It does have a bit of aim assist, but as long as your Move controller is specifically configured for your stance you will not notice it helping out as it is pretty accurate.

Now let's look at what I said there. As long as it is configured specifically for you it works. That also means that you really can't move from where you were standing or you may have a few issues tossing out those fireballs or tornados. I experienced this as the person showing the demo was about a foot shorter than me and there was no way I could literally stand where he started off. This led to a lot of mis-fires until reconfigured. Granted this was until I stepped a bit out of place. So this is something hopefully they will get locked down before launch because it will kill the game if players have to reconfigure every time they take a piss or go for munchies.

The only other real gripe I have about what I played of Sorcery is that it does suffer from some camera problems. It doesn't feel right and it seems that you and the game will be constantly struggling for control to place it right for the scene. Even with the centering option by pressing L3 it doesn't seem to take long before you fall prey to a weird angle again. Hopefully this gets a good looking at because no matter how great everything else is, it won't matter because I won't be able to roam around or look at everything properly.

There is still some time before Sorcery goes gold and is released, so let's hope they nail down these issues a bit more and make this the first real title to fully use the Move. I mean, I want to be able to justify the purchase of the controller and I have yet to be able to with the current library. Sorcery is the title that I see being more than just a "tech demo" gone small title for the Move. I guess we'll see soon.