Story
Finn, a young-ish sorcerer's apprentice, is goofing around with his mentor's magical kitty one day. He accidentally stumbles across some crazy dark magic and reveals that Erline, the kitty, is actually an Elf who is hiding out from her evil mother The Nightmare Queen. After the revelation the Queen wants nothing more to reclaim her daughter and cover the world in darkness and nightmares. Finn now has to fix everything he broke and learn his magical skills along the way.
Hated
First on the plate to receive my ire is that there is now way to move the camera at all and it always seems to choose the worse angle no matter what. If there is, it is not well defined or explained at all. The closest I could find is the "centering" button that would place the camera right behind Finn, but outside of that it was horrid. Not unplayable, but bothersome enough to annoy to the point of throwing a controller. I will give a bit of credit to the dev team as they were a bit limited on the control due to hardware design, only one stick if you use Move and Sub Controller, but then they should have looked into fixing the camera similar to the GoW franchise.
This may also be a hardware issue but it also seemed that there were quite a few "sensor" discrepancies. This is in regards to reading subtle movements and gestures such as drinking a health potion or changing to different spells in any kind of quick manner. You know the things that can matter when in a high action fight with bosses or three Ice Giants. Why would we want that working perfectly right? I wish I had a count of how many times I was doing the "drink a potion" motion while running for my life only for it to swap spells or lead to Finn just holding the mixed potion in hand like an idiot, but I don't. I can assure you that it is an extremely high just like the number of times I had to replay certain fight scenes.
Lastly, while most of the issues have been based around the hardware, it is worth mentioning here that there also seems to be quite a few issues when it comes to the game characters and objects moving as well. There were a lot of times that I found enemies getting stuck in specific places that were almost impossible to hit them and them to hit me. This usually wouldn't be a huge issue except that you can't switch out of combat mode to passive mode until all enemies have been killed. As and FYI, you need to be in "passive" mode to move objects blocking paths and open chests. So these glitches lead to a bit of time having to try and angle Finn to hook magic missiles around objects just to progress further. This could have used a bit more polish there.
Loved
I totally have to start by saying that even though there were those above hardware issues, Sorcery was just the Move game that all of us owners have been waiting for. It uses the tech as best it can to not make you just moving the controller just to do so. There is a reason for almost every motion you have to make and they don't feel as contrived "just cause." Even though it does get tiring, physically, it all makes sense. Shaking a potion, doing a 'lasso' move to switch to air magic and even doing the small key turns to open locks/chests. It all made perfect sense in game and seemed to be organic throughout. So kudos there.
Also stemming from that, and kind of underplayed in general, was the potion creation system in the game. These are effectively the upgrades for Finn through the game and unlike just clicking and adding items together, you are required to actually pour, sprinkle, grind and mix them all together from your ingredients found in the game. It may seem a bit on the juvenile side of things, but I had a blast every time I found enough to upgrade and mix a new potion. It was that extra little bit that added to the overall fun experience of the whole game. You can read that as a classic rule 32; Enjoy the little things.
One more thing to take note of here is that even though the story of the game is very cliché "Save the World" it is presented and told in a very fun and comical kind of way. Not over the top, but they made you actually feel engaged with Finn and Erline just as much as it felt 'natural' to use the wand and potions. I was completely expecting to have to trudge through a poor narrative to get to the fun mechanics of the game but that was by no means the case thankfully. Don't quote me as saying it is the best ever, but it was enjoyable and not fully expected given what we were already looking forward to.
Overview
In the end, if you are looking for something to use that PS Move controller for, Sorcery is worth the lower gamer price it launched with. Like many games pushing for something new it does have some glitches, and while annoying, they are not overly game breaking. Granted I don't see many outside of the trophy hunters playing this more than once or twice, but at least it started out as a $39 game and not $60. So if you have a Move and want some use out of it, rent or buy this one.
For those of you out there that don't have a Move or don't have a care for motion controlled games, I'd say save your time and money. You either can't play it or you won't be able to have the fun that it was designed for. It is a good representation of how motion controls can be used to do more than add a few little features that feel clunky, but we've already defined that you have no care for that kind of thing as well.
Sorcery was developed by The Workshop and published by Sony Computer Entertainment on May 22nd exclusively for the PS3. A copy of the game was supplied by the publisher for review purposes. I played the game to completion on the hardest difficulty.
