The Shoot Hands-On

It’s not too surprising that one of the first games Sony is showing off for the PlayStation Move is a rail shooter. But if visions of a run-of-the-mill forced march through a set path with enemies popping up at random times bore you to tears, you should know that The Shoot is actually pretty clever. The game takes the standard rail shooter archetype and dresses it up with a bit of story and interesting gameplay.

The game's premise is a play on its title, since you’ll be sent through different themed movie shoots. While the demo we played sent us through robot-infested subways and city streets, reps on hand noted that later levels will feature different locations and gameplay that will include some hand-to-hand combat. The two levels we played had us moving through a subway as well as a city street crawling with robots who need to be shot and assorted civilians you should avoid plugging full of holes.

The subway portion of the game felt like an old-school shooting gallery, with enemies and civilians popping out as you move through the level. While this was pretty basic at the start of the level, as you get further in, enemies become more sophisticated and split into smaller foes when shot or have shields you'll need to get around in order to take them out. Peppered throughout all the cannon fodder are civilians you'll need to avoid blasting--which is easier said than done once you get the robot shooting fever--but casualties are to be expected in this type of game.

The city street area mixed things up quite a bit more with a fight against a large robot with weak spots that has to be targeted as it hops around and throws debris at you. As the large bot takes more and more damage, you'll have to contend with more enemies that pop up to prevent you from targeting the weak points.

The Shoot's gameplay is in the vein of a light-gun shooter, with the Move controller serving as your gun. You'll fire your weapon by hitting the trigger on the underside of the controller, and from the look of things, you don't have to worry about reloading. There's some variety added to these core mechanics by a modest degree of motion that reflects where you're pointing. Though there isn't free movement, you can lean a bit to the left or right. In addition, you can collect different power-ups that you can trigger by aiming the controller at the top or bottom of the screen (or by physically moving). Overall, the Move controller worked fine, although it wasn't quite as responsive as we would have liked it to be (but it did feature some solid rumble effects). Reps on hand noted that what was on display was a work-in-progress and that there would likely be options to calibrate your reticle's movement to some degree in the final game.

The Shoot's visuals were clean and had a decent number of effects. Given the game's borderline campy theme, we didn't expect to see any photo-realism on display and were satisfied by the art style. The environment featured a good amount of detail and a good helping of destructible objects. The game moved along at a steady clip and featured quite a few screen effects to help underscore the mayhem. Because of the press event's noisy setting, we couldn't make out much of the game's audio.

While a rail shooter isn't a stunning display of the PlayStation Move's capabilities, it's certainly a solid one. There's already some fun to be had in the single-player mode, so we expect the two-player mode will be fun as well. The Shoot is being developed by UK-based Cohort Studios, most recently known for Buzz Junior: Monster Rumble, and is due for release during the PlayStation Move's launch window. Look for more on the game in the coming months.