The light gun game, like the fighting game, has enjoyed a revival over the past few years. And while there is no light gun Street Fighter IV, the tech in the Wii Remote, and now in the PlayStation 3 Move, raises hopes that the genre will continue to charge ahead.
The debut original light gun game for Sony's Move motion controller is The Shoot. For the non-expert, this kind of game is hard to mess up. Judging by its demo The Shoot is a good first Move light gun game.
The Shoot comes from Cohort Studios. It's built around a concept of a movie director ordering his gun-toting actor (the player) through a bunch of themed Hollywood sets. In the demo for the October-scheduled game, the Wild West theme is unlocked. I tried two levels from that theme. The first, was a shootout near a saloon. The second was a chase of trains, my hand-driven cart barely keeping up with a locomotive full of bandits.
A lot of the expected light gun elements showed up in the levels I played. You shoot the bad guys as they pop up and as the camera pans through the scene. You get bonuses for streaks of successful shots and receive power-ups for headshots. You can fire at vultures for more points or at dynamite kegs to generate explosions. Busty damsels in distress shouldn't be shot, unless you want to lose points. The same goes for horses. You can shoot down knives and sticks of dynamite that are thrown at you.
I found two Move-specific elements. One involved simple gesture prompts to get out of the way of thrown weapons. An on-screen indicator would show when it was worthwhile to pull down on the Move wand or swing it to the side for a duck or dodge. The more interesting Move maneuvers were the motion-and-camera-mapped moves. The most common one I activated was a slow-down effect that I earned for headshots. I could trigger it with the kind of pirouette Obi-Wan Kenobi did against Darth Vader in the original Star Wars movie. I tried to cheat this, to test the Move. But neither covering the Move's illuminated sphere nor simply rotating the Move wand would activate the power. I had to spin my body.
According to menus in the demo version of the game, The Shoot will include five themed career campaigns as well as a score attack mode for one or two players. The game seems like a solid light-gun shooter with a fun aesthetic and an amusing setting. I like the idea that I'm not dying in this game, just performing different takes.
The Shoot will be out for PlayStation Move in October.