Review: Sorcery (PS3)

By Wayne Webb

Sorcery for the PS Move is so very close to being a great game, but there’s one fatal flaw that causes this game to fall short.

First the good – Sorcery is a standard fare story of swords and sorcery about an apprentice wizard who is beginning to learn his craft. Of course, fate intervenes and he’s thrown in the deep end only to find that he is somehow special and can do things that the more adept should not be able to do. There’s also a mentor wizard and an elf princess disguised as a talking cat. It’s a familiar story to fantasy fans, but it is delivered in a beautifully graphic style, reminiscent of Studio Ghibli animations and with some small sense of humour and flair. You get a wand and learn how to cats basic spells with a flick of your wrist a la the Move Controller. So far so good.

Ok, now for the bad – the game seriously falls apart when you have to move. There are two major things wrong with the PS move in my experience. One is the need to have two hands on two controllers for games like this. It feels unintuitive and clumsy and often leads to control issues. The second is those control issues, and in this game they are really bad. The camera angles are often fighting you (the player) for control and view. This is extremely irritating in combat and hampers your ability to learn to fight accurately. The other is movement itself, which is clumsy and inaccurate. This would be a great game and loads of fun if it were not for this problem.

I really enjoyed the story, the presentation graphics and style of Sorcery. I really love the flick of the move wand in lieu of a magic wand. The curving of cast spells around objects is satisfying, and then crafting of bigger and better spells is also engaging to have in the game. But as innovative and well-crafted the magic and stories are, that’s exactly the opposite for the motion and camera mechanics, which distract and annoy. That’s a common theme with Move games; the melding of motion and movement/aiming is just not successful for first-person and/or third-person games that aren’t on rails.

Pros: Excellent presentation, great story and design, innovative wand magic moves.
Cons: Terrible move and camera mechanics, battling difficulty, double controller duty.

2 Shacks Out Of 5