Sorcery excluded, I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to a Move demo. While I hadn’t seen it up close, the buzz on the tech failed to excite me. It seemed like a wiimote with added fidelity and presented in the glorious high definition. In other words, the handful of Move demo’s I had seen didn’t seem too interested in bringing anything new to the table. It was content to reproduce what we did two years ago on the Wii, and that simply didn’t interest me.
Still, I decided to give Shoot Out a shot. Shoot Out is a light gun shooter under the guise of an actor shooting a movie. Four different themes are spread out over twenty levels. The area I got to demo was populated by evil robots that bared a surprising weakness to being shot in the head. Infinite ammo and never having to reload were blessings afforded by a focus on shooting and action, rather than distractions taking your hands away from the action.
All of that was, more or less, standard light gun fare. I wasn’t sold on Shoot Out, at least until it started to diverge significantly from the norm. First off, to dodge oncoming missiles (that couldn’t be shot) I personally had to duck left or right. Not move the Move, mind you, but physically duck my body from the PlayStation Eye. A quick draw sequence, where I had to point the Move down and then quickly “draw” it, was also present, though that was slightly less impressive than the real time ducking.
The level concluded with a giant boss battle. In between shooting weak points at his appendages, I had to dodge a barrage of oncoming missiles by dipping and ducking in every direction four or five times in a row. It was sort of cool, and the added personal movement gave Shoot Out credence toward doing something different than the trail blazed by Wii shooters. I’m still not a believer, but games like Shoot Out are going to do well to try and change my mind.
