TV SuperStars Hands-On

Tonight, Sony officially lifted the curtain on its PlayStation Move motion controller, and in doing so, it also lifted the curtain on a number of party games that will arrive in conjunction with the new peripheral. Aside from the new SOCOM, and a game in which you slug your way through back-alley brawls, most of these games seemed to be focused on a colorful, casual experience that the whole family would enjoy (provided grandma isn't the street-fighting type). Among these was TV SuperStars, a game in which you scan your face with the EyeToy to become a reality TV show contestant.

TV SuperStars features four different types of TV shows: a fashion show, an extreme Japanese game show, a cooking show, and a DIY show in which you make the rules. The ones we played were the fashion and game shows. We started by scanning our face into the game. You can give your character a neutral face, a happy face, or an angry glare, as well as tweak your hairstyle and body type. Then, you use the EyeToy microphone to record a catch phrase with which your character will gloat. We managed to create a character that looked almost unsettlingly similar to us. (There's nothing quite like seeing a virtual avatar of yourself angrily sneering at you the moment after you breathed life into it.)

The basic gist of the Japanese game show is to quickly cycle through a handful of frenetic challenges. One has you churning your arm in circles to run on a giant cylinder, another has you painting between the lines on a giant canvas where the paint rapidly changes colors, and the last has flinging yourself into the air and twisting the Move to contort your body in midair to match targets.

The fashion game had a bit more focus to it. You take to the stage and start dancing for the audience by matching onscreen gestures, as a sort of warm-up for the fashion show to come. Then you go backstage and use the Move to put together outfits for your contestant. After that, you apply makeup to yourself (we decided to go with a Joker from The Dark Knight look) and get back onstage. The character we made looked like a bit of a train wreck, but a funny train wreck nonetheless. With our newly decorated character, we did another motion-gesture dance routine to impress the audience. We may have even "vogued," but we're not too certain.

One thing we could tell about TV SuperStars is that the game is meant to be a light, easy-to-pick-up accompaniment to the Move controller--most likely one of the options that will come bundled with the starter pack. It doesn't appear to be a full-fledged retail game, but it worked well enough with what it set out to do. As for the Move hardware, we were surprised by the responsiveness of the device, and the build quality seemed pretty sturdy. Now, we'll just have to wait and see what other sorts of games come out to support it. Stay tuned. It's going to be an interesting few months leading up to the Move launch this fall.