Start the Party Updated Hand-On

Slicing fruit, catching flies, and bouncing balls are all in a day's work in Sony's upcoming party game collection Start the Party for the PlayStation Move. We had a chance to try an updated build of the game last night before the start of the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Previous Coverage: Along with the actual Move system itself and a host of other games, Sony unveiled Start the Party (then called Move Party) back in March of this year.

What's New: Our quick hands-on demo first required us to sign in by taking a quick snapshot of our face using the PlayStation Eye camera, which was followed by shouting our name so it could be recorded by the camera's built-in mic. After that, it was off to check out a couple of the many mingames that will be part of the collection. We played multiplayer and passed the controller back and forth in between rounds.

In the first game, the Move controller became a whirring fan onscreen, and the goal was to use the fan to help baby chicks (dropping from the top of the screen) to float into their nearby nests. The more chicks you saved, the better you did, though as the chicks began dropping more rapidly it was easy to miss and have them plunge to their (presumable) death or, worse, get caught in the blade of your virtual fan. The player who saved more chickens was declared the winner of the round.

After that, we played a minigame where our Move controller transformed into a sword for slicing through fruit, a hammer to whack moles with, a tennis racket to bounce balls on, and even a makeshift virtual frog that we could use to snatch flies out of midair. Just as in the previous game, the player who managed to perform better was declared the winner.

What Has Changed: As mentioned above, the game has been renamed from Move Party to Start the Party.

Updated Thoughts: The flurry of feathers that resulted from a chicken getting caught in the fan blades was worth a chuckle or two. We can't imagine spending a ton of time with this one, but it seems like it might be right in line with what you'd expect from a party game--the more players having fun in the same room, the better.