| Eyetoy: Play 3 review |
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Ever wanted to pretend you are in a 70s pop video, or be chased by bees? Now at long last, you can! EyeToy: Play 3 brings you all this and much more.
Play 3 tries to be a bit more imaginative than previous eyetoy outings, even including elements that aren't games. Eyetoy has always been more about social gaming and this version has simultaneous (up to) four player games, which makes all the difference.
In single player, you have two play type options: “Playroom” has the executive toys and “Games” has the standard variety of games. There’s some annoying robot guy bleating on about what you can do in each type, on each menu – it’s best to choose an option quickly before it starts talking. Trust us.
The best thing in the Playroom is the Vs Knockout in the Fun section. Two players stand back to back and the camera cleverly cuts and flips both play areas so it looks like you are punching each other’s lights out, without actually doing any physical harm. The other things on offer are a bit weirder. In one, you have to stand still for as long as possible to be rewarded with visuals of plant and animal life “in your lounge” – this is not why people purchase an Eyetoy. Neither is it to slightly vary the pitch of a tin-whistle type noise with the height of their outstretched arms – instant boredom. It doesn’t even have the same reward as the interactive nature of Electroplankton. There is a freaky Motion Cam Tm area, where a variety of visuals can be added to your body movements for nothing other than a bit of fun, like being chased by bees or having psychedelic vapour trails on your limbs (actually quite cool when you first see it). In the Laboratory section you can merge your face with someone else’s, or spookily swap your head with their body. Kids will absolutely love this. So, the Playroom is full of ideas that are mostly worth including, but don't easily slip into a game format, apart from the Vs Knockout which really should have been made into a game with scores somehow.
Games come in 3 shapes: Sport, Music and Variety. The best sport is Bowling, being quite similar to monkey bowling but more energetic and harder to correct after the initial throw (which is a good thing), although you can bizarrely alter the spin at any point, right up to the pins. Volleyball is an interesting idea in which you have to pretend to run in order to get to the ball quicker, but the tech just isn't up to making it different enough or accurate enough when it comes to the spikes where you punch the ball down. American footy is more of the same stuff as volleyball, but eyebrow-raisingly, you are required to punch opponents in the face to stop them tackling you. Shooting for goal is a bit more interesting - you can vary the direction of the ball in the air (physics grads need not apply).
The Music section is fairly lightweight. You can pretend to be a DJ in an easy version of Samba – tap one of two decks when the vinyl falls out of the sky on to them. Occasionally you might have to wave your arms around to get the crowd going. To break up the tedium, there are related interlude games, for example putting up fliers. Hit as many as you can with your hands to stick them to the wall in typical flier overkill fashion. If being a DJ isn’t your thing, you can be in a band. It’s Samba again on the drums, but with air guitar hero too. It’s quite fun for a couple of goes, but the interlude has you as a bouncer doing crowd control at a gig and shows off how bad an interface the Eyetoy can be - waving left or right moves your avatar around to fend off the fans, but not as accurately as just using a joypad. Finally, you can be a conductor in Maestro, but it can’t quite capture the fun of playing music games with a real prop rather than just your hands.
All this pales into insignificance though once you get some friends round. Up to four players can play at once, although you may need to stand further back than normal to get everyone in the camera view, or try using the wide-angle lens that comes with Eyetoy Kinetic. The party games are a bunch of mini-games strung together. The more mini-games you win, the more of an advantage you have in the final round; for example you might win a fish in a mini-game which will them tempt a cat towards you more quickly in the final round. The mini-games are a mixed bunch, but generally the close proximity of four players waving their arms around and trying to grab bugs off the screen or fending off balls while playing an ace version of four player Breakout, or jumping up and down to win a sack race, will generally have you in stitches (in more ways than one). Occasionally the temptation to try and put off your rivals by interfering with what is going on in their area is too much. In a normal game of Mario Party, you would have to reach across and grab the pad - clearly cheating. However, in Play 3, you can accidentally-on-purpose reach nonchalantly across and perhaps grab a fish from someone else’s bit of water to put into your net and pass them your piranha. Some games have you pretending to run and jump, and one with a boulder chasing you is especially disturbing when your on-screen-self gets flattened. There's an athletics mode, which is just like button-mashing sports games, but instead you have to wave your arms about and jump around - much more like athletics than button-mashing ever was. And far less danger of bursting a blood vessel.
Although the multi-player party games aren't that much different in play technique from normal single player games, there's enough variety in the presentation to make them appear quite varied and to keep everyone happy for longer. Variants of the single player games make an appearance in multiplayer too, but just the fact that you are playing against other people improves them no end. The fact that your photos are all taken at the beginning and track through the games deepens the involvement a few degrees - amazing how something so simple can add so much.
Overall, Eyetoy: Play 3 gets credit for the multiplayer mayhem and attempts at innovation, but it lets itself down with the inclusion of some quite weak games in amongst the better ones. If all the games were as fun as each other, it would be easy to play through them all for thirty minutes every now and then when friends are round and get your money’s worth. As it stands, this is worth playing if you haven’t tried the Eyetoy before, but only has the better of the multiplayer games to appeal to those who already own other Eyetoy games.
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System: Sony PlayStation 2
Genre: Party
Developer: London Studio
Publisher: SCEE
Players: 1-4
Version: European
Reviewed: Mar 2006
Writer: Charles Rodmell
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Pros:
- 4 Player Eyetoy action
- Variety
- New ideas
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Cons:
- Inclusion of sub par games
- Average single player
- Annoying compere
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