Thanks to the music gaming boom over the last few years, homes have been invaded by cheap plastic gaming peripherals. The last thing any gamer wants is something else to add to the pile. Luckily, the PlayStation Move Sharpshooter isn’t just another cheap piece of plastic destined for the peripheral junk pile; it’s a badass answer to the “how will motion gaming handle shooters?” question. Thanks to some pretty cool tech and a great layout; the PlayStation Move is a must have for any Move owner — if your arms can take it.
The Sharshooter is set up pretty straight forward, you put the move controller into the front section of the navigation controller into a specialized slot below it. The peripheral itself may look surprisingly bland (coming off as a sub machine gun painted gray), but you can’t deny how cool it looks when powered up with the glowing orb of the Move. The front of the gun features an orange shotgun like pump that serves different purposes depending on the game, for instance reloading. There’s also two triggers and buttons mapped to the side of the gun. Like the shotgun portion, the buttons are mapped for different purposes depending on the game. The back of the gun features a stock that can extend to different sizes to resemble different guns. While as a whole the Sharpshooter feels sturdy, this stock feels quite cheap and I found myself shying away from it in fear of breaking it.
When first using the Sharpshooter, you’re likely to be a little put off by it. Your hands aren’t used to playing a shooter the way the peripheral requires. Stick with it though, it gets better. After roughly an hour of playing Killzone 3 with the Sharpshooter, I became quite skilled at mowing down Helghast with it, in fact, I almost prefer it to the standard controller controls in some ways. The Sharpshooter is a lot more fluid than you’d expect and very precise (though, admittedly, not as much as a controller). Keep in mind, to get the most out of the gun, you’re going to have to seriously mess with the gun’s sensitivity settings.
One of the issues I did find though was that as impressive as the button mapping was, at times they felt too small, and placed too close together. Now, let me preface that; I’m a rather large man, with pretty large fingers, so it may not be an issue to anyone, but I constantly found myself hitting the secondary trigger during moments when I didn’t want to. Another issues I had, and it’s a minor one, is that the Sharpshooter isn’t made for long sessions. After a while, holding the gun up becomes a bit taxing on your arms, and you’re likely to either take a break or switch back to the Dualshock.
The Blast Factor: With a surprisingly reasonable price tag of $39, the PlayStation Move Sharpshooter is a great addition to the Move lineup. It’s sturdy, intuitive, well built and incredibly fluid during most playthroughs. While it does have it’s downfalls, like the fact that it’ll tax your stamina and it doesn’t seem to be built for those with larger fingers, I had a great time with the peripheral. Most importantly, I can’t wait to see how other developers can incorporate it into their games.
Note: Check out our reviews of the PlayStation Move and Killzone 3 too!
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