Feature: Move's First Year - The Stinkers

Here at Movemodo we’ve been a joyous lot, as we’re still celebrating Move’s first birthday. We’ve taken our first step into looking back at the past year with Move's First Year: Part One, and even looked ahead to some Four Must-Have Move Games for the Future. While we’ll continue this journey further as we traverse Move’s entire first year soon, we also wanted to take a look at the other side of Move’s first year of infancy. Yes, Move and a newborn child have quite a few things in common: they’re cute, they’re fun, you can proudly show them off to your friends, but sometimes they just stink. Come with us as we take a look at the games that should’ve been dropped off at the outhouse instead of retail shelves.

Kung Fu Rider

So how about we take our office chairs outside to try rolling down a busy metropolitan street, kicking Yakuza members with chair-spinning Kung Fu techniques and trying not to get pummelled by a car in the process? While it does sounds a bit wacky and fun, we doubt our boss would actually approve of this asinine behaviour, because we’ve got really nice office chairs. If you’re just dying to try this insane feat, you’ll find yourself bogged down in an overly complicated control scheme that has you doing the opposite of what you want far too many times, and a low-budget production value that isn’t wowing crowds any time soon either. It’s true that a few minutes of fun can be had here if picked up in the bargain bin, but as a launch title to show off your awesome PlayStation Move controller, you’d probably impressing your friend more by actually learning Kung Fu.

Zumba Fitness

What is it with Zumba of late? It seems that everyone is doing it these days and it’s no surprise that a Zumba game landed on PS3 with Move support, but how exactly would this dancing actually work with Move, as it requires you to use your whole body? The short answer is that it doesn’t. The controller is strapped into a waistband that’s packaged with the game and you’ll sway to the on-screen motions. While this doesn’t sound too bad, the issue here is that you can simply hold the Move in your hand and swing it back and forth to get better results than when using the waistband. It won't get you fit of course, but hey, who cares about that in gaming? This glaring flaw hasn’t stopped it from dominating the sales charts worldwide, but it’s got a nice soundtrack, which is something to be said for the game.

TV Superstars

Witness face capturing that puts you into the game; the new PlayStation Move controller's precision across multiple exciting multiplayer mini-games; gameplay that will make you a TV Superstar and have you screaming "lights, camera, action!" — what could possibly go wrong with a game packing in all of these features? TV Superstars tries to do a lot of different things, but doesn’t do any of them well. Like a reality television show, it’s funny for a while but then it just makes you sick.

Fast Draw Showdown

Howdy partner, do you feel like gun slinging? We didn’t think so. Fast Draw Showdown takes you back west to the days when you could go to the local bar to get stupidly drunk, start a bar fight and then take it outside for some gun-slinging duelling action to the death. OK, skip the fun parts of getting drunk and bar fighting and you’ve got Fast Draw Showdown. Quickly drawing your Move controller from your side and shooting the on-screen idiot before getting shot yourself is all the gameplay that’s found here. Sound like fun? It’s not, but it will have you longing for a few pints at the local bar – if only you had an office chair to get there that is.

Deadliest Catch: Sea of Chaos

Take to the Bering Sea like pirates in search of gold, but instead of buried bricks of gold hidden away in a locked chest, your gold here is Alaskan Crab. Fishing these deadly seas is prime material for a video game, but someone must have forgotten that when developing this stinker. Combining a small helping of strategy gameplay to select your fishing areas is nice, but a handful of boring mini-games that look like they’re pulled from a low budget PS2 title is somehow supposed to be exciting fishing on these deadly seas. Also, instead of releasing the game as a cheap PSN title, the game released as a full priced $60 retail title to add insult to injury. This game stinks worse than docking at port with a full load of dead crab, and the only thing deadly about it is the risk of terminal boredom.

Unless you're exceptionally drunk or abnormally aroused by acute embarrassment, We Dare rivals abstinence as the most powerful contraceptive ever.

We Dare

Sex and videogames just don’t mix well too often. It’s true that Kratos has his humorous affairs and Grand Theft Auto uses sex to add a bit of ‘spice’ to the games atmosphere, but video games being used a source of arousal or electronic Viagra... well, that’s just not happening for us. We Dare dares to go down this road and tries to make you do obscene things with the Move controller in multiplayer mini-game style. If someone actually thinks this game will help them get lucky, they probably shouldn’t be breeding in the first place.

Let’s Dance with Mel B

Sometimes a game comes along that is just so bad, so unbelievably atrocious, that we can do nothing less than get down on our knees and beg you not to spend your cash on the game. Let’s Dance with Mel B falls at this end of the spectrum, earning the only 1/10 review score here at Movemodo, as it brings a game so limited and unintuitive that we couldn’t recommend this game to anyone. Non-moving on-screen prompts are somehow supposed to let you know what dance moves to perform and that’s about it. See that guy on-screen with his arms outstretched? That’s your cue to perform! But wait, do we jump and outstretch our arms? Do we cut a flying backflip off the couch and outstretch our arms? That’s just it — we don’t know either, and the game doesn’t even try to explain. We finally resorted to sitting our butts on the couch, while bouncing the Move controller on our knee to finish up the songs. You couldn’t even drop a young John Travolta in this game and change the title to Grease to make this game worthy of bargain bin purchase.

There will always be stinkers in the lot with any system or peripheral, and while they usually seem to make a good bit of money from the uninformed gamers or their parents that purchase them, they can make for funny reviews and articles. We do understand that bad games are usually the end result of time restraints and/or budget restriction, but this makes it no more of a reason for you to actually shell out your extra cash for any of them. Many of you have probably played a few of these stinkers yourself, and for those of you who’ve actually endured the stench, please feel free to cleanse yourself in the comments section below.