Reviewed: The Shoot


27 Nov 2010

We take a look at this family-friendly rail shooter, where players use the PlayStation Move controller to take part in the action.

Lights, Camera…

The precision of the PlayStation Move controller lends itself well to certain genres, and rail shooter games is one of them. For those unfamiliar with this concept, all the actual movements are scripted, leaving the player to focus on one objective – shooting targets. Bad guys will pop out and the player must hit as many targets as they can to score big points and avoid getting hit.

The Shoot has taken this long-running genre and has given it a few twists. You’ve been hired by a director to take part in a variety of action movies, revolving around plots such as robots attacking a city or western shootouts. Your job is to make the film look as flashy as possible, hitting lots of targets, avoiding getting hit or hitting civilians, and racking up combos.

The director has a metre which shows how happy or angry he is at your progress. If you do well, he gets happier. If you don’t, the director gets angry and cuts the film, making you lose a life.

The setup means this is a bit more family friendly than the average rail shooter. All your targets are cardboard cutouts or are props on wires, so there’s no blood and gore.

The director setup also makes a change from the typical health-bar scenario. If the director is angry, it gives you the incentive to try and do a lot better, in order to raise his happiness level.

However, the director likes to comment on your progress every three seconds. This gets really annoying and I found it pulled me out of the action at times.

Controls

A lot of rail shooters usually utilise light gun controllers. The Move controller works well for this, as the trigger button at the back emulates the trigger of the gun and the combination of the camera and controller for the Move provides for the pinpoint accuracy.

And it is pretty accurate. The only error in judgement depends on how you calibrate the controller. I found at one stage, I made the target icon slight left of the controller, but it was my error, and by allowing for that when I aimed, it maintained that “accuracy” throughout.

There are also other uses for the Move controller here. You can move the controller to the left and right to dodge objects flying at you and, to activate special moves, you can either spin around, shoot up high or shoot down low.

Most of this was fun, but I found the spinning move, where the play must twirl 360 degrees on the spot, was a bit of a pain to do, especially when playing this fast-paced shooter where you need to keep an eye on the screen at all times.

Modes

While the controls work well, the game does fall down in a few areas. Firstly, the loading times are long. And secondly, and perhaps what could make the player question the worth of the purchase, is its length.

In career mode, there are five stages with four scenes in each. It takes about 30 minutes to complete a full stage, meaning you could complete career mode in a blast in one evening.

There’s also a score-tallying mode, which is essentially where you play any scene again to get higher scores than before. This is fun to do for a two-player game, but you probably wouldn’t be that motivated to play through stages again alone. There is also a challenge mode, which isn’t too heavy duty either.

Verdict

The main problem with The Shoot is similar to the problem of a lot of the early PlayStation Move games. The game seems to have been made more to show what the Move can do as opposed to standing up as a solid video game in and of itself.

The game is a blast to play through, but its length and lack of depth means your joy will be short lived. While it may be fun for a casual gamer, I’m not convinced if it’s worth paying €40 for.

The Shoot is available for PlayStation 3 and costs €39.99. The PlayStation Move controller is available for €59.99.