Sorcery - PlayStation 3

A Worthwhile Experience In Spite Of Move

Kyle Hilliard — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:01:00 GMT

Sorcery was announced at E3 2010, the year following the PlayStation Move’s unveiling. It was presented as a showpiece for Sony’s motion controller, but it’s taken two years to finally make it to store shelves. Even though the Move controls are front and center, Sorcery’s best and most surprising feature is the story.

You play as Finn, an overconfident sorcerer’s apprentice who gets himself into trouble much to the enjoyment of his teacher’s pet cat, Erline. She revels in your frequent failures, making fun of you and goading you into more and more trouble. She convinces you to enter a dangerous cave in hopes of scaring you, but you find a magical amulet inside that briefly reveals Erline is more than just a cat. That revelation is enough to draw an evil woman to Erline’s hiding place, and she attacks your village and kills your sorcerer teacher. His dying words to you are to protect Erline at all costs. The story is not without its clichés, but I was surprised and impressed by the turns it takes. The quality of the voice acting and storybook presentation drive events forward; it’s not Enslaved or Mass Effect, but the acting and characterization are effective, conveying emotional moments.

The combat does not offer the same surprising twists as the narrative. As you may have guessed, you flick your Move controller like a magic wand to cast spells. You have full control of Finn with the navigation controller in one hand, and you conduct attacks with the Move controller in the other. The basic attack of the game is to wave the wand like you’re hammering a nail into a wall, a motion you repeat constantly. You earn a series of elemental attacks like fire and ice, and they all use this same tiresome hammering motion to cast. There is some light aiming involved, but auto-aim mostly directs your attacks.

Finn moves from area to area along a linear path, taking out waves of enemies and casting spells to create bridges and open new pathways between fights. Finn only encounters about five different enemy types, and they each have their own magical weaknesses. A few bosses are littered throughout, and taking them down requires some logic and spell change-ups. A giant tree creature infected with evil, for example, required me to freeze his limbs before I could deal any damage. They offer slightly more variety than the general hammering motion. The combat is fun and even exciting at times, but that has nothing to do with the implementation of the Move controls.

Hidden throughout the game are alchemy ingredients you mix together for permanent upgrades to your spells and physical attributes. To create the potions, you take part in a motion-based minigame that has you pouring, mixing, grinding, and shaking ingredients together in a cauldron. Combining different ingredients to discover new upgrades is an entertaining series of experiments, but I could have done without the pouring-a-bottle pantomime.

Spells have cool effects and can be cast simultaneously to create things like flaming tornadoes, which is great, but they are enhanced in no way by the addition of the Move controller. Hitting square would have offered the same excitement (and less fatigue) as waving a wand, and selecting your spells with a d-pad would have been just as exciting as pausing the game and performing specific motions with the Move to inconsistently select new spells.

I like Sorcery, but the Move controls hold it back. It could have been a fun action game with an engaging story and environmental puzzles (I use the term “puzzle” generously, as they are all incredibly simple). Instead, Sorcery prepares you to hang framed pictures in your house by making you pretend to hammer a wall for five or six hours.

Sorcery Creators Discuss The Benefits Of The Move In Developer Diary

Kyle Hilliard — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:01:00 GMT

Sorcery stayed mostly underground after the announcement of the PlayStation Move, but it will be releasing later this month, and the developers at The Workshop are here to talk about it.

The team seems pretty excited about the Move, and how it will change the future of interactive gaming. We will be able to see if we agree with them on May 22, when Sorcery releases exclusively for the PlayStation 3.

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[via PlayStation Blog]

Enter Sorcery's Nightmare World

Matthew Kato — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:46:46 GMT

Sony's Sorcery is perhaps one of the few bright spots currently for the Move peripheral, and as the game approaches its May 22 release date on PS3 Sony is offering some new details on the title.

The trailer below tells of apprentice Finn's journey (along with his talking cat Erline) through the Faerie World and his quest to defeat the Nightmare Queen.

Judging by the trailer, Sorcery is clearly appealing to a slightly younger audience, but it'll be interesting to see if the gameplay is robust enough to draw in the core crowd.

For more on the game, check out Ben's hands-on time with the game earlier this year.

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We Cast A Spell On Sorcery At CES

Ben Reeves — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:13:00 GMT

When the master is away the apprentice will play. Unfortunately, in Sony’s upcoming Move title, when the master is away the apprentice accidentally unleashes a dark force across the land. Now this apprentice, named Finn, and his magical cat must stop the Nightmare Queen from covering the Fairy Kingdom in eternal night. During the chaos of CES, I wrapped my hands around one of Sorcery’s wands and sent a few goblins off to an eternal night’s sleep.

Sorcery features some fairly streamlined controls. I freely moved Finn around the environment using the Move’s analog stick, while basic wand attacks were performed with the flick of a wrist. Basic bolt attacks don’t require any mana, but more powerful attacks depleted a mana bar that slowly recharged.

During my demo, I had access to three different mana-based spells: ice, fire, and wind. These elemental spells can be used in a variety of creative ways. The fire spell not only created a small area-of-effect fire attack, but I was also able to create a giant fire barrier by drawing a line in the sand with the Move controller. Ice spells also do area damage, but more focused attacks slowly freeze enemies. Once an enemy is frozen, even a normal bolt attack will send them skittering along the ground like a spilled ice cube tray. Wind spells don’t do any damage but push enemies back. However, twirling the wand in a lassoing motion created a small tornado that actually did damage our foes.

After clearing out a camp of goblins I began to understand how these elemental attacks can be used in conjunction. Normal bolt attacks that pass through a fire barrier will become fire bolts that do extra damage. Tornados also took on fire properties when they passed through a barrier or other sources of fire, helping them deal massive fire damage to anything that was stupid enough to stand in its path. I only saw the three elemental spells during our demo, but Sony says that the final game will have a variety of other spells for players to experiment with. Developer The Workshop is hoping that, by the end of the game, Finn will feel more powerful than Harry Potter.

I wasn’t blown away by my hands-on time with Sorcery. It’s a fairly inoffensive game, but given its simplified controls, story, and puzzle challenges, it’s clearly been designed with a younger audience in mind. Still, The Workshop might want to keep working on its spell book if it hopes to compete with Harry Potter in other areas when it releases later this year.