iWatch | Resistance 3 (Single Player Preview Code) PlayStation Move Analysis

Hello everyone and welcome to my Resistance 3 PlayStation Move analysis.
This analysis is based on an unfinished code
But it should be fairly representative of what you will get
from the final game as far as Move controls are concerned.
That said, the few bugs and glitches I've found during my analysis
will be discussed, along with ways to get around them
just in case they slip through QA and end up being in the final product as well.
I'd also like to assure you that I did my best to keep spoilers at minimum.
All the upcoming footage comes from the early sections of the game
and shows basic combat situations, so you won't see "memorable moments"
boss fights and stuff like that.
So, let's get to it beginning from the basic controls set up
which is quite standard.
The X button is for jumping while the Circle button
toggle crouch on and off (there is no hold-to-crouch option here).
Tapping Triangle allows to either switch between the last two selected weapons
or cycle through all your weaponary depending on how you've set the dedicated option.
Holding down Triangle brings up the weapons wheel
which allows to select specific weapons using the analog stick.
In this case you can also decide wether to have the game pause or not
when bringing up the weapon wheel.
Holding down L1 bring up the iron sight or scope.
I will discuss this aim mode in more detail shortly,
but as you can already tell, Insomniac went for a fixed reticule solution
instead of a detached one.
Pulling L2 throws one of the currently selected grenade types.
There are 3 grenade types the game provides
and you can cycle through them via the D-Pad.
As you can see grenades fly in the direction of the on-screen cursor
following a rather flat trajectory arc which allows
some rather precise throws.
Shooting is of course on the Move Trigger
while reloading is on Square
The main Move button instead operates the secondary fire
each weapon provides.
In the case of the Bullseye here,
it fires a tag to the enemy which acts as a tracking beacon
for the primary fire bullets, allowing to fire curved shots from behind cover,
or effortlessly follow even the fastest moving targets.
Pressing the left stick while moving forward allows to sprint indefinitely
(there is no stamina bar or stuff like that)
and finally, to execute melee attacks, you simply jab the Move forward like in other Move shooters.
Gesture detection is 100% accurate and consistent
and it doesn't disrupt aiming nor camera orientation.
Now, before moving on with this analysis, I want to show you
something rather cool about the Move controls scheme.
What you are watching now are the PlayStation Move settings,
which allow to change your usual parameters.
Now, if you go to the main DualShock 3 controls settings,
you will notice there is a "Customize Controls" option.
This option allows to modify either the singleplayer or the multiplayer controls in different ways
either by selecting one of the preset alternatives you see here at the bottom
or by editing you own custom controls.
Of course this is great and all for DS3 users, but
what about Move controls?
Can you edit those as well?
Well, here comes the interesting part...
Despite this screen clearly referring to the DS3 controls alone
changes made here do apply to Move controls as well
making Resistance 3 the first Move shooter to ever allow Move controls customization.
But what about the R3 input you might ask.
That's a good question since there is no R3 on the Move.
Well, this is where it really gets interesting...
Simply put, the R3 input equals the forward jab gesture
so everything you assign to R3 here, you will be able to execute with the forward jab gesture.
Here for example I have moved melee on L3 and I'm using the forward gesture to sprint.
In this other case I have melee on Square and reload on gesture.
In this one I have melee on Circle and weapons switching on gesture.
In this case tho I cannot bring up the weapon wheel
as that's an action which requires to hold down a button.
And of course you can't hold a gesture.
Same thing with zooming.
It simply doesn't work with the gesture.
The two exceptions are the reasons why I'm not sure this Move controls customization thing
is even intentional...
If it was indeed intentional you would expect the developers to not let users
assign hold-requiring actions to the forward jab gesture, right?
Not to mention they would make it clear you can modify the Move controls to begin with.
Which is not the case here.
Anyways, intentional or not, this is a pretty neat feature that hopefully is retained in the final version of the game.
Moving on, let's talk bounding boxes.
As usual there are different deadzone sizes you can set
What's unusual and greatly appreciated is that R3 allows to shrink the deadzone
to the point of basically eliminating it.
This makes R3 the second Move compatible shooter to allow for such a minimal deadzone
after Modern Combat Domination.
Neither Killzone 3 nor MAG nor SOCOM 4 allow for this, for some odd reasons.
As I have demonstrated in my "Frankenmove" SOCOM 4 video in fact
such a small deadzone provides a much smoother camera control experience
one that mitigates the felling of slapping the camera around
you usually get when dealing with bigger deadzones
So kudos to Insomniac Games for implementing this.
On the subject of deadzones, before moving on with this analysis
I first need to briefly discuss a little glitch pertaining the deadzone height setting.
Let's beging by setting both the height and the width settings to the max
so that we get a huge bounding box.
Now pay attention to what happens when I shrink the deadzone height to minimum.
This is how the bounding box should now look like
but while camera reacts correctly to horizontal cursor movements
when it comes to the vertical ones it doesn't turn when it should
but rather when the cursors reaches the edges of the screen.
And yet, going back to the settings screen, the deadzone height is definitely set to minimum.
Let's change the deadzone height again by increasing it up to 50%
This is now how the bounding box should look like
and yet the vertical height value I've set in the options screen
is being ignored.
So what's going on?
Let me show you. It's very simple.
Basically, whenever you move the deadzone height marker
the actual height value automatically mirrors that of the deadzone width.
In fact, if I set the deadzone width to 50%
and move the height marker a bit
as a result I get a medium bounding box.
Notice how the camera reacts correctly now.
For the sake of clarity let's do this again.
Let's set the width to minimum and increase the height just a notch.
See the red dot? That's the height value the game as actually registered.
which doesn't correspond to my selection.
In fact, when I go back to the game, I get a minimal deadzone instead of a thin vertical one.
As more examples of this glitch run in the background
allow me to reiterate that this issue affects the unfinished preview code I've got
and might very well not be present in the final game.
The reason why I'm showing you this is for the sake of providing a workaround
just in case this glitch doesn't get eradicated in time for release.
The workaround of course being to place the deadzone width marker on top of your intended height value
then move the the height market a bit so that it registers that value
and finally move the width marker to whatever you want it to be.
Got it?
Good. Now we can move on.
Unlike Killzone 3 and SOCOM 4, Resistance 3 doesn't make use of any sort of dynamic edge system
meaning the camera stops rotating only when the cursor falls back into the deadzone.
There are various reasons why this is not detrimental to camera management tho.
First one being the top turn speed itself
which is slightly lower than that of the above mentioned titles
As you can see in this comparison against Killzone 3
quick 180 degrees turns are slower in Resistance 3.
Not by a big margin, but you definitely feel slightly less agile.
This is especially true when performing smaller turns that don't involve reaching top speed.
In fact, since the top speed is slower than that of Killzone 3
camera acceleration is slower as well
meaning you need to push the cursor further away from the deadzone
to get a "good enough" turn speed.
As you can tell from this side-by-side comparison
in Killzone 3 the turn speed is "good enough" when the cursor reaches the blue bar
whereas in Resistance 3 is not quite as good.
While hardly game breaking, this slightly slower camera acceleration
negatively affects the tightness of finer camera rotations.
And of course it ends up pushing targets you are circle strafing around
further away from the center of the screen.
Albeit this is somewhat mitigated by a camera assist I will discuss later.
So while there is no difference between Move and DS3 controls in terms of top turn speed
as this quick comparison shows
the natural acceleration advantage of the latter against the former
is slightly more pronounced here compared to Killzone 3.
Speaking of Move vs DS3 comparisons, there are other differences worth mentioning.
First of all there is a visual one that has the gun model pushed to the side of the screen when using the Move.
A solution probably motivated by the need to ensure cursor visibility across the whole screen.
MAG got away with the default gun location because it was already less "in your face" than it is in R3.
And while you might say insomniac could have just lowered the gun
instead of pushing it to the side, they probably felt such solution
would have hidden their artists' job too much
especially when it comes to big and tall weapons like the Auger.
Detaching the gun and have it follow the cursor like Guerrilla did with Killzone 3
would have been another solution, but I personally don't mind the current R3 implementation
as it allows to look at guns from different angles matching those of the Move.
As you have surely noticed already
another visual difference relates to the crosshair
which is fatter and with a dot in the middle when using the Move.
As I have explained in the past, the reason Move crosshairs are different than DS3 ones
is mainly due to the need enhance their visibility.
That said, there are elegant and inelegant visual solutions to go fot
and I'd say the Insomniac one falls into the latter category.
The Killzone 3 one for instance might be ugly yellow, but it is at least compact and sharp.
Winner of the "Best On-Screen Cursor" category tho is clearly the SOCOM 4 one
which manages to be visible whatever the graphical noise
without resorting to out-of-place colors, odd shapes or myopic-friendly sizes.
It's a bit of a pity Insomniac couldn't come up with a better cursor design
as it ends up detracting a bit from the overall visual experience.
You get used to it of course, but still, it does feel out of place
especially during non-shooting segments like the one waiting for you at the end of this analysis.
Speaking of crosshair, R3 offers your usual sensitivity tweaking options
which affect the amount of tilting needed to get the cursor across the screen.
Notice the angle at which the Move is tilted when the cursor touches the edge of the screen in this comparative sequence.
It is important to remember that, much like in most Move shooters
this setting doesn't change the cursor behavior in terms of smoothing or latency
Those values are generally preset by the developers and cannot be modified.
So with regards to this let's see how the R3 cursors compares to those of its colleagues.
First of all, as you can notice by looking at the above picture in picture
the on-screen cursor picks up even the smallest trembles of the hand
suggesting a quite low latency.
Because of this, it feels much more responsive than it does in games imposing a bigger latency such as SOCOM 4 and MAG
Notice how in MAG the pointer doesn't react to small movements.
The R3 cursor has basically the same latency of that of Killzone 3
which is a good thing.
What's even better tho is the smoothing applied to it.
As you can see by this side-by-side comparison conducted by placing the Move on a tripod
the R3 cursor stays perfectly still, while the KZ3 keeps trembling.
This is due to the lack of smoothing in the latter
resulting in a quite jittery behavior of the cursor.
The R3 one doesn't suffer from this
while still managing to feel as responsive as the KZ3 one.
Not only that.
The cursor also deals with vibrations better in R3.
Notice here how the cursor reacts to rumble activity.
See that little shake occurring after having fired?
That corresponds to just when the weight on the Move vibration motor settles at the end of the vibration phase
meaning cursor shake occurs only after having fired, and to a minimal degree.
In KZ3 instead, vibration affects cursor stability during the whole firing process
and quite more severely so.
On the point of vibration, here is another work in progress bug you might want to take note of just in case.
As you probably know, the PS3 automatically assign the Navigation controller to port 6
Well, to get vibration to work in the R3 code I've got
the Navigation controller needs to be assigned to port 1
and that has to be done before launching the game as in-game port switching doesn't do the trick.
If you are using a DS3 as a Move companion
you don't need to do this as it defaults to port 1
so you get rumble on the Move right away.
Anyway, with ou without rumble, Resistance 3 provides the best cursor implementation to date in a Move shooter
It's smoother than that of Killzone 3
while still retaining the same responsiveness
and of course it's miles better than those of SOCO4 and MAG
which are affected by a quite severe latency.
A final difference to mention between DS3 and Move implementation is actually a no-difference.
I'm referring to weapons behavior in terms of recoil and overall accuracy.
As you can tell by this side-by-side comparison, they behave pretty much the same.
Ok now let's take a look at the aiming system.
When aiming from the hip, R3 displays an assist the has camera speed and orientation
affected by the target being pointed.
This generally means the camera slows down
but it can also lead to a reversal in turning direction
if the target moves in the opposite direction to that of the camera
provided the camera is moving slower than the target.
Technically there is little unique about this assist solution
as it just reflects the one already in place when using the DS3
but it works rather well in the context of pointing controls
especially when adopting a minimal deadzone that has the camera constantly in motion.
This system, in fact, only kicks in if the camera is moving
meaning when the cursor is outside of the deadzone
allowing to easily point at targets that camera movement would otherwise
make hard to track even if they were stationary relative to the environment.
Think of it as an automatic variant to the manual Camera Lock seen in Modern Combat Domination.
Finally, another assist worth mentioning is the one you are seeing in action here.
Active during lateral strafes, whatever the camera speed
it slightly turns the camera towards the target being pointed.
Again this is an assist inherited by the DS3 aiming system
and it helps in mitigating a bit the lateral target shift occurring during circle strafing maneuvers I've mentioned before.
Not by much tho since the other camera assist sort of counters its effectiveness
by slowing down your turning speed.
At the end of the day you really benefit from this assist at medium range.
Now, on the subject of aim assist
here is another glitch I've noticed in this preview code
that I want to bring to your attention.
Notice here how the assist slows down camera speed as I turn form left to right.
Now, see how it behaves when doing the same in the opposite direction.
Notice how turn speed seems to accelerate rather than decelerate as the cursor meets the targets.
Let's try this again in a less busy environment.
Again, going from left to right the camera slows down.
But going from right to left it sort of jumps ahead as the cursor makes contact with the target.
Here are a couple of side-by-side comparisons to better expose this odd camera behavior.
Unlike the other glitches I've discussed previously
I don't have a workaround for this one of course
but it's interesting to note that what actually happens when the cursor meets the target from the right
is that the camera *does* slow down, but very briefly so
as it quickly speeds up again while the cursor is still hovering the target
and then it briefly slows down again upon leaving it.
Pay attention here.
Slow down...
Speed up
Slow down again
While there is definitely something wrong with the camera assist
at the end of the day it doesn't affect gameplay too much
In fact one would hardly even notice it as the assist itself is very subtle
and yet effective.
Ok now let's take a look at how zoomed aiming works in Resistance 3.
As you can see here, Insomniac went for a fixed reticule solution
that mimics the one commonly adopted in dual stick shooters.
This is a system that's hardly fitting when it comes to pointer based shooters
which is the reason why you don't see it in any other Move compatible shooter since MAG
which has it as an ill-conceived alternative to the more effective detached solution it still provides
This is not to say such a fixed reticule solution can't work.
In fact it does work quite well in PlayStation Move Heroes
but the way it is implemented here makes it hardly preferable to the detached solution.
The way it works is pretty simple.
Basically when moving the ironsights around, what you are actually moving is an invisible pointer around a small deadzone.
Here is a terrible simulation of mine to better explain what I'm talking about.
The red dot is the invisible pointer.
This of course means ironsights controls feel loose and unresponsive
but, as I will explain shortly, this doesn't affect your ability to actually shoot at targets.
Before that, it's worth mentioning that when zooming in
the camera tilts so that the ironsights or the scope pops up on top of whatever you were pointing at with the cursor.
So you don't lose your target when zooming in.
But this is true as long as what you are aiming at is either within the ironsights bounding box
or an actual enemy
When aiming parts of the scenery like this
zooming in causes the camera to move away from the point you were aiming at with the cursor
This is because when switching from normal to zoom aim
the invisible cursor happens to find itself outside of the ironsights deadzone
causing unintended camera movement.
The opposite is true when switching from zoom to normal aim.
In this case the camera stops moving as long as you have a deadzone bigger than that of the ironsight.
Not only that. Since the ironsight reticule is fixed in the middle of the screen
with the invisible cursor floating somewhere around it
the cursor position doesn't match the ironsight reticule one when zooming out.
This overlapping bounding boxes issue could have been addressed, to a degree
by adopting the dynamic edge solution the way Zipper did in SOCOM 4.
What Insomniac did instead was let the camera assist deal with it.
Just like normal aiming, zoomed aiming is assisted via automatic camera speed adjustment
and, again, this is the very same system in place when using the DS3.
The glitch I discussed before does not affect this aiming mode by the way.
So what this entails is that unintentional camera movements occurring when zooming in
get suppressed as long as you zoom in on an enemy.
Notice here how the camera doesn't move too much away from the target
despite the invisible cursor being outside of the ironsights bounding box when switching.
That's the camera assist in action.
The same assist also helps in halting the ironsight when it meets a target.
The slowdown opening a small time window for you to bring the invisible cursor close to the center of the screen.
I assume at this point you might be wondering how all of this is going to work in multiplayer
Sadly I can't provide a straight answer yet since the ongoing R3 online Beta has the Move controls disabled
(They will be enabled in the final game tho)
What I can tell you is that the DS3 controls are aided by the same assist system I've discussed thus far
so it's fair to assume Move controls will mirror in multiplayer those in place during the single player campaign.
How that will affect balance between Move and DS3 players online
is anyones' guess...
One thing won't be easy with the Move tho
and that's aiming at specific parts of a given target while zoomed in.
While camera assist helps in framing enemies, in fact
going for headshots his made difficult by the disconnection between Move tilting and ironsight motion.
You can basically forget to perform stuff like this in Resistance 3.
Which is ultimately the reason why this sort of bounding box-based reticule solutions
are hardly optimal.
On top of that, this system removes the fun of actually aiming at the screen
replacing it with one of dragging the camera around.
On this point the Sharp Shooter attachment will hardly make you feel better.
So at the end of the day, while Resistance 3 excels in normal aiming
providing the smoother cursor to date and a quite effective camera assist
on the other hand it displays some shortcomings
that prevent it from completely pushing the boundaries set by other Move shooters.
It's probably the easiest one to get accustomed with tho.
And this is it.
Thanks for watching.
Ciao!