EyeToy: Play
Get up close and personal with Sony's PS2-compatable camera and software.
Published: December 3, 2003
I'll admit that I was just about sold on the whole EyeToy as a gimmick rather than a worthwhile peripheral before I ever tried it out. What fun could a low-quality video camera and some minigames provide when I was in search of expansive new frontiers in videogames? Apparently a whole lot more than I expected.
EyeToy: Play is the basic set of games you'll get to goof around with your brand new EyeToy. A collection of 12 minigames that use your body as the controller, Play is probably the best possible introduction to exactly how the EyeToy works. It's simplistic, easy to understand, and more than a bit addictive. Some games fare better than others, and there is a bit of redundancy in the different minigames, but overall, Play provides exactly what the EyeToy needs: an almost instantly accessible playground for the new peripheral that shows off how impressively precise the camera is when it comes to putting the player in the game.
It'll take about 5 minutes or so to get into Play and really understand how the EyeToy responds to the conditions in your room. The vague silhouette that outlines where you should stand in relation to the camera does a good job of keeping you where you need to stay while you slowly work through each of the minigames, though the features in Play aren't entirely relegated to the minigames. It's possible to leave a short video message for anyone else who uses Play (a feature almost worth the price of the EyeToy alone for sheer prank value) in clips from 10 to 50 seconds.
Endless hours of random co-worker mooning incidents aside, the bulk of your experience will be spent in Play's Single-Player Mode, where you'll have the simple task of completing 12 different minigames on three different difficulty modes. While most share some simple concept, there are a few that are quite interesting.
Beat Freak is a Samba de Amigo-style rhythm action game, where you simply move in time to three different songs, smacking one of the four corners of the screen; Kung Foo has you using your hands to slap away would-be attackers that come flying at your on-screen body; Wishi Washi has you using your entire body as a squeegee to clean off soapy windows; Soccer Craze challenges you to use your body (head and hands, mainly) to bounce multiple soccer balls up into the air and against the sides of the screen to take out attacks; Boxing Champ, one of the more enjoyable minigames, has you turn sideways and then box against a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em-style robot; UFO Juggler saddles you with the task of powering spinable UFOs to the top of the screen. The movement of your hand powers the UFOs, though too much power will cause them to explode; Slap Stream has you slapping annoying cloud-hopping rodents, but you can't hit the cute bunny girls that randomly pop up as well; Plate Spinner is much like UFO Juggler in that you use your hand movements to keep plates on bamboo stakes while animals climb up the sticks and try to knock the plates off; Disco Stars asks you to point to a combination of five stage lights around the screen Simon Says-style; Ghost Eliminator has you trying to inflate ghosts that run around the screen with UFO Juggler/Plate Spinner-like hand movements.
Mirror Time, one of the best minigames of the set, starts out simple enough; simply touch a combination of green spheres around the corner of the screen. The difficulty comes from a robot that will randomly flip the top, bottom or side halves of the screen, forcing you to reverse your movements as well. A couple flips into the game, it can be incredibly fun (and difficult) to remember how to move your arms.
Rocket Rumble was easily my favorite of the games, mainly because it plays a bit like a EyeToy tweak of Fantavision, the oft-overlooked incredibly fun puzzle game from SCEI. Basically different colored rockets shoot across the screen, and you use your hands to highlight the like colors, then sweep your hands down across the detonators at either end of the screen. Aside from things being just a bit too imprecise, this could almost work as a game on its own.
When you aren't playing the game comes with a number of simple webcam-style effects that can overlay what's going on on-screen - something that's no doubt quite attractive to PS2 kiosk owners during the eye-catching holiday season. While they don't provide much more than a few minutes of mindless fun, some of these Playroom filters, like the Sparkles and Materialize modes, are quite fun, and seem almost irresistible to anyone who happens to catch themselves in the effect.
Having Play on Playroom mode is obviously a great way to get people into playing the game, and with a simple 30-second instruction course, you can get people playing the Single Player games with no effort. It speaks volumes about Studio London's ability to craft a simple, easy to use that simultaneously gets people playing the game without them knowing it, and makes movement between menu screens as effortless as it can be using the body as a controller.
The ease of use and elegant style are about the only things that are really going to wow anyone graphically, though. While the game certainly doesn't look bad, it's not especially taxing on the PS2 either. The developers did quite a bit by simply adding overlays to the EyeToy's low-res camera. The hard compression on the camera was something that was unmistakable on our mid-range Wega office TVs, and may be a bit smoother on most average TV's not using component cables, but it's still quite noticeable.
Aside from a couple real songs (though apparently the only officially licensed ones were the music that plays while washing the windows in the Wishi Washi minigame and "Sing it Back," a song from Beat Freak minigame), most of the music is just simple happy, skippy generic loops. The music all fits wonderfully (particularly the stuff you hear while playing Soccer Craze), but it's not especially memorable either.
Depending on how you look at it, you're either getting a free game or a very cheap one and a cheap EyeToy. Either way, EyeToy: Play does a fantastic job of getting you primed for what will hopefully be some truly innovative games that will take advantage of the technology. While it's a bit on the low-res side, the games that are bundled with the EyeToy show an impressive ability to distinguish the player and their movements, something that's obviously critical to the success of the peripheral.
Since there's really nothing else out there that supports the EyeToy right now, you'll have to make do with Play, but given how entertaining it is in short bursts, it's the perfect thing to bring out at parties or get-togethers, making this one of the easiest ways to rally the whole family around one of the hardest possible family-wide activities: playing video games. It's a bit of a tough sell with the little amount of software support that it has, but Sony never kicks out something they don't feel they can really sell, so expect plenty of games that take advantage of it here soon. A flat-out buy recommendation is really going to come down to whether or not you think you could entertain enough people, but if Sony does jump at the chance to use the peripheral in more games in the near-future, this could easily become a must-own add-on for your PlayStation 2.
EyeToy: Play is the basic set of games you'll get to goof around with your brand new EyeToy. A collection of 12 minigames that use your body as the controller, Play is probably the best possible introduction to exactly how the EyeToy works. It's simplistic, easy to understand, and more than a bit addictive. Some games fare better than others, and there is a bit of redundancy in the different minigames, but overall, Play provides exactly what the EyeToy needs: an almost instantly accessible playground for the new peripheral that shows off how impressively precise the camera is when it comes to putting the player in the game.
It'll take about 5 minutes or so to get into Play and really understand how the EyeToy responds to the conditions in your room. The vague silhouette that outlines where you should stand in relation to the camera does a good job of keeping you where you need to stay while you slowly work through each of the minigames, though the features in Play aren't entirely relegated to the minigames. It's possible to leave a short video message for anyone else who uses Play (a feature almost worth the price of the EyeToy alone for sheer prank value) in clips from 10 to 50 seconds.
Endless hours of random co-worker mooning incidents aside, the bulk of your experience will be spent in Play's Single-Player Mode, where you'll have the simple task of completing 12 different minigames on three different difficulty modes. While most share some simple concept, there are a few that are quite interesting.
Beat Freak is a Samba de Amigo-style rhythm action game, where you simply move in time to three different songs, smacking one of the four corners of the screen; Kung Foo has you using your hands to slap away would-be attackers that come flying at your on-screen body; Wishi Washi has you using your entire body as a squeegee to clean off soapy windows; Soccer Craze challenges you to use your body (head and hands, mainly) to bounce multiple soccer balls up into the air and against the sides of the screen to take out attacks; Boxing Champ, one of the more enjoyable minigames, has you turn sideways and then box against a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em-style robot; UFO Juggler saddles you with the task of powering spinable UFOs to the top of the screen. The movement of your hand powers the UFOs, though too much power will cause them to explode; Slap Stream has you slapping annoying cloud-hopping rodents, but you can't hit the cute bunny girls that randomly pop up as well; Plate Spinner is much like UFO Juggler in that you use your hand movements to keep plates on bamboo stakes while animals climb up the sticks and try to knock the plates off; Disco Stars asks you to point to a combination of five stage lights around the screen Simon Says-style; Ghost Eliminator has you trying to inflate ghosts that run around the screen with UFO Juggler/Plate Spinner-like hand movements.
Mirror Time, one of the best minigames of the set, starts out simple enough; simply touch a combination of green spheres around the corner of the screen. The difficulty comes from a robot that will randomly flip the top, bottom or side halves of the screen, forcing you to reverse your movements as well. A couple flips into the game, it can be incredibly fun (and difficult) to remember how to move your arms.
Rocket Rumble was easily my favorite of the games, mainly because it plays a bit like a EyeToy tweak of Fantavision, the oft-overlooked incredibly fun puzzle game from SCEI. Basically different colored rockets shoot across the screen, and you use your hands to highlight the like colors, then sweep your hands down across the detonators at either end of the screen. Aside from things being just a bit too imprecise, this could almost work as a game on its own.
When you aren't playing the game comes with a number of simple webcam-style effects that can overlay what's going on on-screen - something that's no doubt quite attractive to PS2 kiosk owners during the eye-catching holiday season. While they don't provide much more than a few minutes of mindless fun, some of these Playroom filters, like the Sparkles and Materialize modes, are quite fun, and seem almost irresistible to anyone who happens to catch themselves in the effect.
Having Play on Playroom mode is obviously a great way to get people into playing the game, and with a simple 30-second instruction course, you can get people playing the Single Player games with no effort. It speaks volumes about Studio London's ability to craft a simple, easy to use that simultaneously gets people playing the game without them knowing it, and makes movement between menu screens as effortless as it can be using the body as a controller.
The ease of use and elegant style are about the only things that are really going to wow anyone graphically, though. While the game certainly doesn't look bad, it's not especially taxing on the PS2 either. The developers did quite a bit by simply adding overlays to the EyeToy's low-res camera. The hard compression on the camera was something that was unmistakable on our mid-range Wega office TVs, and may be a bit smoother on most average TV's not using component cables, but it's still quite noticeable.
Aside from a couple real songs (though apparently the only officially licensed ones were the music that plays while washing the windows in the Wishi Washi minigame and "Sing it Back," a song from Beat Freak minigame), most of the music is just simple happy, skippy generic loops. The music all fits wonderfully (particularly the stuff you hear while playing Soccer Craze), but it's not especially memorable either.
Depending on how you look at it, you're either getting a free game or a very cheap one and a cheap EyeToy. Either way, EyeToy: Play does a fantastic job of getting you primed for what will hopefully be some truly innovative games that will take advantage of the technology. While it's a bit on the low-res side, the games that are bundled with the EyeToy show an impressive ability to distinguish the player and their movements, something that's obviously critical to the success of the peripheral.
Since there's really nothing else out there that supports the EyeToy right now, you'll have to make do with Play, but given how entertaining it is in short bursts, it's the perfect thing to bring out at parties or get-togethers, making this one of the easiest ways to rally the whole family around one of the hardest possible family-wide activities: playing video games. It's a bit of a tough sell with the little amount of software support that it has, but Sony never kicks out something they don't feel they can really sell, so expect plenty of games that take advantage of it here soon. A flat-out buy recommendation is really going to come down to whether or not you think you could entertain enough people, but if Sony does jump at the chance to use the peripheral in more games in the near-future, this could easily become a must-own add-on for your PlayStation 2.
