Sony’s PlayStation Move is coming out September 17th.

At E3 this past June, I had the opportunity to go hands on with Sony’s PlayStation Move and Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition, insinde Capcom’s VIP Booth. I walked away with mixed feelings, but will take this time to share my thoughts on the good, the bad, and the average.

The good news that I come back with is the overall comfort and feel of the two PS Move controllers in my hands. They’re pretty ergonomically designed and lightweight (without feeing junky), coupled with good quality plastic. The left controller’s analog stick functions well (as it should) but is reasuring nonetheless, to know that in a game such as Resident Evil 5 that’s a full on action game and not a mini-game compilation, you’re still able to get that tight control.

The second half of the controller (the one with the glowing ball), that most gamers will be playing with using their right hand, has a pretty accurate ability to relate what’s going on screen with where you’re pointing.

Here’s a video of me at E3 2010, about to go hands on with Sony’s PlayStation Move.

With some good comes some bad, and the first thing that I really didn’t care for is a design trait built into the non-balled controller. For some games this probably won’t be an issue, but with Resident Evil 5, the placement of the D-Pad beneath the analog stick is just no good. When I control a character in a 3D action game, I want to have my left thumb on that analog stick at all times…unless if it’s a part of the game’s gameplay (like in Metroid: Other M) to switch off for some reason.

With PS Move’s controller, you have to take your thumb off the analog stick in order to press any one of the four D-Pad directions to pull off a certain action. This might be something that you could just “get use to”, but I will say that it’s not ideal.

The second irk is with the primary, balled controller, and that’s that even though it’s for the most part, quite accurate, there came a time in the RE5 demo, where I could no longer aim with my right hand and instead had to use my left thumb with the analog stick, once taking over the more precise “sniper rifle sequence” in the game. When I asked the Capcom representative why, he said that the PlayStation Move’s ball controller wasn’t accurate enough to handle that fine of aiming.

Here’s a video of my impressions after playing Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition with Sony’s PlayStation Move.

Now that I gave you a little sense of what makes the controller setup good and what’s bad, something “average” about it, or at least “interesting”, is that since the balled controller has no gyroscope or accelerometer in it, if that ball is covered, gets too far out of the camera’s vision, or is blocked by someone altoghter (not likely to occur in most situations), there’s no more ability to point.

To make a comparisson to the Wii Remote, in games that require the Sensor Bar, if you covered it up, the Wii Remote would be useless as a pointer just like PlayStation Move. However, in titles like Wii Sports Resorts’ archery game or in the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, you use to Motion Plus to aim, so no matter what or who would be in your way, it wouldn’t interfere at all.

Overall, time will tell how well the PlayStation Move becomes integratted into video games on the PS3, both of the party-game, casual style and the more action oriented, traditonal style. If this was an article based just off my hands on time with RE5 and it was against Wii’s RE4, Resident Evil 4 would win in terms of controls. However to be fair, the RE5 demo was just that, a demo, and things can always change and be improved. PlayStation Move is coming out this September 17th. Stay tuned for more.