The moment you step in front of the camera, and see the massive cheesy grin on your face, you'll be hooked. It's quite an odd sensation seeing yourself boxing with robots and launching UFO's, it's one that can only be described as unique, and it's a heck of a lot of fun. There is absolutely NO lag between the movement you make in front of the camera, and the on-screen image, which means you can engage in hectic, fast paced minigame mayhem with split-second reflexes and have it perfectly motion captured by the camera.
Setup is simple. You plug the Eyetoy USB Camera into the one of the PS2's USB ports, place it on top of your TV, and you're ready to go. Don't bother plugging in a controller; it's not needed (although you can still use it to navigate menus).
The picture quality of the camera is surprisingly good, as you'll soon see. If the picture is out of focus, you simply adjust the focus ring on the camera. All up, the process of getting it set up and ready to play takes less than five minutes.
Now, the first thing you're faced with when it's loaded up is a neon outline which tells you where to place yourself in front of the camera. By using your arms, you reach up and rub your hand over the menu options to select them - all navigation is done this way, and it's always fun (unless your arms are aching from the previous game of Beat Freak on Hard mode...)
At this point you'll be itching to jump into a minigame, and rightly so, but first you should create a profile to keep tabs of your progress and scores. You must pose for a series of three photos: Happy, Sad, and Silly. These pictures will come back to haunt you in various ways throughout the game, so luckily you can reshoot them at your leisure if you're unhappy with how you look.
Each of the twelve minigames comes in three difficulty settings, not surprisingly Easy, Medium, and Hard, and all are used in different contexts depending on the games, which are:
Beat Freak:
CD's fly from the center of the screen, passing over four speakers in each corner of your screen. You must hit the speakers when the CD's pass over them, or you'll lose Style Points.
Kung Foo:
You must fend off hoards of angry ninjas, occasionally taking time out to break boards. Breaking out some funky moves results in higher style points.
Mirror Time:
An evil robot randomly flips parts of the screen around, disorientating you as try to hit targets.
Ghost Catcher:
Look out for the feint silhouettes of Ghosts, and rub them out before they fly off the screen whilst shooing away pesky bats.
Slap Stream:
Goodies and Baddies pop out of clouds... Guess which ones you have to hit?
Plate Spinner:
Try to keep plates spinning on poles. Too fast and they'll fly off, too slow and they'll fall off. Watch out for the monkeys who try to knock them off!
Boogie Down:
A precision game, requiring you to replicate dance moves demonstrated by QT, your dance instructor, in time with music.
Wishi Washi:
Perhaps the most shallow game on the disc, you've got to clean soap suds, bird poo, and water droplets off the screen to advance to the next window.
Keep Ups:
Try to keep a Soccer ball bouncing on your head whilst taking enemies out with it.
Boxing Chump:
Take on the evil Robo-Bro in a three round boxing match.
UFO Juggler:
Well, technically you're not juggling them. You need to launch UFO's into the atmosphere by gently rubbing them. If you get them spinning too fast, they'll explode!
Rocket Rumble:
Saving the best for last. In this game, fireworks are shot into the night sky. You earn points by making combos of same-colour fireworks, then hitting the plunger on either side of the screen to detonate them. A special white firework lets you link different coloured ones together.
In addition to them is the Playroom, a place where wacky effects can be applied to the screen such as interactive Aquariums, Spiderwebs, Time Delays, teleportations, snow flakes, bees, and many more. Now you've got the means to act out favourite scenes from Arachnophobia and Star Trek... not that you would anyway, right? (Shh! That's just our little secret)...
The graphics in Eyetoy: Play are functional, and were never intended to be the pinnacle of videogame technology. The central focal point is ALWAYS you, and considering you're the one who's calling the shots, that's a good thing. Regardless, the characters are bold and stylish, the graphics have a fantastic cartoon flair, and when you first see a Ninja go flying into your screen after a particularly vicious headbutt, you're sure to laugh. Every interactive object immediately reacts to your movement, and it makes for a visually and physically stimulating experience.
The sound, however, is a completely different story. Most minigames (Beat Freak and Boogie Down excepted) have a single song accompanying the gameplay, and after the twentieth game of Kung Foo or Rocket Rumble, the initially catchy songs soon get incredibly repetitive. The sound effects are only functional, but are also interactive. For example, hitting an enemy in Kung Foo will result in a cheesy 70's swiping sound, and the volume and duration of the effect depends on the movements you make. This makes for both an interesting, yet slightly bland soundscape that could use an injection of variety. There's only two licensed songs in the game, the 1930's Window Washing song, and 'Sing it Back' by Moloko. Whilst both are a change from the typical cheery, bouncy, hyper-techno songs used, they too succumb to repetitiveness because of lack of available selections.
Now, the downside to using the Eyetoy: You need sufficient lighting and a blank background to be motion captured properly. Sensitivity settings can be adjusted in the options menu, however most lighting will need to be manually adjusted which can become tiresome, especially when playing at night. When properly set up according to the recommendations made in the manual, however, the Eyetoy works flawlessly.
In all honesty, Eyetoy: Play is somewhat of a revolution in gaming, and is definitely something that must be experienced first-hand by all gamers. It comes across in a quasi-Virtual Reality genre of its own, and the quirky, addictive minigames are a lot of fun, especially when you can gather up some friends. It has its downfalls, but the innovative gameplay shouldn't be missed.
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