Whatever you think about the Nintendo Wii, it's impossible to deny that it started off extremely strongly in the form of Wii Sports. The game packaged together everything you'd want from a motion control starter-pack style experience - tennis, bowling, golf... yet if you had to pick an element which didn't work so well, it would have to be the boxing game. It didn't particularly feel like you were dealing much damage, and more like you were flinging your arms around wildly.
 

And swing...

Sony wants Playstation Move to be far more than simply another Wii Remote, and are hoping The Fight: Lights Out will right one of Nintendo's wrongs. Originally known as 'Motion Fighter', it's a physical brawler which sees you grasping two Move controllers, one in each hand, and deal blows to virtual opponents. We flexed our muscles and took the Playstation Beta Rooms showcase for a few rounds.

The demo was rather bare in terms of content, but gave a fair indication of what we can expect from the finished product. The idea is that each punch, jab and hook you throw will land with total precision, unlike the Wii's cack-handed 'punch right and it might go somewhere right, but maybe it won't'. While Move definitely seems to handle positioning with better precision than Nintendo's effort, it's still far from perfect.

Holding the two Move controllers to my chest, I watched as my burly opponent strutted onto the screen through a tall, metal gate. The setting was similar to the underground fighting scenes from Brad Pitt movie Fight Club, and there was no doubt what we were both here to do. With both competitors present, the fight began.

Your character on screen shifts around on the spot, with his arms moving to correspond with how you're holding the controllers. As your opponent swings at you, holding the controllers to your body will block his shots and reduce the damage you receive. So far so good.

Punching isn't so precise. Swinging either arm will cause your character to swing the appropriate arm out, but the action isn't fully one-to-one, i.e. if you swing your left arm, your fighter will do a punch of the same power, but not the same direction. The problem is, the game doesn't always seem to understand where you are punching. We tried throwing a couple of uppercuts into the mix, but our character either stood still and ignored us, or did an entirely different jab altogether.
 

Fighting, or moving a huge invisible box? You decide

Eventually we adopted the Wii Sports tactic of swinging our arms around wildly, and seemed to produce better results, knocking down our opponent swiftly. In the second round, we tried a variety of different punches, but the character appeared to always pull off the same type of moves. For a game which is meant to be the perfect showcase for Playstation Move's precise one-to-one motion controls, The Fight wasn't doing so well.

At this point the Sony attendant at the game could see we weren't too impressed and tried to help out, saying "try punching really hard and straight". Yet as hard as I tried to slam my fists into the virtual fighter's face, the game just didn't seem to read it well at all. Eventually the game exclaimed 'Finish him!' and I punched with all my might. As if mocking me, my character on screen moved his hand closely towards the other guy, and flicked his head, lightly knocking him down in a comical fashion.

It's easy at this point to suggest that perhaps we simply weren't strong enough, and our punches were weak. Yet we watched three more people afterwards each having the same difficulties, with one of them witnessing the flick of the head ending after really going for it with his fist. Hence, it's safe to say that it wasn't just us.

Of course, as previously mentioned this was a simple and extremely short demo of the game, and hopefully will not fully reflect the final release. Graphically it looks pretty solid, although it has nothing on the likes of Fight Night. Obviously there's the point that you need two Move controllers to play the game too, so if you only buy a single Move package on release then you're not going to be able to play anyway.
 

The uglier you are, the better you fight

We'd really love it if The Fight worked how it is supposed to, and showed off Move's full capabilities, but right now we just can't see that happening. It's nice as possibly a tech demo, but outside of that we don't believe there will be much enjoyment to be found. If the precision on punches could be tweaked and a huge deal of personality injected, there could still be hope, but for now this is probably going to be one to avoid. The Fight: Lights Out will be launched alongside Playstation Move on 19th September 2010.

Most Anticipated Feature: Delivering the finishing blow after a particularly gruelling fight