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The Shoot is an on-rail shooter that brings 3D cardboard cut-outs to life with crazy art work that explodes into shards when taken out. It's all set up in a movie set style setting where you're fighting your way through creating dynamic scenes for the director to record getting either rewarded or punished by him blasting your way through the almost fully destructible movie sets with unlimited ammo, but beware it's all about the mighty power moves. Total overall accuracy is required to grab those crazy high scores you will need to advance to the next set. This game does a great job demonstrating the pinpoint accuracy and motion tracking that the PlayStation Move has to offer. But is it worth the forty bones?

Thanks to the folks over at Sony Computer Entertainment America who were generous enough to send the handgun shooting attachment, this game provided the ultimate scenario for an on-rail Move gunning experience. After what I've experienced with The Shoot, I must say this attachment is a must have for any and all PlayStation Move Shooter games. It has been designed flawlessly, your move fits perfectly inside and is just as easily removed giving you a realistic feeling of holding and aiming a gun down the sight.

The game-play itself is fast and furious while you are trying to hit as many targets as accurate as you can to acquire the best possible multiplier and collect lots of supply for the three power moves to be used anytime during that particular movie process. Meanwhile enemies buzz by throwing or firing weapons trying to make you use up all your lives or 'takes' resulting in you having to start the movie scene completely over.

You will have to start out by completing Studio 101 before you can move on to career mode. Studio 101 is the training portion of the game which demonstrates all the power moves, explains how the game works, and how to achieve your goal scores. The director controls the shoot. Do well and he is happy, mess up by being hit or shooting the good guys and he gets angry. If you do really bad he will cut the shoot completely. Accuracy is important. With each hit you get without missing you receive a multiplier for a higher score. Their are three styles of power move shots. First you must accumulate multipliers to receive the style shots.

The first received during the multiplier increases is SHOWTIME which slows down time for a short period allowing you to shoot all the targets with less mistakes. To activate this style shot if you are standing up you must spin the gun (Move controller) in a complete 360 or if you are in a sitting position you can quickly wave the gun in a circle motion up over your head. The second style shot received from even more successful multipliers is the SHOCKWAVE. This move destroys all enemies on the screen at the time of usage. It's only one shot so be sure you have alot of them on the screen. To activate this style shot all you have to do is aim the gun at the floor and shoot creating a deadly shock-wave and clearing the entire stage of foes. The last style shot is the most powerful and takes the most multipliers to receive. It's called RAMPAGE. This shot turns your gun into a rapid-fire machine gun. The best part of this is that if you miss, it doesn't affect your multiplier or accuracy during use.

To activate this shot just point the gun straight in the air and fire one shot then let it rip. But remember, you want to try to have a screen full of enemies as these are very hard to come by. You can dodge items thrown at you by holding the gun and leaning with it to the opposite side of where the item is coming from, in some cases even ducking down if you are inside or behind some cover. Also, if the enemies are too close for comfort there is a melee option. To activate this just jolt the PS Move forward and you will smash them to pieces.

The bad guys use the civilians as shields so you will have to be careful to take aim without hitting them as this will cost you points and multiplier accuracy. Some targets only take one shot whereas others require a head-shot to make the kill and collect the points. There are various items to shoot and collect points from during each shoot but these will not earn multipliers. Thankfully they also won't hurt your accuracy as long as you don't miss at the end of each scene.

At the end of each scene you will have to battle a boss. This requires that you shoot him while dodging whatever he throws at you and at the end of this you will need to drop your arm down and complete a quick-draw when prompted. You get five 'takes' to complete an entire movie and there are four scenes to each movie so you want to keep that director happy whenever possible. During each scene there are pieces of torn posters that you must try to find and shoot during your scenes, this is important because you will need to piece these posters together to enter the challenge mode. There are five posters, one for each movie, and the pieces are scattered in each four scenes for that movie.

The first movie you will be shooting is called Outlawed. This has a wild west theme with everything from saloon brawls, a train chase, shoot outs, blowing up dynamite, and gunpowder barrels. The second movie is set forward in time called Robotomus Crime where you are fighting off several different kinds of robots that are trying to rob banks and take over the world. Some of these guys will require head-shots to kill. Third on the list is The Mob. This one is set in an older style 50s setting but with a twist. These guys are manufacturing poison gas in huge factories using jet packs and crazy homemade weapons wearing gas masks. Number four is called Deep Perils. This one is set underwater with all kinds of crazy mermaids, starfish, killer crabs, and basically anything that lives under the sea. There are tons of treasure chests in this one. Be sure to shoot these. You will acquire a lot of points this way. Finally, the last one on the list is called Haunted House Party. I found this one to be the most challenging of the group. It has zombies, bats, spiders, goblins, and ghosts. I found this movie to be the most challenging of the five because the targets are a lot smaller, the zombies need to be killed with a head-shot and their heads bob back and forth. On top of these increased challenges everything moves at a much faster pace.

I found the graphics in this game to be really good considering they made it to be exactly what it is, an on-rail shooter. So for instance these 3D cardboard cut-outs are just that when they spin there is another side to them and space in the middle. Some hang from wires, some follow the rail on its path. All in all it was really well done from the carnival shooter point of view but also advances into a whole new kind of carnival shooter game. One of the things I wish they had done different is have settings for the difficulty like low, medium, and high. More difficulty for the most hardcore of shooters who can blow though the entire career mode in one full day of playing would have been nice. There's always the chance to go back and better your scores to stay atop the leader-boards though. The load screen for the movies does take a little bit but considering it loads the entire movie (all four scenes) without any waiting once the initial load is finished, that isn't really too big of a deal.

As far as the difficulty goes, once you play through the scenes and get the hang of what's going to go down you can compensate for most of the big battles, but it's not as easy on the first time around. The level design is excellent. At the start of each scene you are looking at a movie scene set and as you step closer you are absorbed into the movie. Everything looks as it would if you were actually there. I have to say it's pretty impressive how that transformation takes place.

The hardest part for me was trying to figure out when to use the big style shots. There are some key points in each scene where they will be most effective and the only way to figure this out is to go back and replay the scene, which you will have to do anyway if you didn't have enough points to qualify to the next movie. One thing is for sure, this game has unlimited replay value for those of us who like target practice. It just never gets old, especially when it has so much more to offer other than stationary targets. There is also a Score Attack mode in which you can go to a specific scene in and battle your friends' online high scores (that do not transfer to career mode scores). In Score Attack you can also play local multi-player mode which allows you and a friend to play on the same screen dueling a part co-op and part competitive at the same time. Each player has their own multiplier but both share the style shots to keep it balanced. During this mode you or your friend, depending on who is getting it done, can steal the show becoming the star player for that scene.

In conclusion The Shoot is well-made with great graphics and has a lot of fast paced fun to be had on all levels for this type of game. Having several different types of unique and challenging enemies in every scene with tons of destructible items and an almost completely destructible environment this game will be played for a long time to come in my console, and not just because I like carnival shooters, because it's just plain fun. I believe they have done it right keeping the idea of the old 'reel shooters' but sending it into the future with all the added features and the idea of it being on a real movie set just makes it good clean fun.

[Guest reviewer: Paul Ireson]

  • Title: The Shoot
  • Platform Reviewed: PS3
  • Developer: Cohort Studios
  • Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
  • MSRP: $39.99
  • ESRB Rating: T for Teen
  • Release Date: October 19, 2010 (EU: October 29, 2010)
  • Review Copy Info: A copy of this title and shooting attachment peripheral were provided to DualShockers, Inc. by the publisher for purposes of this review.
The Shoot
9 / 10