First touch of the Eyetoy and its clear that this is a whole new experience. No setup time, 12 sample games ranging from the annoying to the exhilerating and a clean vision of how we finally get to integrate gamers and non-gamers.
"It was wicked"
"Best thing I've seen for a long time"
"You get to move!"
"All the dealers are getting it."
Coach potatoes will never be the same. OK that's a lie but there is definitely something to this latest peripheral that hasn't been obvious before on a PS2, or any console. The ability to step back completely. The next stage has to be the removal of the screen altogether. Give my eyes a chance to recover.
Even at low light levels, the EyeToy performs reasonably. With stronger light and clear contrast around the player the system responds noticeably more accurately to movement.
In by far the best minigame, Kung Fu, the player swipes at oncoming attackers from a number of directions. The game rewards the fastest possible movement of the player, never seeming to lose tracking capability, resulting in a rather powerful sense of having complete control over the virtual interface. To cap it all off, the player's image strobes and fades away towards the end of levels so that all is left onscreen are the attackers facing an invisible opponent. "A Matrix moment" as someone put it. The future of interactive media as I like it. Truly degradable controls that recede into the background as the user's skill increases.
Another review concentrating on the mini-games themselves
http://www.game-revolution.com/games/ps2/sim/eyetoy.htm