PlayStation Move Heroes reviewed on PlayStation 3 by James Hamer-Morton. Game supplied for review by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Three of the PlayStation's great franchises thrust together into some kind of connected story mash up sounds like a great idea and perfect fan service for those lamenting the lack of any Sly Cooper or Jak & Daxter on the list of upcoming games. (Ratchet & Clank have “All 4 One” on its way later this year.) In fact, the game seems to use its characters as little more than gimmicks to draw you in to what is essentially a collection of arena based mini games, lauding the PS Move controller.

The 'story' is as contrived as it gets. Each of our three pairs of heroes (Sly Cooper brings along Bently) are getting up to their usual escapades when time freezes, and they are sucked into a different world and forced to play a series of 'games' to show their prowess, saving 'Whibbles' in each one. Now you may forgive the initial premise, just to get the ball rolling, but the story is only revisited very briefly in between each of the four worlds of the games, each based upon the universe of one of the heroes with the final world being Gleebertopia, the homeland of the Whibbles and the aliens that brought you all together.

This 'story' basically gives each of the characters to quickly interact with each other, boast about their own heroic abilities and imply a challenge between them to see who is the best hero. It's all completely irrelevant in reality though because you could play the game only ever using one team of heroes if you wanted and would only see the others in these few cinematics and a final couple of forced challenges.

Each of the 'games' gives you a weapon and a style, varying them up sometimes to give a little more variety. Weapons include a bowling ball, which has you tilting your Move controller to alter the direction of the ball, flicking it up to jump it, and hitting a button to explode the ball, taking out targets in the vicinity. As a style, it remains entertaining and varied because of the arena design. The disc throwing weapon lets you guide it around your arena trying to break Whibble cages, and again is a great use of the Move. Even third person shooter style segments, using the navigation controller (or left side of the standard Sixaxis) to move and the Move to aim (still with me?) work surprisingly well and responsively.

Physical combat, however, is where the game misses a step. With your normal weapon, you'll have to swing your Move around to attack, and it doesn't feel like any improvement over a normal button press, beyond your ability to choose the direction of the swing. Indeed it misses out on camera controls and even the ability to jump. Then there are the sections that give you a whip. To attack enemies, you'll be literally whipping the controller, and on the occassions when it doesn't register, it can be very frustrating.

The remaining game types include defending a set of Whibble cages while enemies try to destroy them; standing next to each cage will raise its health back up from any damage, running around trying to bring baby Whibbles back to their mother by collecting them and dropping them off with the parent, and simple survival levels that send waves of enemies towards you. Depending on your performance in each of these games you'll be awarded a bronze, silver or gold medal, however there seems a lot of discrepancy between the crazily easy casual gamer style golds and the more tricky ones that will probably take a few goes to secure.

You'll get to choose your character for each mission, though the game decides on whether you are able to use the hero or the sidekick for each team. Your decision however plays very little influence on the actual gameplay besides giving an unique super move triggerable when you have collected enough crystals in each level. Ratchet has his 'Groovatron', making enemies dance while Sly can turn everything else into slow motion by activating 'Thief Time'. Ultimately they're all useful depending on what you're doing, but besides having trophies for using specific abilities, there is really no incentive to vary your character choice.

To add a tiny bit of extra replayability, hidden collectables are located in each game, one per mission, and while they unlock extra costumes, once you've got the gold medal and found the collectable there is little point in revisiting each game. Leaderboards are nice, but can only go so far. Each 'world' has a few arenas and each has a few games, so we're looking at 43 challenges before finishing the game.

The single player story is essentially a load of mini-games, so reason suggests that it would shine more in multi-player. The only option is Co-op teamplay, and relegates the second player to being a Mario Galaxy-esque cursor on screen, simply there to soften up enemies and give the first player bonuses. It makes each level easier, and there is a team attack if you hit the move controllers together, but leaves a lot to be desired in a game like this. Ironically, it will suit new gamers better than a fully fledged competitive mode, and my girlfriend loved the fact that she could help out and play the game with me without risking dying or holding me back, but while it may work for you, personally I'd never want to be stuck being the second player.

Some of the games are genuinely fun, but they are rarely much of a challenge until you unlock the diamond challenges by getting gold medals in everything else and is likely aimed a lot more at the younger audience. It seems to me like a waste of the licenses involved, and while fans will get some entertainment out of the rather short feeling game, serious gamers may want to hold back for a heavy discount, or more likely, a fully fledged release in any of these otherwise excellent franchises.