Your Move

R.U.S.E.

If shooters don't always click with motion controls, how about RTS games? They can work surprisingly well, actually. With R.U.S.E, the Move's pointer is not quite as flexible and reactive as a mouse, but the lag isn't bad at all, and after your initial assault on Colditz Castle, you may find yourself really enjoying the experience.

Unit selection and movement are handled via pointing, and mass selection, deselection and opening the Production menus are stuck on the face buttons – although you can also open the latter with a sharp swing to the right. It's pretty easy to jab around the battlefield moving artillery about, sending innocent men to their deaths, and rocking up on a tank ambush with just the wrong kind of defence. Moving about the map is handled with the left stick, and zooming and turning are done by holding the trigger down and tilting the Move like a fishing rod: you'll be clumsy at first, but it quickly starts to sink in and it generally feels quite precise.

Blast around too hectically and you can throw off the calibration, but any annoyance at that was wiped away for me the first time I selected an enemy unit to blow up and the squidgy Move light bulb started to glow an ominous red. Take that, Kaiser. (The Second World War was the one with the Kaiser, right?)

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Ultimately, to get the best out of an RTS, you're going to prefer a mouse – but this is still an appealing and somewhat novel way of playing. Like the game itself, Move integration has been no rush job here; if it tempts more players into picking up Ubisoft's thoughtful and inventive spin on the RTS, I'm in favour of it.

EyePet

Pets really are good value. They provide young children with hours of entertainment. They don't require batteries, internet connections, strategy guides, or easy access to a plug socket. They don't come with DRM, and they give couples in struggling relationships something to do after work rather than sit around apportioning blame. Finally, as they expire, they even teach any kids caught in the blast radius an important lesson about mortality: everything dies, baby, that's a fact. Bruce Springsteen said that.

And he was wrong. EyePet doesn't die (neither will Joan Rivers, I suspect). It's probably not even something Sony has planned for DLC.

Part monkey, part troll, part asthmatic Chihuahua, EyePet was a smart idea when it first appeared last year, albeit one that was waiting for technology to catch up slightly. Now, technology has caught up, with Move replacing the original game's magical flashcard. EyePet: Move Edition keeps the basics of the first instalment intact, but it allows you to interact with the same range of pet toys and gadgets in a far more satisfying manner.

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The game beyond the controller is still sweet, but still limited, though. There's a decent number of mini-games, but they're unimaginative. Those that turn the Move controller into various gadgets crank things up a notch as Sony's software superimposes various fantastical devices over the glowing lollipop in your hand and puts them to work. This kind of stuff struggled to be entirely credible with the Magic Card that came with the original box, but with Move the implementation is ideal.

You'll soon be feeding your pet cookies, scaring him with a dangly toy ghost, taking him bowling, and drawing cars and planes that come to life and zip him around the living room. The moment Sony's really perfected, however, is bathing: covering the EyePet in suds, washing him off and then drying him results in a perfect marriage of simple Move controls and well-judged animations. It presents a kind of idealised take on pet ownership that is almost convincing. Sure, you sound like a weird strain of sex criminal talking about it, but it's a masterful piece of coding.

Brilliantly clever but slightly aimless, this remains a bit of a gimmick, ultimately. A dog is for life, but EyePet is probably still just for Christmas.