Mesmerize Impressions

Will two dollars really mesmerize you?

Anyone who hopped on to the PlayStation Store yesterday -- presumably looking for the Warhawk expansion or perhaps some of the free holiday add-ons for Folklore and MotorStorm -- probably saw a few new PlayStation Eye games now available for download. We decided to snag a copy of Mesmerize, a simple piece of software by Sony Computer Entertainment's London Studio, and see what it's all about. For just about two dollars, you can download a "game" that's similar to the previously released Aquatopia, except much better. Mesmerize is another interactive screensaver of sorts, and while it certainly could be improved, it may manage to impress if you have a few friends over. Let's take a look.

First and foremost: you'll once again need the PlayStation Eye for this game, because attempting to start it up without one will not work. Once you boot up the software, you're treated to a simplistic but stylized menu that lets you either play through the various effects randomly, or you can select them from a list. Strangely enough, you can delete effects from your list also. Why you would want to do that is unclear at the moment, but we can only assume that more effects will be released in the future to enhance the Mesmerize experience.


Each "effect" is essentially a visual effect that responds differently to movement and sound registered by the PlayStation Eye. Your choices include Pincushion, Genepool, Flora, Fallout and Blurmotion. The loading time for bringing up a particular effect is surprisingly long for a hard drive load, but oh well.

Pincushion, the first effect on the list, is a digital replication of the metal pin toys that can sculpt a 3D silhouette of your hands or face. This effect works fairly well and mixes colors nicely to form some pretty rad images. The actual "pins" themselves are a little big though and can't capture as much detail as you might like, but it's still entertaining. Making a loud, sharp sound (like clapping or a snap of the fingers) will cause the pins to freeze in place so you can observe the sculpture. While the sound detection was somewhat imprecise, it worked most of the time.

Genepool was easily our favorite, which depicts a bunch of pulsing energy strewn across the screen. You can sweep this energy up and move it around. Scooping it all into one place will cause it to merge together and "overheat," creating a big burst afterwards. The motion detection used for this particular effect was startlingly accurate, considering how we could cup energy in between our hands and move it around on the screen, shaping it in different ways.


Flora and Fallout, unfortunately, aren't the strongest effects in the package. Flora will cause stems and vines to spring up wherever you move, and Fallout covers the screen with cubes that (you guessed it) "fall out" when motion is detected. Neither of them seem particularly accurate and both are less visually stimulating than their counterparts.

The last notable effect on the list is Blurmotion, which displays two ribbons of light on the screen which you can move with your hands. Again, like the other effects, there's really nothing more here than what you see in the first five seconds, so your level of enjoyment depends entirely on how enthralled you are with the visuals.

So, here's the bottom line: do you spend $1.99 on an interactive screensaver that barely lasts for five minutes? Just like Aquatopia, the answer depends on the person. If you have a few dollars sitting on your PlayStation Store account and you want to show off the PlayStation Eye to your friends, go ahead. The motion detection isn't the best but it works sufficiently enough (especially in Genepool) to impress. More clear to us is how superior this software is to its fish-tank counterpart, which really wasn't interactive or impressive. We really weren't "wowed" by anything in this game, but hey, it's only two dollars.

In This Article



A simple downloadable interactive art piece for use with the PlayStation Eye gaming camera.
No Descriptors
Platforms:PlayStation 3
Developers:SIE London Studio, Playlogic
Publishers:Sony Computer Entertainment
Features:Number Of Players, 16:9, 480p, 720p, Gaming Camera
Release Date:December 20, 2007