Ahhaa! The Eye Toy - that revolutionary camera for the Playstation 2 - you know, that gaming peripheral that changed the way we played games forever. right? Of course it didn't. I personally gave up with Eye Toy very quickly. Despite, it being released in 2003 there's actually been very few games to use it with, and most of those games were absolutely useless, failing to use the camera to its full potential.

Similarly, the Xbox live vision camera has been severely under-used. Some people love its voyeristic functionality (perving at people playing UNO) and others may have briefly enjoyed the God-awful Totemball for a short period of time, but aside from being used as a potential way to meet a future wife, husband or f**k buddy its use is extremely limited considering the hype that surrounded its launch and the future plans for its use, which we thought would have materialised by now. Even the face mapping function is dreadful; I look like a transvestite in Rainbow 6: Vegas and like David Guest in Tiger Woods PGA Tour.

Excuse us for being so cynical, but what's so great about the Playstation Eye, Sony's digital camera peripheral for the PS3? Well, to start off with, it does look the part and it has "two times the sensitivity" of the EyeToy (which to me and you means that we shouldn't have the sensor problems that we experienced with Eye Toy, caused by the room being too dark).

The list of specs (below) are fairly impressive and Sony are now planning to release of a number of Playstation Network games to take advantage of this 'fantastic' technology. IGN were on hand at TGS to take a look at some of the titles, which to be frank, look like they won't really take that much advantage of what is actually decent piece of kit. One of those games was Trials of Topoq. IGN say that:

The premise for this game is very simple. Maneuver the ball throughout a series of levels that are put together to make up the castle for each stage. You'll need to run the ball into as many cages as you can, though a certain goal will be set for each stage. As you'd expect the ball will need to make its way to an exit in order to complete the level. The real trick that makes Trials of Topoq fun to play? Why it's the use of the PlayStation Eye, of course! See, each of the aforementioned levels is divided into a grid of squares. You'll need to move these squares up and down by moving your hand closer and further away from the PlayStation Eye to create hills for the ball to roll down, thus into the desired cages.

The architecture of the stages will obviously change as you move through the game. While we first expected the game to use a similar dynamic as Operation Creature Feature - meaning that we'd need to simply push the ball along with our hand - it was nice to find out that the game actually uses different levels of depth to slide the ball along. Rest assured we'll have more on Trials of Topoq as its November release draws closer.

Sounds about as thrilling as watching paint dry. Check out the other games that were Playstation Eye compatible, over at IGN .

Check out the spec sheet for the Playstation Eye:

• A sophisticated microphone with the ability to reduce background noise and focus on the spoken word for smoother, more accurate speech recognition and transfer

• The ability to capture videos and audio clips directly to your PS3’s hard disk drive

• Engineered to perform well even in low-light conditions

• A range of different capturing modes, including slow motion and time-lapse

• Faster frame rate for improved tracking, responsiveness and smoothness

• Two position zoom lens for close-up and full body options

• A range of eye-catching visual effects to apply to photos and videos

• Bundled with EyeCreate™ editing software, which allows users to save and edit photos, video and audio clips

EyeCreate software
EyeCreate editing software, bundled free with Playstation Eye allows you to save photos, video and audio clips to your PS3 hard disk drive and apply visual effects to your images. Different capture modes like time-lapse and slow motion can be loaded into EyeCreate's editing suite.

New microphone functions
An all-new four microphone array, incorporating multidirectional voice location tracking, enhanced echo cancelling and background noise suppression allows for clear audio chat in even the most noisy of environments, without the need to hold or wear a headset.

Next-generation camera features
A frame rate of up to 120 frames per second allows for super-smooth video and sophisticated low-light operation means that the room doesn’t have to be brightly lit for the camera to deliver crisp, perfectly exposed video. The adjustable zoom lens features a 56º field of view to capture head and shoulders action for close-in audio-visual chat, and a 75º field of view to capture the whole body for a fully physical gaming experience.

Technical Specifications:• 4 channel audio input:16 bits/channel, 48kHz, SNR 90db
• 56º to 75º Field of View zoom lens
• 2.1 F-stop, <1% distortion, fixed focus (25cm to 8 at 75º FOV)
• 640 x 480 at 60 frames/second
• 320 x 240 at 120 frames/second
• USB2 high-speed data transfer
• Uncompressed video or optional JPEG compression Source :: IGN .