I agree with you up to a point. I for example actually liked the demo and would love to play the full game but I feel the controls will limit the game. I mean it's just frustrating that your character feels as flexible as a steel door.
And again I understand that the no shooting while running is a gameplay decision and not necessarily control issue.
I do feel that the turning and strafing option are limiting the player and are an issue that should've been addressed. But now that we've heard about the "action" mode, I think I have to stop bitching and just enjoy the game for what it is...

I'm not really as passionate about this controlling the way it does as I appear, but I do think the matter has a wider significance that I do feel rather strongly about.

I won't even take a side here and call one control scheme better than the other, but I just think it's way too common to reduce games to what you see on the screen. In my opinion, a game should be built deliberately from the ground up.

I'm just gonna tell the weak hearted to not read any further right now because this'll get pretty long I think.


Essentially, nowadays we pretty much take for granted that our body as the player is represented in some capacity on the screen. Basic movement and actions are mapped to buttons, and just as little as we'd like to wake up one morning and find that waving our arms actually makes us kick with our legs, we rue the thought of having that right trigger do anything other than fire a gun if our on screen persona is armed.

Virtually all genres today share this to an extent because more than ever before games are about realising something you as a person can do. You're skating, shooting, racing, fighting, saving the world, running over hookers, stopping and popping or killing Ares. We've reduced the gameplay part to as efficiently as possible getting the desired result on screen; a result we are all too familiar with.

So where do games go from there? Bigger set pieces, more believable characters, more engrossing worlds more gripping stories, a greater sense of speed a geater sense of danger a greater sense of fear, excitement, loss, victory. To do so we employ prettier pictures, more beautiful music, more immersive sound, better voice acting, better written scripts.

A great gaming experience is often described like "it felt just like a movie" or "a blockbuster". The ups and downs are many times determined by scale and narrative and how much you identify with your avatar. It's clear that what differentiates one game from another is surprisingly similar to the difference between two movies. Characters, story, or generally how convicing it is in its production. Aureal and visual input.


But the thing is, even though we've basically standardised how we move around in these worlds to the point where they could just as well rename RT/R1/Z the "Fire" button like they did on old joysticks, controls are still the most powerful tool with which to control the player's emotions. It is also the sole aspect of gaming that is absolutely unique - the ace up its sleeve if you will.

Yet it seems people expect every game to be a skin pulled over a stock skeleton, or that the next story and world are decorations to hang on the already established controls tree. I might be old fashioned but I'm kinda keen on the whole "what matters is on the inside" thing, and inside a game is where I reckon you find its identity.

I was totally thrown by the way Halo 3 just up and chucked its reload button to the Right Bumper. Sure, Gears had its reload button up there, but that was Gears, that was its unique "fingerprint". People think Halo is a green dude with a helmet, but that's not true. At least for me it isn't.

Megido said (or you said if you're reading this) earlier that Metroid Prime would've worked with FPS controls. See that's not really my point, I don't feel that "whatever a game works with" is "fine". That's like saying a person would work fine with a different personality. Of course he or she would but it wouldn't be the same person.

I should probably stress that I'm not suggesting a game's identity comes from its controls exclusively, but just like a face or the colour of someone's eyes play a part in defining that person, the enemy design, which way a corridor turns or how a story ends is really not what's ultimately of greatest importance to a game.

At least not for me.

So when I can't strafe in RE5 that is part of what that game is on the most fundamental, core level. It's a fingerprint of many fingerprints. It's a butterfly effect that in the end has me feeling a certain way as I'm going up against the final boss. A grand, beautiful, significant difference on the smallest and biggest scale that only a game could possibly achieve - something Ebert with his movies will never grasp.

If we sand these things down to something smooth and predictable, we're being unfair to the very nature of games.

I'm not saying RE5 controls are better or worse than Gears, but I salute that there is a difference and I pray there will always be a pair of steel testicles hanging between the legs of people who can make that happen.

I see your point of course, and advances should be noted and built upon for sure, but there is such a thing as a game's integrity. When Super Mario World came out that was obviously the benchmark platformer but Sonic didn't adapt its controls regardless. By today's reasoning, if one didn't LIKE how Sonic controlled, found that having to hold right to make him eventually get up to top speed instead of using a button for it was unintuitive or countered his or her "immersion" then that person would demand that the control scheme should change. Which of course is preposterous because Sonic wasn't just about colours being different and having badniks instead of mushroom people. It was just as much about what buttons you pressed.

It's the exact same debate I despise when it comes to mouse and keyboard vs gamepad. You can make all kinds of cases for mouse being faster, but they're ultimately two very different setups that gives you a distinctly different feeling when you play a game.

On a somewhat similar note Red Steel for the Wii is pretty much a terrible game that is awesome because you play it with the Wiimote. Not because that is necessarily BETTER or something all games should adhere to, but because it feels fundamentally different and fun in its own right.

I feel that what people seem to be asking for is to be allowed to pick up the football with their hands because it's more intuitive than kicking it around, but the goals are big because you're supposed to be kicking the ball and what you're left with is pseudo basketball.

I'm not condoning *bad controls* here you must surely understand.

The whole of Korn's post scares me half to death because that sort of conformity would kill all enjoyment I get out of gaming in an instant. I don't care one bit if I'm shooting aliens for this or that reason if I shoot all aliens the exact same way. Gunvalkyrie lives on in my memory not as the game where I shot aliens because there was some.. comet or whatever. The controls in that game and the way it felt playing it is something I can relive by just closing my eyes and imagining it again.

World's a big place and there's obviously place for both. I hope we can all get a bit of what we're looking for.

@ Korn

I dunno who's to decide what is good or bad though, people have a hard enough time agreeing on what games are good or what graphics are good. Hell, people disagree, that's the one constant.

As I said before I'm not saying I want bad controls, but there's a difference in adjusting sensitivity of the wiimote corshair to be more fluid and responsive and remapping the entire control scheme.

I'm sure the majority of people sitting down with Gunvalkyrie would want that too to play like Gears, but I don't. God I love that it doesn't.

I can't be sure that every game that does something different will be better, but the times where I've had the BEST gameplay experiences I've been absolutely overwhelmed by the way a game feels. I have *never* had a real gaming life highlight with a game that controls like I'm already used to. Fact.

The very reason gaming has largely become so mundane the last couple of generations - don't pretend like you haven't felt it - is because it's falling into a rut more and more. Everywhere you turn you have games playing essentially the same with pretty pictures and sounds to alter the experience ever so slightly.

That's not just a bad thing of course as quality is consistently high and eyes fall on graphics and narration - no doubt the most talked about things in games these days - but I don't require a control scheme to BEST another every time a developer decides to change it. It just needs to be fun in its own right.

And fun is subjective. The ever returning crux of people having opinions.

Here's one of mine; I thought Red Steel was a blast.