A New Kind Of Control

So without doubt, one of the most talked-about presentations at E3 was Nintendo’s, not least because of the 2+ hour que to even see anything other than the DS. A friend of the alsoran had overheard the press password “Starfox” on the first day, but that only led to a futile attempt to gain entry under false pretences, with the pair being directed back and forth between terified-looking Nintendo-reps, quite unsure of their ability to authorise entry.

After queing with all the other monkeys for 1.5 hours, there was a second lineup behind the magic curtain to get past the awful video presentations of middle-aged folk playing the Wii – “this new controller is for everyone!” Finally, there greeted the alsoran a 45+ minute que for all but the most unappealing of games. Was it a good move by Nintendo to aggravate their virgin audience for over 2 hours before allowing them the first chance to play with their “revolutionary” controller? Well let’s see…

Some time ago, the alsoran was surprised when he learned that In Japan, the symbol X means “bad”, only adding to the reasons why Microsoft’s fledgling console did poorly in the eastern market. “How could Microsoft be so amateurish as to miss something as obvious as that”? Surely they employ scores of market research and localisation experts to avoid exactly such cases of international faux pas. So now we have the Nintendo Wii (pronounced “wee”) – henceforth referred to as the “Piss”.

While the alsoran was initially sceptical about the direction taken by Nintendo with the Piss, he had all but made up his mind to purchase one after seeing the fantastic Nintendo press conference at the openening of this year’s E3. All the way through the initial lineup, remaining so throughout the exciting “live drumming” demonstration during the second que, and still, steadfastly, as he looked on ahead while others took their first steps with the new console. Then he actually got to use the device, and found much to his disappointment, that it is, in fact, a piece of shit.

Now perhaps the alsoran had overestimated the ability of the controller. Reading about the initial reports of Ubisoft’s Red Steel, he was under the impression that he would be wielding an accurately moving sword, playing tennis would be akin to holding a racket, allowing the player to be creative with every serve, return, swipe or stab. However, that is ENTIRELY NOT THE CASE. What the Piss does allow, for all its “revolutionary” claims, is, if you swing the controller IN THE GENERAL DIRECTION of a downward swipe, your onscreen avatar will play a pre-canned downward swipe animation.

Similarly, if you ROUGHLY SWING THE CONTROLLER SIDEWAYS, your tennis player (running around automatically on the court, as you can’t actually control their movement while swinging) plays the pre-canned side-swing animation, EXACTLY THE SAME AS IF YOU WERE TO PUSH THE THUMBSTICK DOWNWARDS OR TO THE SIDE. In fact, there wasn’t one game the alsoran played that couldn’t be done already, and better, on a Gamecube joypad.

To make matters worse, the controller doesn’t always work, so SOMETIMES YOUR CHARACTER WILL NOT SWING THE BAT AT ALL. Finally, to top it all off, there is a noticeable delay between moving the controller and your onscreen reaction. This was handily pointed out as likely being due to the wireless nature of the device by a similarly dismayed controller manufacturer in a que near the alsoran.

This character went on to explain that there is acutally no new technology in the Piss controller as the games use one of two technologies present. Shooting games such as Metroid Prime 3: Corruption use infra-red sensors for aiming (ie a light-gun or TV-remote), provding an experience that had already been achieved several years ago with Capcom’s Resident Evil: Gun Survivor series.

Other games, such as the excitingly-named Wii Sports Tennis, Wii Sports Golf and Wii Sports Baseball all use a technology traditionally called acceleration sensing, meaning that the controller has no idea where it actually is in 3D space, only that it is rotating or moving, essentially putting paid to any future games providing the kind of experience the alsoran, and many others he spoke to, were envisioning. Interestingly, the technology in the (desperately clutching at straws) PS3 controller is, contrary to written statements, in no way inferior to the Piss, aside from the unfortunate loss of vibration, lending the PS3 controller a light and cheap feel similar to the original PS1 pads.

As an aside, it is worth mentioning that the alsoran witnessed a number of non-gamer press and executive types, (the target audience / untapped market of the Piss), having great difficulty getting to grips with the controller, not to mention that he had to give up playing Metroid half-way through the demo due to the sheer absurdness of the controller setup – the A button, (not the trigger), to fire?

The real star of the show was a controller light-years in advance of the Piss, the Novint Falcon. Best described as a 3D mouse, this controller also provides 3D movement, however, unlike the Piss, the Falcon utilises haptics (touch) technology to provide feedback for whatever you are manipulating onscreen. The simplest demo involved moving a pointer around a sphere, which felt entirely tactile under the user’s hand via feedback from the three arms connecting the controller. Mindblowingly, the texture of the sphere, when switched, provided different sensations, causing more or less resistance as the pointer moved around the various spheres, even pushing through a gelatinous example.

Raising the stakes higher, a later demo offered the ability to lift up a ball on a rubber string and feel the weight of the ball pull and drag on the controller as it was moved around. Even more impressive was the fact that this was also present in the available Halflife 2 demo, where picking up a plastic bin was felt to be “heavier” than a simple can, not to mention that in the future the spherical controller will be able to be replaced by multiple peripherals such as a gun trigger – all for under $100. Forget Piss, this is the future of gaming, perhaps even CG animation if they can integrate it into 3D Packages.