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.

So bad that even god intervenes to put an end to this mess, the mistakes on the walk cycle are dwarved by the fantastic and unexpected finale. Who would have thought that electric shock therapy could produce such elastic limbs, and what a death pose.

This last weekend saw the alsoran properly introduce the joys of videogaming to his girlfriend and her friend in a hazy evening of gin & tonic and XBOX360. It was certainly interesting to observe two thirty-something women take their first forays into his favourite past-time, most of all because both newcomers were able to catch right up with the alsoran’s two decades worth of gaming experience and have fun in a variety of games, even going so far as to throw themselves into online bouts of Dead Or Alive 4 against geeks that were clearly not used to interacting with real females.

There were two apparent factors leading to one game being more enjoyable over another for a complete beginner, both of which relating to the ease with which the newcomer can feel welcome. The first was the forgiving nature of the gameplay, providing a relatively safe area in which to learn without constant punishment for failure or lack of immediate skill. Burnout was instantly accessible with the ability to take corners simply by sliding around the edge of the track, whereas Project Gotham led to much penalised wall-hugging. DOA4 consistently provided dramatic encounters, leaving one screaming girl the clear victor over the other. Even the versatile Lara Croft was quickly under command within the relative safety (apart from one unfortunate drowning incident) of the Croft Manor gym.

The second conclusion was the ease of the control scheme. This often-repeated statement is seemingly obvious at first, with the complicated multi-character management of NHL 2K6 proving difficult to comprehend despite both girls being experienced hockey players, and was only possible due to the alsoran’s past experience with similar schemes. However, Fight Night’s unique control scheme, “Total Punch Control” (described here by the ever-charismatic producer Kudo Tsunoda) was surprisingly easy to understand for the novices due to not having to “unlearn” years of prior knowledge of less revolutionary control-schemes.

In taking a player’s prior experience with games for granted, we are perhaps ostracising those who would play games but feel at a loss when faced with the (misplaced) percieved complexity the next-gen of games are now displaying. You know as well as the alsoran does to check wooden crates for medikits and ammo, and shooting red barrels around which stupid NPCs congregate will dispatch them quicker, but does a newcomer? Maxis’ Will Wright (The Sims) observes that “the last thing [players] do is read the manual…Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play”.

Perhaps instead of sticking to conventional “safe” control schemes, we should not only be simplifying existing ones, but also experiment with new approaches that don’t assume the player is a moron lacking the ability to adapt, as well as provide a safebut fun area with which to practice the moves outside of the established beginning tutorial. When Lara Croft can negotiate an obstacle course requiring only a thumbstick and an (A) button, it becomes much easier to see how we can swing punches with both arms using just the thumbstick.

In the dark days of his career between the woeful 3D finale of “Freddy’s Dead” and his “Freddy vs Jason” reprisal, the unfortunate Mr. Krueger stooped to shoplifting to make ends meet. Here we catch his thievery on security camera, casually bending down to swipe an apple without even breaking his stride. Years of practice have taught him to perform this illegal maneuver without even requiring a shift in weight of his lower body, visually reducing his chances of detection despite the incriminating swipe marks left at every crime scene.