A debate has been raging inside my mind. A question of near constant vexation that has been lingering deep within my psyche for awhile now and it's finally bubbled to the surface in one brash conclusion. Gamepads ruin FPS video games! I know! I know! The vast legion of frat boy Halo douchebags are already queuing up to express their unyielding hatred for my brazen battle cry of 'anti-thumbing', but I stand by my decision. Maybe it's because I am old school and grew up with arcade games that placed bright plastic pistols in my hands, or the countless hours spent in front of Q3, CS, Tribes, and many other FPSs played with the keyboard and mouse, or maybe I am becoming crotchety in my mid twenties, but I refuse to bow down to the tyranny of game pads!
Every game I have ever played on every console that had any worthwhile shooter on it that forced me to use a game pad was a complete let down. I twiddle my thumbs when I am bored not when I am trying to mow down zombies or other players online. Who came up with the idea of playing intense, combat related video games with your thumbs? I don't go for a Sunday drive with my thumbs. I don't fire an actual weapon with my thumbs! Sure, thumbs are great and they have a grand purpose in the evolutionary scheme of things and are probably the only parts of human anatomy that dogs and cats envy, but to saunter into digital combat with a vibrating game pad and my thumbs sounds more like an experience reserved for the users of exotic Japanese sex toys than an immersive combat (though fake) experience.
And then there are the button mashing 'finishing moves' of the game pad and to paraphrase Peter Griffin, "that really grinds my gears.". I remember the good ol' days when I didn't have to try to mash buttons in a particular sequence to kill off the bosses. Granted, some games made you do something in sequence to add a bit more of a challenge to taking out the boss, but it was normally a little more thought provoking than mashing the B button as quickly as possible and then holding down A while standing on one foot and trying to open a twist off cap of cheap beer with only your tongue. In my day, when I needed to kill off some behemoth; I merely pumped his guys full of lead, rockets, or lasers and called it a job well done. I didn't prance about like a grass fairy dancing on my thumbs.. No sir, I actually used my hands and more than two fingers to get the job done.
There was a time and place for gamepads, but that time is over and the place is long gone. I'd like to take a moment to apologize for the generations growing up behind me and rising to the ranks of l33t speak and pseudo uberness. We have failed you.. Instead of investing more time and money into thinking of truly revolutionary ways for you to interact with games we simply took the gamepad from twenty plus years ago and added more buttons, an ergonomic twist, and patented sextoy vibration. Sure Nintendo made some head way with the Wii and Project Natal seems to be coming along nicely, but those should be a portion of the technology we are improving now, not projects slated for the future, near or otherwise.
Every so often you see stories in the news about how the elderly are wasting away in horrid and depressing conditions within 'retirement/assisted living communities' and that is wretched and I'm not trying to detract from gravity of those situations, but I at the same time I can't help, but wonder how things will be when my generation retires..
And you know what? Unless the world implodes and all the women on the planet are stricken with an insidious disease that makes them breast-less.. I think retirement is going to be kick **** ass. In fact they may have re-coin retirement community to geriatric gaming community because as long as I can move a mouse and operate w,a,s and, d my ass is going to be chewing up bandwidth and tea bagging fools that don't know what time it is until I keel over due to a massive heart attack just as I scream into the microphone during a session of Counter Strike 35.
Course by that time I may not even have to use a mouse and keyboard and I might be able to game with just my brain and electrodes, though it's not my intention to speculate on future gaming technologies. All I'm trying to say is that in the future.. It might not be the 12 year olds with no life that piss you off in WoW and other games, but instead an 80 year old who only has to break so he can get a sponge bath by a lovely Swedish nurse with huge tracts of lands.
Or not..
IT'S WW2!!! EVERY STORY YOU CAN POSSIBLY THINK OF HAS ALREADY BEEN TOLD! I DO NOT CARE! I ONLY WANT TO BLOW SH*T UP! LESS STORY! MORE ATTENTION TO GAMEPLAY!
But I /can't/ forget the sham that this game presents as combat.. All of the combat in this game has been stolen from good oldie called Whac-A-Mole.. The only difference between this game's so called combat and whac-a-mole is that the moles here are wearing tiny gray uniforms and tin helmets that ding when you pop them in the head and start ANOTHER WORTHLESS CUT SCENE JUST TO SHOW YOU THAT YOU ARE INDEED NOT AS INCOMPTIENT AS YOU ORGINALLY THOUGHT!
Then.. There are your teammates whom you are led to believe you are in control of. Sure there are times when they move correctly to cover and don't wrap around an object in the wrong direction thus exposing themselves to enemy fire which they seem quite content to remain standing in front of until they die.. But what really bugs me about them is how worthless they seem to be. I will confess that they can put down cover fire, but other than the five enemies they have put down, I am left to do the bulk of the dirty work and finish off the moles one by one as they pop up from their hidey holes. *yawn* Do I get any tickets that I can cash in for cheap prizes if I get them all? For $50 bucks I should.
And finally.. The illusion of tactics. If you think there are tactics in then game then your mind is extraordinary simple and you should be given a cookie along with a pat on the back. So, in the midst of this horribly restricted game, you are given the option the flank.. Which translates to, instead of taking the yellow brick road we like to call option A, you can run along the 2nd (THE ONLY OTHER OPTION!) we like to call option B. Can you say 'boring, funneled, worthless, game play'? I can..
