So what did you play?
I played the Retro-fitted version of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.
And ...?
It played far better than the original controls. Turning and aiming were instantaneous. Control was absolutely precise.
At a certain point during the demo, one of our designers did a double-jump over a gap and spun a full 180 degrees in midair before landing on the opposite side. When I saw this my arm literally started shaking and had to grab and squeeze the cup holder on my theater seat like Doctor Strangelove to hold my arm steady.
Then he circle-strafed around a Space Pirate.
Yes, circle-strafed.
In Metroid Prime 2.
And that's without target-locking.
How were the controls set up?
It was set up in the "nunchaku" configuration described in the article. On the left controller, the thumbstick controlled player movement, the upper trigger button was assigned to visor-switching, and the lower trigger was assigned to the "scan" function and locking onto a target. On the right controller, the controller itself moved the player's gun independently of the player's view (yes, you could fire at any point on the screen without changing the player view -- the gun tilted to face toward the aim point), the trigger button fired the gun, and three of the buttons controlled jumping, firing missiles, and switching to morphball mode.
How does it compare to a mouse?
>From what I experienced, it seemed to be more precise than a mouse, but it's also much faster because it requires only a much smaller movement of the hand to achieve the desired effect. You just instantly point the controller at any part of the screen and bam!, that's where you're looking.
There is no lag.
There is no error.
It took a while to get used to the idea of how little effort is required to play a game with this controller. I kept wanting to lean forward and move the controller closer to the screen, and it took some practice to just sit back and just calmly move my hand ever so slightly.
At one point, someone said, "If you were to play a game with this against someone using a mouse, they'd have no chance against you." I had to admit it was true.
I've been using a mouse and keyboard for gaming for almost as long as I've been a gamer. I've logged over 80 hours so far in Battlefield 2 and I have a level 60 World of WarCraft character. If somebody had tried to tell me before now that a better controller would come along, I would have laughed at them.
But it only took me 5 minutes with the Revolution controller to realize that I don't need to use a mouse ever again.
Let's take a first-person shooter as an example. With a flick of the wrist, you can completely change your aim point from one corner of the screen to the other. Changing your aim point that way would require you to move a mouse all the way across a gamepad and could potentially take up to several seconds of pushing on a thumbstick with a standard console game controller.
Add to that the fact that the controller can correctly interpret roll (rotation of the controller clockwise and counterclockwise) and movement toward the screen or away from it, and you start to get an idea of the universe of new gameplay possibilities that Revolution games will be able to explore.
