There is a game called football. Unless you are living in the US you probably know it. They have a game called football too, but you play it with your hands. They are confused. And maybe so am I.
Cultural differences aside, let me introduce the game for the uninitiated.
Football, also known as soccer, is a sort of team based, PvP, capture the flag game. Officially each team is made up of eleven players but private games may feature smaller teams, in which case usually the map is smaller too. At the opposite edges of the symmetrical map, each team has its base. The goal is to carry the small, spherical flag into the base of the enemy team but there is a catch: there is only one flag and you cannot touch it with your hands or arms. Therefore the best way of moving the flag is kicking it with your foot, hence the name of the game. There are a few special rules I didn’t mention but I’m sure most of you have at least seen the game once. Oh and under no circumstance are you allowed to shoot people.
Now imagine you are playing football. But we are introducing another inconvenient catch. This time we say you are allowed to touch the ball with your head only, even if the ball is on the ground.
Are we insane? Would you want to play this game? More importantly, would it be the same game?
No. It would be broken. I’m sure in time people would adapt and play the game similar to the football we know and love. I have seen people in wheelchairs play basketball very well too. And I have seen people play first person shooters with a gamepad…
You cannot attempt murder with a rubber duck. You cannot drive a car with your feet. You cannot drink water through your nose. You cannot sleep on razor wires. You also cannot play first person shooters with a game pad. This is plain and simple.
If you absolutely had to, given enough time and training, you could do all those things of course. You could even become so good at killing people with a rubber duck that people might think it’s awesome, and at one point you could reach a level of proficiency at which you can kill people more effectively with a rubber duck than you could with a machine gun, because at that point you are a rubber duck expert. No one kills people quicker than you using a rubber duck. Perhaps you are a more effective killer than many people with a machine gun. This still doesn’t change the irrefutable fact that a machine gun is a better instrument of death than a rubber duck.
I have yet to see a proper real time strategy game succeed on game consoles. This is because the funnily named genre called real time strategy was invented with keyboard and mouse in mind. It doesn’t work any other way. If you want to make it work you have to improvise. You have to change the game in some way so that it is playable. And it is open to debate if the game is still the same or not. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.
First person shooters have been on consoles for a long time now. Until “Medal of Honor”, they did not work. And the thing that made “Medal of Honor” work was simply superior production values. We all know that the series reached its summit with “Medal of Honor: Allied Assault” which was coincidently the first PC spin-off of the series. First person shooters are really at home with the PC, specifically with its keyboard and mouse. For a long while everyone knew that first person shooters didn’t really work on consoles. Then came “Halo”.
“Halo” is such an interesting subject that it deserves its own article. Suffice to say that, one way or another, “Halo” made people believe that First Person Shooters work on consoles. [ed: by “people” he means frat boys.] So people started producing more first person shooters for consoles than for the PC.
By now it is a well known fact that “Unreal Tournament III” on PS3 is supporting keyboard and mouse controls, a move I applaud. For years I could find absolutely no reason why developers did not support keyboard and mouse controls for console FPS games.
Actually the reason is very simple. It is the same reason why the PS2 port of a 4-player Dreamcast game only supported 2-players on the PS2. It has only 2 gamepad ports out of the box. Sure you can plug 8 game pads to it using a couple of multi-taps (and play 8 player Winning Eleven, a fine football simulation by the way) but still, the standard equipment supports 2 players.
And even though the PS3, for instance, supports Bluetooth and/or USB keyboards and mice out of the box, it is not the standard equipment a PS3 user has, for these things don’t come out of the box. In fact regardless of how much Sony is trying to say “Hey! It is not a games machine, it is a computer”, many people still have their consoles in their living room, underneath their TV set, a place the device was designed to sit at in the first place. How many of you really have a table in front of your games console? Have you tried using your mouse without a table?
That is probably why Mark Rein says he doesn’t understand why on earth a PS3 user would need keyboard and mouse support on their game. He says they added the function because their fans asked for it in the forums, but he doesn’t get why they asked for it.
Well, it is a simple matter of “can do, will do”. The previous paragraphs detailing how FPS games are best played with keyboard and mouse were probably unnecessary because this is a well known fact for any person with a functioning brain. And we all know developers produce games for the installed base of the hardware they chose.
Yes, many people will play those games with a game pad because they are either used to doing so or they simply don’t have a keyboard, a mouse or even a table. But quite some people would want to use their mice and keyboards. After all, if you are not going to support it in the games why do you put the support into the game console in the first place.
I am not saying developers should now start making proper FPS games which can only be played with keyboards and mice on the consoles. This would be stupid. I’m just saying that it should be an option. It is not a great mystery, Mr. Rein.
Many people play “Gran Turismo” with a game pad. But everyone knows it is best played with a “GT Force” wheel controller. Imagine the game not supporting that. It would be plain stupid.
Sure, finding a machine gun is not easy, and not many people have one. Still, next time I see a console FPS without keyboard and mouse support, I at least want a rubber duck as an in-game weapon.