WASD & Mouse FTW!

jr.gameon | 5/14/2008 8:39 am | Game On

I'm not a big fan of First-Person Shooter (FPS) games. I do play most of the popular ones, but certainly not all of them. COD4, for example, isn't even on my radar yet and may never be. With the exception of the original DOOM, almost all of my FPS gaming has been limited to console-based games. For years I've heard from Erik and from other gamers that the best way to play a FPS is with a keyboard and mouse, not the console controllers that I was used to. Having performed admirably with my adventures in "GoldenEye" and more recently in "Halo" and "BioShock", I didn't think that keyboard and mouse controls could be that much better. Maybe a little, but certainly console controls could keep up, right?

As a Mac user, I never really had an opportunity to test this out. However, Apple's release of Boot Camp, which allows Intel-based Mac computers to run Windows natively, and Valve's release of "The Orange Box", which collects all of the "Half-Life 2" releases, "Portal", and "Team Fortress 2" in one package, gave me the opportunity to play some FPS games with a keyboard and a mouse for the first time. I finished all of those games around Christmas time and while the PC controls did perform very well, I wasn't willing to admit they were significantly better than their console counterparts just yet.

Last week the demo for "Haze" arrived on the PlayStation Network. As a PlayStation 3 exclusive in a relatively small catalog of PS3 games, "Haze" is on track to be a huge release for the PS3 in 2008 and has rightfully been heavily hyped. Always looking for a good game to expand my personal small PS3 catalog, I downloaded the demo and gave the game a run-through.

I immediately had trouble with the controls. It didn't control bad, it just didn't control as good as I remembered a console FPS controlling. I went into the options and tried to get it better, but I didn't have any luck. While the two sticks on the PS3 controller performed admirably, they weren't nearly as precise and fluid as the keyboard and mouse combo that I had become accustomed to after playing "Half-Life 2".

I eventually quit the demo before I finished all of the content that it had given me.  I might have continued to the end with a different game, but the less than original characters and situations made it not worth my time to soldier on with the not-quite-as-good console controls.  I will admit that the Nectar mechanic that heightens your senses to make combat easier is an interesting little gimmick, but it was already getting old after only 15 minutes with "Haze".  Maybe I'd be willing to play "Haze" a bit longer if I was playing it on a PC with those slick mouse and keyboard controls.