Motion Gaming 5 Years Later

[KillerGremlin]

I want to add to my FPS list that certain games like Counter-Strike, or even sniping in Halo or using the Rail Gun in Quake 3 come down to very precise aiming. These are games of pixels, where moving a millimeter the wrong way will be the difference between a headshot and a miss.

You can calibrate a mouse, and to a less extent an analog stick, to have very dull sensitivity so that you can have very precise movement. When you watch the Cal League Counter-Strike players you see them moving their mouses A LOT. This is because the sensitivity is so low. The advantage is that when you are making precise, surgeon-like shots towards someone's head, you can accidentally twitch or move too much and still make the head shot.

When sensitivity comes down to my entire arm or hand, as in the case of using a pointer device, there is way less ability to accurately point.

You don't write with your whole arm, you use your fingers and wrist. Precision movements just seem to be inherently vulnerable to large sweeps of an arm.

[KillerGremlin]

Here are some examples. Counter-Strike is a game of TWITCH movements followed by moments of absolute, surgeon-like precision. I have a hard time seeing motion controls ever competing with this:



The beginning of that Counter-Strike example looks like it would handle fine on the Wii. But look at how little movement is actually going on when he is zoomed in. That type of concentration and precision cannot be easily obtained via pointing with your arm. Not as consistently as with a mouse or even with an analog stick. Your arm fatigues, it is susceptible to shakes or movement...I speak from years of hardcore FPS experience here, but I have some more videos below.

The Quake 3 Rail Gun not only requires precision, but it IS a TWITCH game so you are running around ALL THE TIME. Between running, jumping, strafing...it is quite the mental chore to figure out where you are going to go while also figuring out how to kill your opponent. I have a hard time seeing this work with arm movements:



Lastly, Halo 3. Okay, so a big part of sniping is anticipation in Halo 3. Knowing where people are going to spawn...things like that. But this is still a game of precision. And if you look and see how slow the guy's controls are set, you can see that there is quite a delay in the controls. Having "slow" controls allows for surgical like precision when you get down to headshots.