Cold Coffee: Motion Controls

I've come to realize that you simply can't fight change. I'm one of those gamers who talks about the good old days far too often and constantly complains about the direction the video game industry is going in. I try desperately to hold onto the ways of the past: I write on a typewriter whenever I can, I wear a watch instead of checking my cell phone; I still have an N64 that I play more than my current gen consoles at times. My point is, change sucks and, since I'm still quite young, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be the crankiest old bastard on the face of the earth in my ‘golden years'.

While a lot of people will look at me like I'm crazy when I complain about certain things, I do take comfort in knowing that this particular topic is one that a lot of my fellow gamers aren't huge fans of.

Please, for the love of God, tell me why I need to suddenly ‘be the controller' when I'm playing a game. Is there something wrong with sitting on the goddamn couch and just losing yourself in a game for a few hours? Believe it or not, even though I write about video games as a career, I don't spend all my time in front of a video game. I go out and exercise and take my dog to the park and cook and clean, so at the end of the day I really don't feel like dancing around like an idiot in my living room ‘playing' a game.

Motion controls are apparently going to be the future of gaming; with video game developers trying to target people of all ages to buy their products. How many families do you know that actually look like the cheery model family on the front of a Kinect game? Ya, that's what I thought. It's a neat gimmick for kids but it doesn't belong in the mainstream video game world.

Nintendo's Wii console was the start of this movement revolution when they revealed their bizarre controller that was actually two controllers. It was new and therefore, piqued the curiosity of the gaming world but they're turned out to be more annoying than anything. The only games I've somewhat enjoyed were Nintendo's grainy versions of popular shooter games. Moving the aiming cursor with a hand gesture is neat but it gets old quick and it only seems to work half the time. Nintendo had issues with their sensor bar not detecting the controller movements properly right from the start and, even after updated parts and upgrades for the controllers, the issues are still there to a degree. Don't even get me started on Playstation Move…

Someone please take this article and send it to the highest authority so we can finally give the gaming industry the slap across the back of the head it needs. We don't need futuristic gimmicks and family oriented games. We need quality games that actually work right from day one.