Andy Laub

I Twittered about Saturday’s lapse in judgement, but it really does deserve more explanation than that. Since I’m always on the hunt for great deals (especially game-related), I was happily surprised to see that Family Video was selling off their excess copies of Metroid Prime 3 for the Wii… for the bargain price of $20. I figured that giving it a try wouldn’t hurt; maybe it would rekindle my interested in the more neglected of my children. Consoles. I think of them as my children though.

That’s not true.

Anyway. Prime came home with me, where I promptly popped it in to make sure it was a good disc. It fired right up, as expected, and after some unrelated technical difficulties (audio ins on Samsung televisions apparently don’t pass through to the audio outs) we were in space. Because that’s where all Metroid games take place.

Graphically, the game looks nice, but I didn’t notice a significant improvement over the original on the Gamecube. The keyword is “notice”, because I haven’t touched the Gamecube version since last year; there could be a substantial difference. Sound was average; it would’ve been better if I was running it through the stereo rather than the TV speakers, but whatever.

I was most interested in the control scheme, since this is the Wii and that’s how they get you. It was not disappointing and behaved as expected. Moving your arm/hand to aim rather than an analog stick is different but fairly intuitive, but that’s where the good stuff ended. The problem here is that the Wii controller still pretty much sucks when you try to compare it to a normal controller. Any analog movement is fine, but as soon as you need to find buttons, you’re boned.

My problem with the Metroid Prime (emphasis on Prime, because the regular 2D Metroids didn’t have this issue) is that there are many different things you’re expected to be doing, often in very very short amounts of time. The biggest culprit here is the visors. In the series you generally accumulate 2-3 additional visors in addition to your standard view; each of them serves a different purpose: research, thermal, etc. Unfortunately, switching between them was always a hindrance for me, especially in battle.

And boy, are there battles. Nintendo has this nasty habit of making their bosses require very specific processes to defeat. You see it in Zelda, in Mario, and of course, Metroid. Honestly, it can get a little tedious, but once you know what to do, it’s not overly difficult to go about accomplishing your task. Generally.

Prime adds a level of frustration in that not only are you trying to carry out a very specific set of tasks in a very limited amount of time, but you’re trying to do it from a first person perspective. At best, this is only a minor hindrance, but often it’s so much more. In this case, trying to defeat the first boss in the game was frustrating enough that I decided that this wasn’t the game for me.

Fortunately, Family Video also had copies of Orange Box for the bargain-basement price of $30, and at just $6 a game, that’s a purchase I feel immensely confident about.

Also, achievements.

A few weeks ago I happened across the PS3 display at Target. It looked like Motor Storm was the game of the day, as some sort of offroad racing machine was sitting idle in the middle of the racetrack. I felt like I needed to help, so I got to it. There was an air of familiarity and I soon realized why: I was playing the DiRT demo; the same one available on Xbox Live.

The big difference, and the big handicap on the PS3′s part, is that effing controller they insist on rehashing. I’ve complained about it before, and it’s still terrible. As it does on the 360 DiRT relies on the bottom shoulder buttons (L2 & R2 on the PS3; LT & RT on the 360) to control your brake and throttle. While this works great on the Xbox (thanks to .25-.5″ of travel on each trigger), the whole thing feels ill-suited to the pre2k stylez of the SIXAXIS. This is all exacerbated by the fact that now the technology is on a console that’s “next-gen” and costs $400 instead of $150.

The Playstation controllers used to be pretty decent. The PS1 controller looked like a mutation of the Super NES controller. Nothing wrong with that; it was more ergonomic and boasted two extra buttons. All this while Nintendo went off the deep end with the N64 controller; I don’t know why it looks like a trident. I don’t really care at this point.

But anyway, the analog sticks soon made their appearance and that’s where Sony’s been since, barring minor alterations. I have a feeling we’ll still be seeing this same basic design in 20 years, kind of like Eames chairs. And just like the Eames chairs, they’ll be increasingly expensive and “classic” but still not so hot ergonomically.

Here are the three things that need to happen for the DualSho… er, SIXAXIS to be a contender:

1. L2 & R2 need to be triggers, not just big buttons.
2. The left analog stick needs to change places with the direction pad; analog is now the primary method of control in games; the d-pad is ancillary if it’s used at all.
3. Rumble.

That sounds like… the 360 controller! I guess somebody’s been taking notes, at least.

Somewhere around a million years ago, I wrote a post that went into great detail about my issues with the design of the iMac, and things that could be fixed to make me like it more. Nitpicky things like power button and CD slot placement were secondary to my main concern: height adjustability. I’ve been wrestling with the idea of picking up an iMac to replace my beleaguered Powerbook for some time now, and the iMac seemed like the best candidate given what it offers for the price. I never published the post, because it was ridiculous. The iMac at the time (the white Intel) was gorgeous. The new metal/glass iMac is gorgeous. It’s fine. It’s perfect.

But not for me.

My big hangup was that I already have a not insignificant sum invested in my current display. I like my display, and so the iMac would have to function as an addition and not as a replacement. While it’s more than feasible technically, it leaves many things to be desired aesthetically. And the more I thought about it, I started to long for more RAM slots, room for more hard drives, and a design that I fell in love with the day it was introduced in 2003.

I will own a Mac Pro.