Ion Total Controller

This is making the rounds over at Destructoid. Mad props to this fellow for looking like...well I don't think I need to say it, but he has a compelling game face and a unique take on how to hold the controller. I'm sure it's for effect, to show us the buttons, but really Ion? You couldn't have had your photographer stand at a different angle or showed this guy playing and then put an inset of the controller embedded in this photo?

If there is one thing many gamers hate, myself included, it is the perception that when you game you look like an ass: jumping up and down, gesturing, and whipping the controller around furiously. The wild antics so popular on TV and in photos for products do not happen. Even when using the wii-mote we don't look crazy! A much more accurate image of a console gamer would be this scene from The Guild season 3 in which Riley challenges Codex to some FPS action.

See, she's just sitting there, albeit aggressively because it's in the storyline, but she looks like she is actually playing Halo or something.

So, the Ion controller. Can you imagine playing a FPS or MMO, as the company suggests with this?

I'm interested in the different approach that they took with replacing the D-pad with a mouse ball, but I'd have to game with it before I could truly judge it. How much could this thing cost? I mean even some of the best controllers I have purchased have ended up malfunctioning at critical times or even just began to glitch randomly. Usually those problems have happened with the D-pad for me. Would the track ball change that or make it even worse?

However, the main problem I have with this is the size and probable weight. I have very small hands. Gamers come in all shapes and sizes and I'm on the hobbit-like end of that scale. Petite, to say the least. Can I picture myself holding this up for hours on end while I play Dragon Age? No.

Mann of the Dead

Fired up Red Dead Redemption and I was immediately transported into a world that felt eerily familiar and very specific. Yes, I realize that the game exploits the common tropes of any Western, but in its gritty realism and darker elements I believe it may be paying homage to the films of Anthony Mann, a director who moved from early works in film noir to the western and then finally the epic.

It's Mann's early Westerns, with their noir sensibilities, that I found similarities to as I watched the opening of the game and then began to play.

First of all we have the story. Red Dead Redemption's protagonist Marston is a reformed outlaw with a family. We see him walking through a town and getting on a train. He has to listen to his fellow passengers and we gamers get the necessary exposition that situates us in the world of the game. This is highly reminiscent of the opening of Mann's film Man of the West in which a reformed outlaw with a family sets out on a train only to be stranded after a robbery and forced to rejoin his old gang, eventually fighting them to survive. Now the latter is where the story departs, but the opening was interesting nonetheless. I was really expecting Marston's train to get robbed!

Next, we end up on a ranch whose house and internal layout greatly resemble the homestead in Winchseter '73. Its owner is a woman named Mac Farlane who resembles Vance Jeffords from the film The Furies. In fact, this rancher reminds me of an amalgamation of several of Mann's strong female characters from a variety of his films. Even the chase sequence reminds me of Vance Jeffords horseback races with Juan Herrera and the landscape begins to look a lot like the Furies ranch as you travel around past the house.

Now, how about the game play? Well, it's very smooth and learning the controls comes very fast. I really liked being on the Mac Farlane ranch as an introduction to game play mechanics. Oh, and the landscapes are so beautiful as to be distracting. If this is how good the game is with only a few minutes in I cannot wait to experience more.

The game included a massive fold-out map and a beautiful poster of Mac Farlane looking tough as hell. If I continue enjoying the game that poster is going up!

*Photo: Vance Jeffords, copyright the original holder.