A common criterion we see in game reviews today is ''controls.'' Essentially, many games are critiqued on how accessible they are based on the button layout. Words like ''finicky,'' ''unresponsive,'' and ''unpolished'' catch our eyes and make us instantly write off a game we may have been anticipating as poorly designed. But how reliable ought these terms be to us? I present a counter-thesis to the idea that the controls in a game could ever be criticized or praised objectively, and that it wouldn't matter even if they could be.
To start out, here's a little story: When I was 7 years old, I played Medal of Honor for the first time on my PS2. I was one of those weird kids who always loved his Y-axis to be reversed, so my play-session started with me pulling up the options menu and trying to find a way to invert my ''up-and-down.'' Unfortunately, the menu was so confusing to me that I ended up enabling all sorts of crazy settings; things like ''southpaw'' and ''reversed X-axis'' made no sense to me, but I did my best and flipped right through all of them. When I exited the options screen and returned to the beaches of Normandy, something wasn't right. Not only did I walk sideways when I tried to look around, look up when I tried to walk forward, and spin around when trying to strafe incoming bullets, but my Y-axis still hadn't been reversed. Blame my wee little brain at the time, but for the next hour or so I couldn't for the life of me restore the settings back to default. So you know what I did? I played the entire game with those lambastic controls that made no sense to me. The whole game. With no complaints.
''Well Luke, you aren't making a very good case for this whole notion of yours that game controls are subjective to personal tastes,'' I can hear you saying. Just let me finish the story. When Medal of Honor's campaign had finally been completed, effectively bringing me out of my completionist mode, some brothers of mine wanted me to jump over and play Halo 2's multiplayer with them. I hadn't played anything other than Medal of Honor for almost a week, so I was happy to get back to my favorite split-screen experience. We popped in the game, and for the first time since I started gaming I was utterly demolished by my little siblings for what seemed like an eternity. ''What's wrong with these controls?!'' I yelled. (Okay, not really. But for the sake of dramatization, I've got to exaggerate a little.) Halo seemed like a completely different game to me; I wasn't used to any of those controls. Walking around the map was like flopping down a hill in a shopping cart with no wheels. ''My Y-axis must not be reversed!'' I thought. But lo and behold, it was reversed all right; and that was only one of the many problems facing me.
You see, I was used to playing on Medal of Honor's control scheme, which happened to be fitted toward someone who was left-handed, one-armed, and liked his Y-axis set to default. I didn't even realize what had happened until later, when my older brother showed me the mistake I had made by getting used to those terribly awful controls... but were they really all that bad? Who makes the decision that a certain control scheme ought to be the ''default'' setting? And who's to say that we humans aren't adaptable and can't take on any button or stick layout that's thrown at us without a hitch, as long as we have an open mind? The answer is this: game controls are subjective to our own tastes, to our own biases. Whatever we're used to is what works best for us, which is why when we're introduced to a control scheme that is so startlingly different than the one we're used to, it appears that something must be broken.
''Well Luke, if that's true, then why do so many games get unanimously criticized for having 'finicky,' 'unresponsive,' and 'unpolished' controls?'' Don't worry; we're getting to that.
In reality, reviewers will criticize a game's ''playability'' without acknowledging that it's the core design of the game that's at fault, and not the button layout. What they're really calling out when they use the term ''finicky'' to criticize a shooter's aiming system is the lack of any auto-targeting, bullet-spread, or hit-reactions. ''Unresponsive'' refers to so-called tank controls, when the character you're playing as or the weapons you're using have a delayed response to your inputs. Likewise, similar terms correspond to how the game itself is designed more than whether the right button was assigned to its function.
Quite frankly, the large majority of games on the market allow for customizable control-schemes anyway. That reviewers would continue to criticize a game's button layout in full knowledge of this fact only serves to prove my point: it's the design of the game that's at fault, not the controls. Now, does this mean that if you thought long and hard about it and did your very best to assign every movement input to a controller's face buttons that you couldn't prove me wrong about all this? I supposed you could try, but ultimately the only way anyone could effectively ''ruin'' a game's controls is by compromising the core design of the game; if that means restricting the player from moving, then yes, that would be bad design. But ultimately it's impossible for anyone to form an objective criticism towards a control scheme they simply aren't used to. It's just a matter of familiarizing yourself with the game.
''Are you trying to say that developers shouldn't give us players the ability to customize our control layout? Is that what you're trying to say, Luke?'' Why, certainly not. Just the fact that I've become used to reversed controls proves that I'm not out to take away people's freedom to tailor their experience (although it's interesting to point out that I probably would have been perfectly content with default Y-axis controls had I not accidentally changed it years ago). Still, it's unjustified to criticize someone else's tastes. If it works for them, it ought to work for you, too. Left-handed people can get upset about modern console controllers putting the face-buttons on the right side, but ultimately they'll just have to come to terms with the fact that they've still got two hands; they can still play the game.
As video games continue to innovate, our ability to personalize our experiences becomes a fundamental aspect of play, a necessity even; expanding on that is only natural. But for those who are tasked with critically analyzing games, it's essential that we not overlook what really makes or breaks a game, or else we risk courting bias, causing developers to focus on the menial aspects of game design and leaving them to make the same mistakes over again. Let's let them focus on innovating the games themselves; worrying about who likes which button to go where is left up to personal tastes, and can be changed in a heartbeat anyway. If a game is designed to be fun, then you'll enjoy your experience regardless of the control scheme.
