I'm Going to Try to Write about Games for My Classes, and Post Them Here

Being a writing major, I get a lot of writing practice.

I am going to spend this quarter testing GTA4's and GRAW2's multiplayer and seeing if getting most of the achievements in COD4 has a strong positive effect on my XBOX 360 multiplayer shooting skills; COD4's XBLA achievements are all singleplayer, unless you count the role-playing game unlocking-of-stuff that makes COD4's multiplayer special.

I will also see how useless the sniper rifle is in the XBOX 360 version of Left 4 Dead.

This summer, I will do 100-200 pages of writing. A lot of it will be on this blog.

FPS - The MOUSE vs. the XBOX 360 Gamepad

Question- What makes mice better than XBOX 360 controllers for first-person shooters? First the obvious reasons: 

         1. Mice allow for more accurate shots per-minute in situations when there are more than zero enemies on screen.

         2. Mice allow for quicker looking around, which increases the amount of information the player gets about his or her environment per-minute. 

         But after playing all the Halo-like shooters on my XBOX 360, I find that those two lose their advantageous nature. But only in singleplayer.

         The mouse is better for competitive multiplayer. If you face the best PC shooter against the best XBOX 360 shooter, they using their platform’s standard controls, the PC shooter will gun down the console shooter (in game), unless the PC shooter gets hit by a pterodactyl (in real life). That is why, as long as you keep mice users away from gamepad users, the world is at pea − keeping them apart is impossible! There is a peripheral called the XFPS Sniper 3.0+ that allows most USB mice to be used with XBOX 360 first-person shooters.

         In singleplayer, gamepad annoyances can be sufficiently assuaged by putting auto-aiming or smooth aiming or both into the game. 

Another issue then: should we be pissed about the XBOX 360 singleplayer being harder to beat than the PC singleplayer, for gamepad in lieu of mouse? I say no. When the XBOX 360 singleplayer is harder than the PC singleplayer, we should be happy as long as we know that the hardest difficulty is beatable and as long as we find the controls intuitive (I don't find the XBOX 360 controller unintuitive with these Halo-like FPSs).

        It's that Halo thing that the mouse is better. The XBOX 360 controller limits FPS design. Forget Crysis on the XBOX 360.         

        What do you think?

And, if you have time, read:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_196/5938-Bridging-the-Skill-Gap