Pushing Buttons

Sometimes I get all excited when I talk about games. When I get a new game I usually want to tell people about it and when they’re in my humble abode I hand them the controller and insist they have a go. Usually that’s followed by that tricky question of what buttons they need to press… I forget that not all my friends spend half their free time with a controller in their hands. They do silly things like watch TV and something called ‘running.’ For me it’s all pretty logical, I grew up with them and ten minutes within most games will have me working out the gist. How hard can it be for these folks?! Take the PS4 controller for example.. That’s only got one.. two… like twenty one buttons and two sticks!! Easy!

I love my controllers but fret not, this blog is about more than pressing buttons…. And that’s because buttons are only part of the fun. Recently I’ve been playing Tearaway Unfolded, a game about a paper based dude wondering through an episode of Art Attack come to life. There’s a story and stuff and I ain’t got time to discuss it all so I’ll stick with the controller wizardry. There’s a light on the back of that controller in your hands and in this game you need to shine it. Point it at the screen to destroy the bad guys or just shine it in people’s faces to see them squirm in confusion. There’s a touch pad on the controller that with a swipe of your finger sends gusts of winds blowing through the screen, spinning the characters and near dismantling the world you’re exploring. I flipping love this stuff! The grin on my face probably matches the one from when I first joined some dots to other dots and got a picture of a dog. Genius at work.

Way back on the Nintendo DS there was a Zelda game called Phantom Hourglass. I would run about, swing my sword and do all the things I instinctively knew how to do through years of pressing buttons. Then came this room with someone stuck behind a wall and the game was telling me to shout out. I pressed every button on that machine, I turned it upside down and looked for buttons that weren’t there and I contorted my fingers in unnatural ways in order to press as many differnet combinations as possible. Eventually I lost my cool and angrily shouted hello at the stupid machine. The game replied… Puzzle solved, and a grin on my face that nearly burst my cheeks. Then of course I had my parents staring at me, having ignored my constant rubbing of the DS and calling it ‘my precious,’ they found my shouting at it to be a bit more peculiar than usual.

Super Mario 3D World on the Wii U... a friend played that like he had played any other Mario then came some propeller powered platforms. I knew already what he had to do and I told him to blow them to make them work. “What button??” came the bemused cries before eventually he blew on the controller’s mic. Platforms moved and the giggles came. Magic. 

And that’s what controllers are, pure magic. I like to look upon my black consoles and controllers, admire their sleekness and talk about the technical specifications below the covers but I’m way happier when they just melt in to my hands and ask me to do simple things that have a big impact on screen. They’re like magic tricks, ignore the fact that it’s just a set of a props and nimble hands, sit back, switch off and enjoy some smile inducing randomness.

Probably should have ended there but there’s more examples!! Controlling all of Flower by tilting the controller, watching your wife hold the controller perfectly still or she’ll be caught and killed in Until Dawn, the first time you played Wii Sports… loads more.  You get the idea. Pushing buttons is only half the fun. Enjoy