Ok. It all came to me in a rush so it could be a bit blah but here it is.

Revolution’s controller is going to revolutionise first person shooters more than we initially think. The genre has been dying all over again, having to resort to horror themes and generally making everything bigger and longer to improve itself. When people get excited over the ability to hold two different pistols at the same time you know we’re heading towards a brick wall.

Everyone’s already thought about simply aiming with the controller by tilting, as we would a mouse or second analogue stick. I propose however that with the revolution controller FPS games can move beyond that, beyond even what light guns offer, and offer true realism in handling firearms as done in real life. I’m talking blind shooting, shooting around corners, behind ourselves, over objects.

So far. Most people have accepted the obvious idea, to simply map the motion sensor as you would a mouse or right thumbstick. To look up and down and turn left or right. To aim. You gun remains shooting towards the middle of the screen.

I believe this to be a flawed approach. If you consider turning in the keyboard/mouse setup. You move the mouse towards the desired direction then lift it off the surface and back to your central position. If you do not do this and move back to centre, your character does the same, facing the original direction. When you apply this to a motion sensor, should the motion sensor be on at all time, we have no way to ‘cancel’ our movements as we can a mouse by lifting it. Therefore when we turn around a corner in a game we would have to hold the controller or our whole arm at 90° until we face our initial direction again. I dread to think of the difficulties we’de face holding our controller backwards, pointing away from the screen, should we ever need to backtrack. Because of this I suggest my own scheme.

Detachable Thumbstick
Move forward and back and turn left or right. *

Motion sensor.
Moving the ‘remote’ left and right across a horizontal plane to reach left or right.
Tilting the ‘remote’ up down, twists left and right to aim.
Moving the ‘remote’ up and down to raise and lower your gun.

Crosspad
Left and right: to strafe. Up and down to look up or down*

Under my scheme, we wield the controller as we would a real firearm. My approach  intergrates the precision aiming of lightgun games and the player controlled movement of traditional first person shooters. But it takes it up another notch.

Imagine a situation we’re you’re taking cover behind a wall. Around the corner to your left, enemies are opening fire, awaiting for you to appear. In a traditional FPS you would have to move out into the open and take out the gunmen while standing in the way of their gunfire. But now, with revolution, you could just edge up with your back pressed against the wall. Then at the corner. Reach around, moving the controller around your shoulder, and just firing. In person you would be holding the controller behind you, pressing the B trigger. In the game your character would we shooting blindly into the room, with only their arm exposed. Maybe you might be lucky, but if not you can still just swing around and run in firing at enemies as you would a light game game.

But there’s much more you could do. Taking cover behind a crate you could raise your arm to shoot over the top, or failing that, lob a grenade, simulating a throwing action with your arm, pressing the trigger to release the explosive. In multiplayer while running past an open doorway you could fire into it, just incase you hit someone, while not breaking stride or changing direction.

In case you just skipped all this or didn’t understand. To put it simply, in shooters, you should use the motion sensor to replicate the movements of the characters arm. Use the crosspad and thumbstick to take care of his feet and head.

*I say this because I’m used to the “Goldeneye” setup. For those who want to strafe with the thumbstick or walk with the cosspad it really doesn’t matter, they could map it like that. I just find speed and precision in turning to be more important than strafeing.