Customizable Controls at the Firmware Level?

One of our members, soulwarrior, has written an excellent post on the behalf of Alt-Controls.com and AbleGamers regarding the implementation of customizable controls at the firmware level.

I know that a number of you have mentioned the need for this, so now would be an excellent time to voice yourselves. If this is something that interests you (and why wouldn’t it?), please head on over to the PS3 Forums to lend your support.

He has also opened up an online petition here as well. Thanks, soulwarrior!

Battlefield: Bad Company

Much to my surprise, guys and gals (note the sarcastic tone), the full version of Battlefield: Bad Company offers the same control setups as the Beta and Demo. No Southpaw, Legacy or button assigning.

You can read my full review of the game over at AbleGamers.com. I was invited by this community to do a guest review for them. As it turns out, they are very supportive of our ideals.

Please go check out this great website and my guest review here.

COD: World at War Debut Trailer

This has been floating around on the net for the past few days, but in case you haven’t seen it yet, here is the trailer for Call of Duty: World at War -

Conspicuously absent is any game play footage, but the trailer at least provides some insight on the setting and tone of the title.

Correction: It’s Halo, Frontlines and Map Week

Looks like Frontlines has some new maps on the way as well:

“…if a company wanted to re-energize (create?) a game’s fans base, we can think of few ways to do it better than this: Five maps are being doled out for the game, all for free. The first one hit Xbox Live today, according to Microsoft mouthpiece Major Nelson.”

Source: Joystiq

Halo 3 week at Alt-Controls.com?

Two postings in a row on Halo 3, so it must be! And I guess it’s the game that keeps on giving, because a new map is on the way yet again and this time, it’s another remake of an old school favorite. Read the rest…

Hope for HALO 3

As many readers may know I am an honest to goodness HALO 3 freak. I love the game, to be honest it never leaves the disc tray of my 360 (and if it does it’s straight back in when I’m finished playing other games).

Now like many of you guys I struggle when it comes to jumping and melee attacks while in the heat of combat. But there is hope, I have now started to use the button layot ‘BUMPER JUMPER’ - this is a small configuration difference to the button layout which I’ve listed below.

Read the rest…

FRONTLINES PATCH 2 RELEASED A.K.A YOU AREN’T VOICING YOURSELVES

Yesterday Kaos Studios released the second patch for the 360 version of Frontlines: Fuel of War. You guys remember this one right? Well apparently you don’t because it would seem that people didn’t make enough commotion to coerce Kaos into fixing their broken control options for Legacy and Southpaw-Legacy.

I must say that again I am disappointed…but not in Kaos Studios…no, I feel that the blame lies solely on the majority of our own readers. Now before you send us a bunch of hate mail please try to understand that I am only stating what I believe is fact and I am not just attacking you readers out there. In case you folks don’t understand the point of this website, I’ll explain.

The purpose of Alt-Controls.com is not to help you all to avoid purchasing a developer’s game because of a lack of control options; it’s not even about getting Legacy or Southpaw controls included in every first or third person shooter. It’s most defiantly not about any one game. No, the idea here is to get the developers understand that “not every FPS player sees a developer’s default or numerous layouts as the best option.” Getting developers to understand this simple point is vital to many of us, whether you play default, legacy, or southpaw. I would imagine that even folks over at AbleGamers could get behind our ideals. The point being that, if you get developers to understand this simple idea, they have only one recourse: controller mapping. If Fred wants to aim upwards with the A button, dammit he should have that option. Sure, we provide control information about every new release in the genre but that is all intended to be secondary; a “fall back” if you will.

The point of this rant? 2Three and myself see the numbers, we see the traffic from our readers. What you folks aren’t aware of is that you are part of bigger community than you may think. You come from all corners of the planet. The problem is that too many of you sit on the sidelines and watch each disappointment unfold. You make no comments on this site, no attempts to contact developers, no effort towards making your voices heard.

Be helpful, get some help:
If you make a post on a developer’s forum, post here to let the Alt-Controls.com community know and vice versa, if you see someone has made a forum post get over there, sign up, and chime in. I believe this community can make a difference, you just have to put forth the effort.

The Legacy Player’s Survival Guide

Legacy: The control style that many of us used to learn how to play console first person shooters. For the Legacy player, this is the only way to play shooting games. It’s seen as awkward and archaic by many other gamers; but for us, it’s all we know and what we need in order to play a first person shooter comfortably.

With the way things have been going lately, you have to seriously consider if the Legacy control scheme will even be around in the next couple years. Less and less games are supporting this control style and some series that used to offer this option, such as Quake, no longer do. And even Free Radical Design, who worked on GoldenEye 007 while employed at Rare, has moved away from including a Legacy option in their recent flop, Haze, for the PS3.

Which brings me to the purpose of this article: It is a compilation of some of the better titles, in my humble opinion, that support Legacy – past, present and (hopefully) future. Read the rest…

Call of Duty: World at War

Now there’s an original twist to keep things fresh…

Anyway, all joking aside, Activision has confirmed that the next Call of Duty is titled “World at War” and will officially be taking place during, yep, you guessed it, the Second World War. Read the rest…

Bourne Conspires Against Us

Well, that may be a little dramatic, but The Bourne Conspiracy does not offer any support for Southpaw or Legacy controls.

However, you’ll find that the default presets are actually fairly comfortable for navigation, combat and driving… but when it comes to shooting, it’s not so good. This game offers the now standard over the shoulder/FPS-style aiming as seen in Gears of War, and pretty well every third person shooter these days. So I definitely missed my Legacy controls during the firefights.

Perhaps an auto-aim function would have been more practical for the shooting segments, similar to what’s offered in GTA 4 since there are four separate button layouts for navigation, combat, driving and shooting. Obviously, alt-controls would be awkward for the non-shooting parts. Read the rest…