Poll Results: Do you use inverted aiming?

So it seems as though a slim majority of you folks (55.07%) prefer to use inverted aiming, while 43.48% don’t. And 1.45% of you weren’t sure what the heck I was talking about. Guess I’ll be nice and briefly explain: Think of inverted aiming as being very similar to flight controls - you pull the analog stick back to look up, and push it forward to look down. Much like Legacy controls, I became accustomed to inverted aiming thanks to GoldenEye 007.

Warhammer: “Most Accessible Mainstream Game” - AbleGamers

AbleGamers has cited Warhammer as the Most Accessible Mainstream Game of 2008, thanks to Mythic addressing (and correcting) their concerns with the game:

Upon Warhammer’s September 18, 2008 launch date, the game had accessibility features covering a wide range of disabilities right out the box. This includes options for the physically disabled such as mapping nearly all actions to the keyboard, or playing the entire game just by using a mouse or special controllers. There is also text for all key events to aid the hearing impaired and the game has also been made accessible to the colorblind.

Despite the features available upon launch, members of the disabled community still had one concern: Warhammer did not work with the On-Screen Keyboard. This is a tool gamers with physical limitations use to type data on screen with a mouse. It is one of the few MMOs that missed this feature.

According to Mythic, a new patch will be released within the next two weeks taking care of the On-Screen Keyboard.

The problem was first addressed on the AbleGamers forum. A registered user who had purchased Warhammer brought up the issue regarding the On-Screen Keyboard shortly after the game’s release. Mark Barlet, Editor-In-Chief of AbleGamers, wrote Mythic regarding the issue on several occasions.

In case you’re not familiar with AbleGamers, they are a community for disabled gamers and push heavily for accessibility in videogames. You’ll find that much of their mission overlaps with ours, and they have been extremely supportive of this website.

Please go visit Mark and the crew from AbleGamers to read the complete story and press release regarding their naming of Warhammer as the Most Accessible Mainstream Game of 2008. I’m a big fan of their new design, and they have a lot of interesting things going on over there these days.

Gears 2: Customizable Buttons Thread

I think everyone can agree that fully customizable buttons in Gears of War 2 would be pretty helpful. It’s great that we have configurations available for Southpaw & Legacy, but there are many people that would like to be able to customize the button layout for various reasons.

One of our readers has explained his thoughts on this over at the official Gears of War boards. Please head over there to post your thoughts as well and back him up. A number of you have expressed the same concerns to us… so express them to EPIC now as they frequent their boards often, looking for feedback from players. You’re all aware that UT3 offers button mapping, so perhaps voicing your concerns to EPIC may get some results for future Gears of War games.

Poll: Do you use inverted aiming?

Just curious how you all prefer to aim. I use inversion, and I’m interested in seeing which style will be more common around here.

The poll is set to close on February 10. Thanks in advance for your vote.

*Poll closed - results

2008 Alties: Results

Here are the results for the 2008 Alties. Thanks for voting, everyone. Read the rest…

Check out this little gem…

Stumbling around the interwebs, searching for stories about Legacy controls, I found this incredible article! This is a must read. Someone has gotten through to Gabe Newell at Valve, and he’s promised Legacy controls in Left 4 Dead coming soon. I was all too excited to go check my Xbox 360 copy of The Orange Box, but alas no Legacy to be found there quite yet. Gabe doesn’t specifically state that Legacy will come to The Orange Box as well, but that was the game that sparked the whole conversation. Here’s hoping! Check it out here.

2008 Alties

2007 was considered by many to be one of the greatest years in gaming history, and 2008 had a lot to live up to. Personally, I would have to say that 2008 surpassed last year. It started out somewhat slow, but we’ve been hammered by solid title after solid title over the last few months, and I’m still yet to try a number of games that I was anticipating.

So with the new year under way, the time has come to pay tribute to the best of the best in ‘08. Last year, The 2007 Alties were pretty much just an “Editor’s Choice” kind of deal, but this year we have decided to open the floor up for everyone to voice their opinions.

The games included in the categories are of course what we consider to be titles that are applicable to what we do around here. So in other words, don’t expect to see something like Mortal Kombat vs DC or any Wii games as options.

The polls will close on January 10, so get going:

*Update: Jan. 9 (late evening) - Ok, so I have closed the polls a little earlier than originally listed. They were set to close automatically in a few hours anyway, and I wanted to get the results up before turning in!

Season’s Greetings from Alt-Controls.com

Festive colors, no? Anyway, we hope that you are all enjoying the holiday season and spending far too much time playing your new games.

It’s been a little slow around here lately - there hasn’t been anything out that needed immediate coverage and we’re all pretty up to date about the control options for the games of significance. Things should be picking up soon though as there are a number of cool games on the way in 2009.

Speaking of games, what did you guys and gals manage to snare this year? I was happy to receive Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War. I’ve already smashed through World at War and finished it last night. It was a pretty decent game in my opinion and I had quite a bit of fun with it. Albeit short, I thought that the campaign was a riot.

The levels taking place in the Pacific provided an interesting twist to the series, and being able to knife the banzai troops in the neck was a nice touch. Though I have to admit that I enjoyed the Russian Campaign a little more. I thought these levels were better, and found them to be more appealing visually as well. Although the Russian missions were essentially familiar territory for the series and didn’t really offer anything new or unexpected, in my opinion they provided some classic COD action that was executed very well.

As for Gears 2, I’ll be trying that out later today after spending about half an hour with the original for a quick tune up and to get back in the Gears frame of mind. *Update - Gears 2 is awesome.

And how about the rest of you, what games are you occupying yourselves with during this holiday season?

RUMOR: DEATH OF THE FATHER OF LEGACY? *updated

*It’s official now, the developer has shutdown permanently -via Kotaku

As of late, it has become clear that not even the mighty gaming industry is immune to the powers of economic downturn. Reports around the web state that the offices for Nottingham based Free Radical were unexpectedly locked down today. Apparently the staff was notfied when they arrived for work. You may recall that this studio is comprised of staff from Rare’s Goldeneye and is also responsible for the developemnt of the much loved Time Splitters, and the mostly “meh’d” Haze. One can only hope this isn’t true, but many in the industry are taking such actions these days. Even big players like EA and SONY have cut jobs as of late.

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MIA Games

Now that the year is coming to a close and the onslaught of new releases has slowed down, we want to ensure that the control list pages are current. This was a pretty busy season for new shooters and I tend to think that as a community, we all did a great job of making sure that the control information for new games was readily available for everyone in relatively short order.

However, with so many new games coming out that needed covering, there are a few examples of titles that inadvertently slipped through the cracks. So at this point, we’d like to open the floor to our contributors and readers to help us play a little game of catch up.

The games that still need to be added to our lists include Silent Hill: Homecoming, Secret Service and NPPL Championship Paintball 2009 (or Call of Duty: Paintball as we like to call it since it’s an Activision title).

In our defense for not covering these games yet, for the most part they are budget or low-profile titles that are sometimes difficult to get a hold of. We thought it was better to focus our efforts on the games that you’ve all been dying to get your hands on, such as Gears of War 2, Resistance 2, and more recently, the demo for RE5 that was only available in Japan. And I’ll be willing to bet that this is probably the first that you’ve heard of these games, with the exception of the new Silent Hill.

So if any of you folks have some information on these games or would like to chip in by checking one out, please feel free, and either post a comment or email us with the details so we can ensure that our lists are current. We would appreciate the hand.