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I have finally gotten around to playing Half Life 2: Episodes One and Two. I am a big fan of the HL series, and I’ve played every HL game and add-on except Blue Shift, and the Episode. This is the first time in several years that I have played a First Person Shooter game on the PC, since buying a PS3.

I noticed almost immediately upon picking up Hl2:EP1 that the mouse and keyboard is still a far superior input device to any console controller that I have ever used. Even after several years, I still find aiming in a console FPS quite clunky, and I have to spend time “dialing in” the sights, as if I am directing artillery. The mouse, by contrast, makes for smooth, intuitive, and very accurate aiming.

The implications of this, I feel, go beyond just improving the gameplay. I think that a control interface is one of the most important barriers towards immersing a playing in a virtual world. Ideally, a player should identify with their character, and view them as an extension of themselves. Every time the player has to think about the controls, you are breaking that connection. Every time the player has to think about which button to press, or how to perform an action, they realise that they are not Gordon Freeman fighting the forces of the Combine, they are sitting in a chair looking at a computer screen.

Since the most important action in an FPS game is aiming (and shooting) I had overlooked the importance of the mouse as a control interface. I am now thinking of all of the console games that I have played over the last few years, and how much more immersive they would have been with a smoother interface.

It’s not that console controllers are bad, it’s that they are just slightly clunky, even for experienced players. This is why a lot of console games have “aim-assist” on lower difficulties, to help newer players hit what they are trying to aim at. PC game don’t have aim-assist, because they don’t need it. Even when you think you have gotten used to the controls, the clunkiness is still there, at the back of your mind, like a flickering light or a dull humming noise. You only notice it when it’s gone.

What’s needed is some kind of innovation for console games to allow this level of control. A conventional mouse and keyboard wouldn’t work, since consoles are designed to be played from couches and easy chairs, not desks, so a handheld solution is required. It is possible that with the advent of Virtual Reality headsets like the Oculus Rift, and their associated head-tracking technology, that all conventional control interfaces for games will become obsolete. However, I believe this is a long way off.

Until that time, there is room in the market for a mouse-like control interface for console games, to allow those games to achieve the level of interactivity that PC gamers have enjoyed for years.