More Rail Shooters!

So, I've been getting a fair amount of experience with first person shooters and the wiimote. Plus, I've gotten to see a lot of other people play and so forth and so on.

And my opinion is that the Wii needs more rail shooters.

The wiimote is a great pointer, but there's a reason people don't shoot from the hip. It's not just that we can target down the sights: it's that we have better control when our gun is held at distance, linked to our eyeballs.

We'll put aside the fact that not being able to think of strafing in terms of a strict 90 degrees complicates things. As far as I can see, people get the hang of strafing pretty easy. No, it's the "shooting from the hip".

Most FPS games use a simulated set of gun sights. When you move the mouse or the thumb stick, your guy moves his gun, which is DIRECTLY LINKED TO YOUR LINE OF SIGHT, like guns really are.

So, what do wiimote games do? Instead of becoming more closely linked to the way that things actually work, they decided to add another layer of separation. Argh!

Normally, I would be open to arguments that we just have to get used to it. After all, we got used to using two thumbsticks to control our FPS action, we can get used to this, right?

Well, I've watched people who literally play Wii FPS games for hours a day. They are still clumsy at the controls. The moving isn't the problem: they figure that out pretty quick. It's the aiming. The shoot-from-the-hip aiming system. It doesn't work.

No, I think this is an inherently poor interface choice.

If you want the wiimote to be a gun, make it a gun.

Give me rail shooters!