Myth and Keyboard

I just bought a new mouse for a family computer today.  I was none too keen to start my homework, so I thought maybe a little stalling on Steam was in order.  I've been picking at Portal 2 on my Macbook Pro sort of, but after beating it on PS3 and watching my brother play much of the game, I thought I'd go another route today.

A couple years ago, a buddy of mine played through Half-Life 2 on the Orange Box for Xbox 360.  I tried, but eventually gave up on a vehicle section that just felt too awkward.  Playing the vehicle-based parts of Half-Life 2 on a mouse and keyboard has been much much better, but I just found a spot that has me cursing the things.  Antlions.  No one should have to deal with antlions on a mouse and keyboard.

I had forgotten why I was giving "the best PC game ever" a break, just to find that it wasn't a voluntary break - I'm kind of stuck.  I'm at a segment I remember seeing a lot of hype about.  You take Gordon Freeman across a desert area without touching the sand.  Just use the gravity gun to place items in front of you!  You can jump on them and avoid the sand (and antlions).  This is a pretty smart gameplay idea; it uses the unique abilities of the gravity gun, it makes you slow down and think about your decisions, it changes things up.

This would be good, if the keyboard wasn't the most outdated piece of technology in the gaming industry.  Why would Valve give you these tiny spots to land on when you can only move at one (sprinting here is pretty damn inadvisable) speed?

PC kids like to point out how superior  m/kb controls are when compared with controllers, but it simply isn't true all of the time.  If PC gaming is going to stick with this completely deficient manner of movement control, why would the flagship PC first-person shooter have an extensive platforming section?  Why is Braid so difficult when I've just recently conquered Little Big Planet 2 (which has more difficult level design, and relies more on quick responses)?  The same could be asked about Trine, which I've taken a break from simply because it isn't enjoyable enough to continue.

Mice are phenomenally sensitive (and thus, accurate) devices; there's no comparison between the dexterity in a wrist and the dexterity in a thumb.  For perfect aim on first-person shooters, yes the mouse is king.  But PC gamers shouldn't be so haughty as to think their keyboard is worth anything past the button count.

Part of the appeal of PC gaming is that you use the devices already at hand.  This has paid off with the aforementioned high button count of the keyboard and precision of the mouse, but consoles are making progress.  Most prefer use of an Xbox 360 controller over a mouse and keyboard for first-person shooters.  I don't want to say that "because most people like this, it is better than that," we only have to look to the music industry to see that that isn't true.  But I would like to point out the necessity in innovation when new hardware is released once every six to eight years.  Sony catches flak for not changing their controller enough; Nintendo has faced the fact that for the hardcore, they've possibly changed their controller too much.  But then look at the 360 controller - an improvement over the original Xbox controller in every regard, and seen by many as the best console controller ever.  Let's not forget the increasingly prevalent incorporation of motion control into traditional styles of gameplay either.  That may be - with some serious improvements in technology as well as implementation - where the big changes are made.  With console control constantly improving, and things staying the same on the PC front year after year, it's only a matter of time before console controls move from dumbed-down knock-off to visionary trend-setter.  This has already happened in the realm of the fighting game, and the two- and three- dimensional platformer.