Revolution or Evolution?

The DS and the Revolution can provide more intuitive control for games than the traditional control methods. I'm still not totally sold on it, but I think Nintendo deserves at least a chance because of the way they've handled the DS.

A lot of games that come out have interesting ideas that can't be properly executed because of control issues. For example, Black and White had you casting spells with certain mouse movements, and Die By The Sword (an old and rather mediocre game, but with a cool concept) actually gave the player complete control of the character's sword, letting the player get more immersed and be more accurate. Previously, games like this have been held back by not really having a great interface for their ideas. The DS has games on it that can't be done on any other console: Trauma Center, Kirby Canvas Curse, Meteos, Pac Pix, Yoshi Touch and Go, Zoo Keeper, and especially Ouendan.

A lot of games are extremely clunky on consoles. A quality game like Exit on the PSP just suffers from bad controls, or Super Monkey Ball on a crappy thumbstick, or Starcraft 64, or any non-PC version of Worms can all be improved and simplified. Who would prefer playing Maniac Mansion on the NES over the PC version with mouse control? The controls for many games do work, but probably not as well as they could.

That said, it depends entirely on the games for Revolution. If the system comes out and nothing takes advantage of it, of course it'll suck.

For certain genres that already exist, I'm hoping that the gameplay for them on the Revolution will be much more streamlined. I can see a lot of potential already for first person shooters, flight sims, stealth games, horror games, and even real time strategies. A console that can do all that and potentially have a SCUMM system game work well on it sounds pretty cool to me.

Jam it back in, in the dark.