Elsa sneaks up and grabs the flag... she's running with two enemies following close on her heels firing at her. She sees the tank up ahead and runs toward it - instant cover and protection! It's only a few feet away now... she runs up to it... and squats beside it. WTF? Is she taking a pee break or something? Why the hell didn't she just get in the tank?

No... I did not mean to squat beside the tank, I pressed the button to get into a vehicle... for the wrong game! My name is Elsa and I have a problem. I play too many games and have OCD... Over-gaming Controller Dementia.

So much of gaming is automatic, once we get used to the controls we often don't even think about the buttons we are pushing to achieve the action... until we push the wrong button and instead of jumping, we throw a grenade at our feet to commit a spectacular suicide. There isn't even any standardized controller configuration... while most games use R1 to shoot, every once in awhile some game comes along and decides to use R2 just to screw with you. The other day I accidentally loaded up a game using my husband's ID... and suddenly I was in a game using switch sticks with an inverted view. I quite literally could not play the game. My lil avatar was running into walls while looking at the sky or his feet and doing pirouettes... it was like being a drunk epileptic trying to do microsurgery.

With the abilities of current gen games where we can customize our avatars with different heads, voices, outfits and even facial scars... why does every game not have ingame controller customization? Why don't more developers allow for button remapping? Resistance 1 and UT3 both had this capability, why can't every game include a comprehensive controller configuration menu? Why doesn't Sony buy this code and give it away free to every developer rather than spending money making more pick-up bar emulator locations for Home? In fact, why isn't a controller remapping widget not built directly into the console operating system? Just as we can access the XMB to change our headset volumes and configurations, why can't we access a controller remapping system that retains the configuration for each game? The very basics of gaming is the input controls... why don't console developers work to create a way for the users to create their own customized and comfortable control inputs?

Many of us are old enough that gaming controllers essentially worked like this:


Nowadays, the L2 and R2 triggers work as "alt" controls for the entire controller... essentially creating a controller like this:


When new gamers take up gaming nowadays, the learning curve is much more difficult... this is exacerbated when games don't give controller options but instead give a "standardized" configuration that the user has to adjust to. If third parties like Splitfish can create the Frag FX controller that has remappable controls, then why can't console developers create their own 1st party controller remapping systems? Why should I have to adjust each time... why can't games adjust to me? Isn't this the "next generation" of gaming?

I'll be honest, there are games I didn't buy because I hated the controls. Resident Evil 5 was one of those games. Yes, I probably would have adjusted to the controls, but in this day and age, why should I adjust to awkward controls? There are other games where I tried the demo and specifically bought the game because the controls felt natural. Bioshock was one such game. Battlefield:Bad Company was a rental... because it didn't have a southpaw control scheme for my husband, so I knew it wouldn't be a game that he would play or that we could play together online - otherwise they might have sold two copies of the game.

The basics to most any online game nowadays are the controls... and voice chat. This is another area where the PS3 seems moronically inconsistent. How does a game like Battlefield 1943 manage to pass any type of quality control process when voice chat consistently fails after a game or two? How does a game like Sacred 2 manage to be released with "4 person co-op play" when the person creating the co-op game loses voice chat the minute there are more than 2 people in the room? I think that one of the reasons for the commercial failure of UT3 was the lack of voice support. For the first several months after the game was released the developer refused to believe that voice support was even problematic despite the numerous complaints... the fix simply came too late. Again, why isn't there either standard programming for voice chat that is freely given to all PS3 developers or alternatively an operating system option for voice chat that works in all games?

The PS3 is an amazing piece of electronics... you can watch blu-ray movies, you can download movies, you can watch movies from a flash drive, you can voice/video chat, you can play music, do a slide show, you can game online for free and can even opt to inhabit the second-life world of Home... but it seems that the actual function of gaming is not as fully supported as other aspects. Why can't every game have reliable voice chat and customizable controls?

These two fairly minor issues... but they continue to piss me off! :(