HANDS ON GUIDE

Controls

Both the 360 and PS3 are supplied with a single wireless gamepad. The 360's pad is comfortable to hold, but it's big and heavy. In comparison, the PS3's pad is so light it feels like a toy. Both gamepads bristle with 11 buttons plus two analogue sticks, which can be depressed, and analogue triggers. Both pads are wireless, although the 360's use a proprietary technology, while the PS3's pads use Bluetooth. The PS3's gamepad also senses motion along three axes, but it has no rumble feedback, unlike the 360's pad. Sony plans to add rumble to its gamepads this year, but you'll need to buy them separately.

Sony and Microsoft have tried to produce gamepads that can handle FPS games and, provided those FPS games are slow, ponderous efforts that require neither reflexes nor accuracy, they can. To the PC gamer, the weaknesses of using a gamepad for an FPS are obvious. You just can't simply whip around to cover your sides or back at anything like the speed you can on the PC with a keyboard and mouse. If somebody manages to sneak beside you, they can strafe around you in safety as you try to bring your crosshairs to bear with all the pace of a vintage Dalek. If the lack of speed wasn't bad enough, you also lose precision. The gamepad isn't nearly as sensitive as a mouse with a several-thousand-DPI sensor, so precise aiming is laborious. What's more, all the controls of an FPS are crammed onto a pad that you control with only the thumbs and forefingers of either hand, whereas a keyboard and mouse use all ten digits and your palms. This provides much finer control and better reflexes as more functions have a finger over them.

The gamepads proved to be more adept at racing games, such as Need for Speed: Pro Street and Motorstorm, thanks to their mix of analogue and digital control options. Not many games use the PS3 pad's motion-detection capabilities, but in those that do were fun and surprising. The Tomb Raider-like Uncharted: Drake's Fortune lets you use it to keep your character's balance when crossing tricky sections of the level, for instance.

The PS3 gamepad's capabilities are a curio compared with the Wii's motion-sensing abilities, though, which are key to its games. The Wii Remote has two parts: a small TV remote-sized controller, and a 'nunchuck' attachment that plugs into the bottom of the main remote. If you're unaware of the Wii Remote's powers, you must have been born with genes that suppress hype (lucky you). To recap, it can sense direction and speed of movement along three axes, as well as its orientation, and it has a small built-in speaker and rumble.

The Wii is bundled with Wii Sports, a selection of mini-games based around sports such as tennis and baseball, all of which use the physical nature of the remote to involve you. It's a strange experience to describe, because it's both simple and nuanced. In tennis, for example, you control your character's shots but not their movement on court, yet you can apply spin to the ball. It does a great job of levelling the playing field between players. Your hundreds of hours of practising headshots in Counter-Strike: Source don't count for much with the Wii.

1 | 2

Latest Hands on guides

These are the most popular features articles over the past three months.

Mobile Broadband

Compare prices

Fastest, cheapest 3G mobile broadband dongles from 3, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange
from just £10/month