It's a daunting experience for a guy like me. I was around (albeit very, very young) when Pong was invented. For the first part of my adolescence, video games were played in pizza parlors and bowling alleys using quarters (creating the motivation for things like allowance and mowing lawns). Later, my home was blessed with Atari's first home unit, the 2600. It had, for a controller, a joystick with a single red button. Ah, the joystick: simple, elegant, . . . simple.
The original X-Box controller, by contrast, is a pathologically complicated device: it has six buttons, three joysticks (each of which can also act as a button), two triggers, and the thing vibrates at various points. It's an IQ test for your hand, to be honest.
I'm getting the hang of using it, although my son hasn't quite figured out that one of the purposes of a video game is to learn as you go. He's already completed HALO 2, so this game is almost second nature to him, as evidenced by the fact that I spend a great deal of the game following him around, getting lost, and catching up right after he's killed all the bad guys. My getting lost does us little good, as he already knows where to go and what to do. We're having fun, though.
I probably have to find some time to practice solo, without him around, so that I can keep up; but at some point, I think we should purchase and play a game he's not yet played so that we can explore it together. I may even get to take the lead once in a while. Finding a game he hasn't played on X-Box will be difficult, and will probably be his justification for advocating the X-Box 360. Guitar Hero, and all that.
My God: another controller.
