Series-ously Good

I said I was going to review the Xbox Series controller after I received it, and here it is... it's pretty good.

Oh wait, you probably wanted a more verbose description. Okay, let's try this. This gamepad has become my preferred way to play Xbox games, because it's both reliably responsive and cleverly ergonomic. The D-pad works a lot better than you might expect from its off-putting appearance, trapping your thumb in the center with its scooped design and offering a click you can both hear and feel with every press. The back of the controller and the two trigger buttons are textured to keep even the sweatiest hands anchored in place. The action buttons have just the right amount of give, not so wobbly to make them feel unsteady under your thumb but not so rigid that they resist your input. 

The Xbox Series pad doesn't reinvent
the wheel, but it vulcanizes the rubber
for a smoother ride.
(image from Xbox)

The icing on the cake is a "share" button that should have been on the Xbox One's controller when that system debuted eight years ago. It was always a bummer to have to pause the game with Guide and press Y to take a snapshot, but now it's as easy as it's always been on the Switch and Playstation 4. Better late than never, I guess!

Would I say that I prefer the Xbox Series controller to my M30 or a good joystick for fighting games? No. Would I say that it's the best analog gamepad for those kinds of games? Absolutely, and it's well suited to a lot of other genres which aren't appropriate for digital pads and sticks. I've tried the Xbox Series pad with all kinds of games, from the third-person shooter Armed and Dangerous to overhead view shmups like Ikaruga to old school classics like Pac-Man, and it handles them all magnificently. 

(It's worth mentioning that the Xbox Series really shines with Pac-Man and its sequel Pac-Man Championship Edition, thanks to a tactile D-pad which reads cardinal directions with absolute precision. I don't think I've ever had a gamepad that works this well with those two games, and believe me, I've had plenty. You're probably not buying an Xbox Series pad just for Pac-Man, but if you should happen to dust off this golden oldie for a few plays, you'll be in for a fantastic experience.)

There's not much to complain about with this controller, really. The square edges of the D-pad are a little rough on the thumb, and the multi-format compatibility that sounds handy in theory is a little awkward in practice. If you pair the Xbox Series pad to your PC with Bluetooth, you'll have to re-sync it to your console later, something that probably could have been avoided if the pad had a mode switch instead of just a sync button.

The Xbox Series pad is easy to recommend. It doesn't look like much has changed from the Xbox One controller, but when you start using it, you'll quickly recognize and appreciate the subtle differences. Kudos to Microsoft for making it compatible with both the recent Xbox Series and past generation consoles... those of us who aren't ready to step up to the new hardware extend our thanks.

Not Labeled for Individual Sale

I thought this comic from Keith Stack was worth sharing, having a couple of these cartridges in my collection myself.

pic.twitter.com/KDosmyJpWC

— KEITH STACK (@keithjohnstack) May 25, 2021

Maybe it was a pressing concern in 1992, but these days the warning probably holds as much weight as those mattress tags which warn "do not remove under penalty of law." Who's going to come after me, the Dream Police? Too late, they already live inside of my head.

Anyway. I bought a lot of games over the last two weeks, including a bundle of Assassin's Creed titles on ShopGoodwill for an unexpectedly reasonable price, and a clutch of Xbox One discs discovered at Saint Vincent RuPaul's (and don't @ me, I will cling to that joke until the day I die). I swore that I was going to keep my Xbox One collection strictly digital, but every man has his breaking point, and five dollars each for three fairly recent games was apparently mine. Hold on, let me see if I can dig up a picture of my haul...

There we go. I wanted to dip my toes into Watch Dogs 2... I heard they lightened the mood considerably from the dour original, in an apparent reversal of Ubisoft's previous decision to follow up the lighthearted Prince of Persia: Sands of Time with Warrior Within, a game best remembered for its grouchier protagonist and Godsmacked soundtrack. 

Unfortunately, Watch Dogs 2 came with a nasty surprise that left ME a little grouchy... a mandatory eleven gig download on top of the data already on the disc. I don't have any data caps, but I do have miserably slow DSL out in the boonies. Making matters worse, the Xbox One monopolizes what bandwidth is available, leaving all my other devices incapacitated until it finishes its downloads. I'd better fall in love with this game after the hours it left me twiddling my thumbs!

We Tried to Warn 'Er

AT&T is having second thoughts about its purchase of Warner Bros., as evidenced by its attempt to share the financial burden with Discovery. The telco giant will now own seventy percent of the studio, with Discovery claiming the other thirty percent. As for the company's interactive entertainment subsidiary Warner Games, nobody's sure where that will end up. It seems AT&T and Discovery will take the Solomon approach, cutting their baby into pieces and each taking a handful for themselves. I would humbly suggest they sell Traveller's Tales to Lego, since they don't make anything else these days.

image from Wikipedia

What else? I recently bought an Xbox Series controller, since I've heard that it's got the best D-pad in the twenty year history of the product line. Like the (outrageously expensive) Xbox Elite controller, it's got a circular, concave design, keeping your thumb in place while you use it, and like the Neo-Geo Pocket Color, it clicks, giving the player important auditory and tactile cues as they play. 

Another plus is that the controller can be used with a handful of devices... not just its native Xbox Series, but the Xbox One, home computers, and even an Android phone should you need it for that purpose. I don't know when my controller will arrive- since I bought it from ShopGoodwill it might take a while- but you'll likely see a detailed review on this blog when it does finally get here.

ZAMN It All, or Curb Your Dogecoin

"I don't wanna" can make nothing happen to you, too.

Sorry folks. There's currently not much to report, and not much motivation to post what gaming news is available. I can say that Disney is releasing a two-pack of Zombies Ate My Neighbors and its stealth sequel Ghoul Patrol for the Switch, under its Lucasfilm Games banner. (I thought it was "LucasArts" now? Geez Mickey, make up your tiny rodent mind. Also, pay your damn sci-fi writers while you're at it.) Special thanks to the always reliable "Oh no!" Mollie Patterson for the scoop.

Zombies Ain't My Favorite.
(image from Reddit)

I personally wasn't a big fan of ZAMN, but then again, I was a Genesis man back in the early 1990s, and it didn't feel like LucasWhatever put its best foot forward in that version of the game. Maybe it couldn't have been better on Genesis, since the game's charm was heavily dependent on clean sound samples and colorful sprites. Strip those away (and cover a quarter of the screen with a black bar) and you just have Gauntlet: Late 20th Century Edition, and there's a perfectly good version of Gauntlet on the Genesis already. A version of Gauntlet which, by the way, has one of the coolest damn soundtracks you're gonna hear on that system... none of that crummy GEMS sound engine crap like Zombies Ate My Neighbors had. GEMS... when you only care enough to send Genesis owners' ears the very least.

So, what else? Switch Pro (or is it Super Nintendo Switch?) rumors are flaring up like hemorrhoids again, but I'll be honest, I have very little interest in buying another game system at the moment, let alone a third Switch. PS5s and Xbox Series-es have been tough to hunt down thanks to the pandemic slowing down chip manufacture, but I'm quite happy with the previous generation of consoles, and I don't see that changing any time in the near future. 

(Gee, I sound like a re-run of myself from 2016, except then I was sticking with the Xbox 360 and PS3.)

What I could use is a new PC, and I've been slowly putting one of those together from random bits and bobs. You know, a spare hard drive here, a refurbished motherboard there, and a generously donated GPU to top it all off. Did you know that the GTX 970 is seven years old but will still run you a kingly $400 on the open market? That's mostly thanks to the virtual stripmining operations people have running in their basements. I have expressed my contempt for cryptocurrency in the past, have I not? At least some friends managed to make Dogecoin work for them when someone (who recently hosted SNL, and badly) decided that it had value beyond making fun of all the other brands of invisible money on the market.