Out of control? Certainly not!

The 3DS offers a huge wealth of control options for game designers to make use of: a traditional D-Pad and face buttons as well as an analogue stick, touchscreen, motion detectors and even the camera can all be used to control titles. Masuhiro Sakurai, the man in charge of bringing Kid Icarus: Uprising to the world, thinks his title will show other developers how well inventive controls can work.

Speaking to the Techland website, Mr Sakurai said:

I’ve found that, in the established genres, the controls are always the same. For example, in shooting games, you find first-person-shooters utilize all of the buttons on the controller and always do the same thing — the stick is for moving, triggers for shooting and they’re always trapped in this very restricted framework for gameplay. And, that’s just not creative. This time, with Kid Icarus, we wanted to address that certain problem and not only because I think the industry deserves it, but also because it’s a more satisfying experience personally.

Mr Sakurai describes how Super Smash Bros. revamped the fighting genre in a similar fashion, and that certainly seems to have worked out all right. With Kid Icarus using L to fire, the slide pad for moving Pit and the touchscreen to control the camera and aiming, it sounds like this could be one smooth ride, but we'll have to wait and see if the team's creative controls live up to expectations.

[source techland.com]