SIXAXIS Brings Nothing to GTA IV (But Frustration And Burning Helicopter Chassis)

The SIXAXIS motion controls in Rockstar Games' sublime opus Grand Theft Auto IV feels like a last minute appendage, and not a particularly useful one. It's like the game's third nipple, you know it's there, and maybe you can't resist a fiddle, but no good will come of it.

When Mike told me that he didn't like the SIXAXIS controls for the game, and wasn't even able to complete the tutorial, I chalked it up to some innate hatred of the PS3's motion controls on his part. In fact he did admit that he doesn't really like the PS3 games that use SIXAXIS motion sensing, but there are several that I quite like (Warhawk comes to mind), so I decided to give it a whirl.

After playing through GTA4 on the Xbox 360, I swapped seats with Mike and settled down to get to the bottom of his SIXAXIS hatred. A few minutes into the tutorial I figured out what the problem was. The special SIXAXIS controls for this particular game suck, they're absolutely abysmal.

I suppose with some time I could master using the bike, in fact it wasn't that hard, and maybe one day I would fly the helicopter, but that's not the point, the point is there's no benefit using the motion sensing in Grand Theft Auto IV.

The in-game tutorial for the controller, which is an annoyingly permanent option on your in-game cell phone, walks you through the four ways you use the special controller in the game. Here's the break down and my thoughts: