Look Inversion

Up is Down and Down is Up??

So for all you FPS (First Person Shooters) fans out there, I pose the question of if you prefer using the look inversion or keeping the classic default settings for your character when you run around.

First of all, for anyone who isn't into video games or isn't a fan of the shoot 'em up type of games such as Halo or James Bond, I should maybe explain the look inversion option and its great importance to the gaming world. Basically the default controls for a first person shooter is having one control stick to control your moment forward and backward and side stepping from left to right (or what some would call "strafing"). The other control stick is defaulted to move the cross-hair up and down and looking to your left and right. The latter control stick is where this "look inversion" comes into play. You see, the default for looking up is pushing up on the control stick, and down on the stick is down for the cross-hair or characters head looking down, however you want to look at it. BUT, there are a few people out there that prefer to have look inversion on, which makes the controls switch, making up on the stick make you look down and down on the stick make you look up. Crazy right? Well lets compare both.

Looking up for up and down for down makes sense logically. If you think of the screen you want the shooter to look above the screen or the radical to move higher, so you move the stick up. Same goes for down. So why would you want it the other way around? Many feel that the look inversion came from games that resembled flight simulators or pilot games. For all who don't know, the cockpit of a plane has a control stick. To lift the plane off the ground, the pilot has to pull back on the stick. To land, they must push forward on the stick. This is how any flying game is defaulted. Somehow this tactic of up being down and down being up migrated its way to shooting games too. So using look inversion can be thought as tilting forward or up on the control stick to look down and leaning back or down on the stick to look up.

So which is it? I personally for whatever reason have been accustomed to the look inversion, which inevitably pisses off all the default players. It is definitely a pain to switch controllers or use someone else's profile and find that they use the other type of look inversion than you. It really messes with you. You usually can't play as well. The ironic thing is that if I accidently start to play with inversion off and switch back after one game, I start off the game thinking the default setting is still on and am uncomfortable with it for awhile.

Well I hope you can make sense of all that and understand what possibly goes through other inversion-ist heads when playing the game. My point should be understandable so cut us look-inversion minorities some slack!

Resources: Game Trailers