My weird controller grip - The Claw

Just a short random post today about the unusual way I hold my controller and how I came about using it this way. Now most players tend to hold their controller's for Playstation and Xbox  with their right hands positioned in the image below.

Common Controller Grip

Thumb placed on the analog stick or face buttons, index finger on the first shoulder button, middle finger on the second shoulder button and the ring and pinky under the controller for support. This position is pretty much the norm for most players and works perfectly fine. However over the years I found myself wanting to find another way to hold it. The biggest flaw I had with holding it was that most games use the right analog stick to control the camera angle or First Person perspective in a First Person game. However this meant that any time I wanted to press any of the face buttons to do things like jump, crouch or reload in some games it meant I would need to take my thumb off of the right analog stick. This meant that in some high speed games where you need to react to things constantly moving on screen that performing certain actions meant you couldn't look around with the camera and do that action at the same time, particularly an issue with action fast paced First Person games. So over the years I started developing what I like calling "The Claw" grip.

It's not exactly very interesting to talk about, it is literally changing the position of one finger on the controller really. The pictures below show how I hold the controller with my right hand.

My Controller Grip called "The Claw"

The Thumb stays dedicated to the right analog stick, the index finger now rests on the face buttons and the middle finger rests on the first shoulder buttons. What this does is allows my Thumb to control the camera at all times since my index finger is now pressing any desired face button action I require. Now I can jump, crouch and reload while still being able to look around with my middle finger now pressing anything that the first shoulder button does (usually this is for firing a weapon or attacking in first person games), whenever I need to press the second shoulder button I either alternate with the middle finger or just let my ring finger reach up for it.

You might be wondering why I would bother doing this and to be honest I wondered that myself for a good while. It was more or less just something I got used to because I started playing more and more First Person and Third Person games that required constant use of the camera. On PC this is less of an issue since the mouse controls the players camera view and additional actions can be performed with the other hand on the keyboard without having to stop moving or stop looking around but on a console with a controller that has limited button space you'd need to do a grip like this to be able to do face button actions and look around at the same time. This was a huge help for me for one game (or specifically game mode) I was obsessed with when I was younger and still adore to this day, Zombies. Specifically, Call of Duty Zombies.

Call of Duty Black Ops III Zombies Mode

For as overated and samey as Call of Duty tends to be with itss yearly releases, its hoard Zombie mode with its hilarious characters, silly weapons, fast paced survival gameplay and secret hidden storyline (that's far better than the normal games bland realistic military story) was something I could happily play over and over with friends to see if we could beat our previous record. The idea of the mode is to combat waves of Zombies in numbered rounds with each round spawning more zombies, faster zombies and stronger Zombies.

One of the many barricades

You couldn't "win" at Zombies, you simply played the rounds over and over until every player was dead. The fun part is trying to react and plan your next move amidst all the craziness of having entire armies of screaming Zombies constantly running towards you. One of the main aspects to this planning mid battle is repairing simple wooden barricades used to slow down the zombies trying to get into the map, allowing players more time to run away, take shots at them to weaken them or grab more ammo and perk upgrades. The way you interacted with the barricades (and most interactable objects) was to hold the Square Button (on PS controllers) but I found that doing so left you vulnerable as you couldn't look around AND fix things at the same time. So you may be busy looking away from the barricade while fixing it to see if a Zombie is sneaking up behind you...but you couldn't then check if there was any at the barricade trying to get in while fixing it until you'd had a right good slap across the chops from one of the undead to tell you. With the grip I use it now meant I could fix the barricades (or do any interactable thing like buy ammo) while still looking around to check for any Zombies trying to be ninja's and attack me where I'm not looking.

Even though I adopted this grip to be able to play into higher rounds at Zombies, it has honestly helped me a lot in many other games by allowing me complete control of the camera all the time. Sometimes it even helps me in games where I need to press more than one face button at once. My thumb and index finger alternating between buttons at the same time is much easier for myself as I'm so used to holding the controller this way. If any avid gamer is looking for a way to try and improve their control over a game then I do highly recommend practicing holding and using the controller this way. It is very awkward to do at the beginning but to this day I am just so used to using it like this that I really can't play it any other way without playing a lot worse off for it. It might look a little weird but people should definitely give The Claw grip a try.

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