Comments on: Control Issues

By: Lorna

Lorna — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:39:53 +0000

I do that all the time in Fable 2, Rook. I’m forever whipping out a sword or sending a circle of fire to terrify Albion’s citizens…but then it’s their own fault for crowding me…

By: Rook

Rook — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:19:11 +0000

Muscle meory works great when playing games, but what about muscle amnesia. Everytime I have Fable 2 loaded up, there will always, (and I do mean ALWAYS) be at least one instance when I try to go into the menu by pressing B (Fallout 3 controls) but in Fable 2 that’s your magic attack. So instead of going to the Map for fast travel I scare everyone around me with a fist to the ground lightning spell.

The main control issue I have though is with inverted/non inverted controls. I know it sounds weird, but pushing up to look/aim up is not natural. My brain is wired so that up is down and down is up. That makes more sense.

By: Kat

Kat — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:18:24 +0000

I’m struggling to think of a game that I found had terrible controls. I do however have problems adjusting as I switch from game to game so much just within the course of a week. I could be playing GTA4 on Monday, MW2 on Tuesday, L4D on a Wed then ODST on Thurs. I spend a good 15 minutes or so adjusting to the controls. What was “crouch” is now “throw grenade”. Thankfully I game with a forgiving bunch or I’d have been cast aside for friendly fire a looong time ago!

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 09:23:32 +0000

Oh dear don’t get me started on Too Human. Whoever came up with the idea that the right stick would attack and not look around was clearly having a special moment. It was good in theory just poorly executed, as the games camera didn’t do a good enough job of anticipating of where you actually want to look.

The 360 has corrupted my control sense recently though, as I now find myself plugging in a 360 pad into the PC for quite a few different games. While mouse + keyboard (different debate I know, sorry) will always be used for pure FPS games, everything else now ends up controllers via a pad.

Perhaps it’s the lazy part of me that likes to slouch in my chair, but part of me has to think that it may have something to do with how the game is made, take Red Faction: Guerilla for example, keyboard and mouse combo should have worked because of the nature of the game but it felt so sluggish and unresponsive I had to plug the 360 pad in and bingo! It played like a charm.

As long as key bindings are available then I’m happy.

By: Victor

Victor — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:32:18 +0000

I haven’t had a chance to play Saboteur just yet, but if you want to sample a game which has an inhuman control scheme, try Too Human. It is rumoured that they let insurgents in Guantanamo Bay play this game, to give the torturers time off on Wednesday mornings. For torture training.

By: MarkuzR

MarkuzR — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:15:22 +0000

Dood, I’m the same. Gears of War was one of the games I got along with my 360 and I couldn’t wait to play it, but after an hour of arsing around with far too many button combos I just gave up. I like what I like, but I don’t want to spend weeks getting used to an inordinate number of controls just so I can play a game.

I remember watching Tiq and Victor playing SFIV one night and couldn’t believe the number of combos that were at their disposal. Great if you want to excel and be kick ass by knowing every move known to man… but such a pain in the arse if you just want to chill out for a while and throw a few punches.

My biggest problem was going from Oblivion on the 360 to Oblivion on the PC with the XBox controller plugged in. I tried to remap it as much as I could but there was still that problem where I was used to hitting the A button to interact with someone on the XBox but on the PC it would draw my weapon so every time I walked up to someone for a bit of gossip or to bring them up to speed about progress in a quest I’d end up making them shit themselves.

By: Pete

Pete — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:31:47 +0000

Great stuff!! My biggest bugbear over controls came with Gears of War – the whole trying to move, aim and fire, crouch and run thing just got to be unbearable and I never made it very far past the prison outbreak bit thanks to getting so frustrated at being dead so quickly and so often

By: Tiq

Tiq — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:15:02 +0000

Ugh. You know what I really hate now, more than anything is the inability to remap controls. In this day and age theres no excuse for forcing you to use a god awful control scheme…

Kudos for bringing this up lorna…it always amazes me when I see examples of developers ignoring a perfect control scheme thats worked well for years… especially when a well honed muscle memory is the main attribute that seperates us proper gamers from those wiimote wielding wimps out there.