Back when Playstation was around, I always had a problem with the play controls. I felt like they were unresponsive. I would press a button and the game would hesitate a moment before reacting, and sometimes wouldn’t react at all. Even my fanatical Playstation fan friends acknowledged this fault.
When Playstation 2 came out, I just took it as a foregone conclusion that this was such a blatantly obvious joykiller that they fixed it. In fact I almost bought one, and only didn’t for unrelated reasons. But then I played it at a few friends’ houses and sure enough-- same damn unresponsive controls.
Last night I finally played PS3. It’s been at least 6 or 7 years since I’ve played a PS2 so I’d totally forgotten about the control issues. We were playing UFC Undisputed. Sure enough, almost right away I noticed that the controls reacted like they had been dipped in molasses. I would press the punch button, a second later my character would punch. If I hit the other punch button too soon, no dice. I would press the kick button, maybe my character would kick. Maybe. I would press the buttons to do a takedown-- pssshhh, that had Vegas odds on it. Even my friend who owned it said he’s barely played it since he got it as a birthday present because of this (the PS3, I mean.)
What the hell gives? Not one other console since NES has had anything remotely like this problem, and it wasn’t as bad on NES. You have to go back to Atari to find a console with such muddy, unresponsive controls. I thought PS3 was supposed to be the pinnacle of console achievement right now, but if I had thrown my money away on one I’d be finding someone at Sony to beat over the head with it.
I once had an issue where my PS2 controller’s right trigger button would stick a little bit on occasion. Of course, that was after years of being rode pretty hard. A small, carefully placed spritz of WD-40 cleared that problem right up, though.
Sorry – I have all three consoles, and I have to vote for crazy pills (or superhuman reaction times…hey, never know).
Crazy pills. I don’t own a Playstation or a PS3, but my PS2 is as responsive as I could ask, across a very wide variety of titles.
The only thing I can think of as even vaguely similar is that most/all newfangled flatscreen TVs have some processing delay, but A) That’s on the order of milliseconds, as a rule, and is only a problem in titles that require extremely precise timing and B) I somehow doubt that this would have been responsible for your experiences on the original Playstation.
Did you try more than one title at your friend’s house? It could be that UFC Undisputed has ass bad controls (Though based on the 84 metacritic score, this seems unlikely.). I got nothing for ya.
Was the PS3 routed through an AV Receiver? There are some receivers (and I *think *some HDTVs) that are introducing a fair bit of lag. There may be a syncing issue that you can resolve.
Never had that issue with my PSX or PS2. My PS2 controller does have a nasty habit of occasionally disconnecting for a brief second when there’s a lot of rumble going on, but I think that’s just because it’s old, and Sony stuff doesn’t have the greatest durability.
Could it be that you’re not used to the pressure-sensitive buttons? It matters how hard you actually push the buttons, and some games won’t register a push unless you squeeze hard enough.
One thing to keep in mind about the PS controller is that if the connection to the system is loose, then rather than not working, SOME of the buttons will not work. I often boot up my PS2 and am unable to press start, even though the analog light is on and I can still use the control pad to move the main menu down to ‘load game’.
You’ve been dipping into the crazy pills. I’ve owned an original PS, the PS2, but not the PS3, although I’ve certainly used it. The problem you describe would have driven me NUTS, and I certainly would have noticed it. But I never experienced anything like that.
I have only played the PS3 once, and most of the controls were fine.
I dislike the pressure-sensitive triggers though. They just felt really mushy. I guess that is because I am not used to it. But it made switching detective mode on in Batman:Arkham Asylum kind of a pain.