So I just picked up the MGS Legacy Collection for PS3. All great games and I have fond memories of them. The graphics hold up well but OMG the controls are archaic as hell and make the games almost impossible to play after years of playing more refined control. For instance you have to hit X to crawl, but if you hit X and don’t move you go into a crouch instead of prone. If you need to get up to fight you have to not just hit X, but HOLD X, otherwise you will just crouch like a moron. If you are on one knee and want to move you lay down instead of walking. You have to toggle walking with X at all times. The stealth controls, though awesome at the time, feel ancient now too. Enemies have ears like dogs and can hear every move you make unless you are in creep mode, which is slow as hell. I could go on all day and night here but you get the gist.
What games can you just not play due to antiquated controls even though you loved them in the day?
There was an NES game called Solstice that used isometric perspective to get a 3D effect. However the controls didn’t match directly, pressing up made you move diagonally up and right, while pressing left was up and left. You could kind of make it work by holding the controller at a 45 degree angle. I hated the controls, but it was still a kickass game.
I remember Solstice, but I don’t remember the controls being particularly problematic. I think I recall playing other isometric games with similar controller setups, though.
I hear that the PC ports are even worse. Something about the mouse being unusable for aiming? Personally, I never got the hang of aiming with a controller. Mouse+keyboard is so much more intuitive. Which is rather :smack: when the ports screw that up.
Older FPSes like DOOM have dated controls. E.g. the mouse was used to move your body, you had to hold some key to mouselook, and also it autoaimed in the Y axis, so that you could still hit an enemy if you were shooting 10 “feet” above his head, as long as you weren’t more than 1 foot to either side.
I think back to when I willingly used poor controls. Like I preferred the arrow keys to WASD, because that seemed weird. I’m not sure when I made a switch. Or when, in games like DOOM (and therefore not completely my fault), up and down arrow moved forward and backwards (okay), left and right rotated your character (instead of strafing), and you had to hold ALT or something and arrows to strafe (so the mouse was optional).
The original (as in, the very FIRST) Resident Evil game had bad controls (and ‘bad’ camera) pretty much by design - it was supposed to be unforgiving and hard because it wasn’t a game about shooting things and feeling like a badass. It was a game about struggle and scarcity and fear.
Later RE games failed at this by becoming generic TPS games where you kill lots of zombies.
I don’t think RE became a generic Third Person Shooter until RE4. RE2 definitely still had the tank controls and fixed camera angles, and I’m pretty sure RE3 did as well.
The fixed camera angles made sense from a technical standpoint (so you could have those pre-rendered backgrounds that looked great for the time), but dear og are they frustrating when the camera switches just as a licker jumps out at you.
I was recentlish replaying the MGS games (well, the good MGS games; i.e., 1 and 3. I got sidetracked when I was stuck in the cave w/ no light and Dishonored came out). While 3’s controls may leave much to be desired… go back and play 1 for a while. You will develop a profound appreciation, even gratitude, for 3’s controls.
Heh, it’s amazing how much perspective changes things.
When I was in college, the professor that was to teach us hardware and intro C structured the class so the first thing we did was Machine Code. yes, ones and zeros only. They we got assembly, and it was far easier. Then we got C, and damn, if that wasn’t a gift from the gods!
Same thing for me with Final Fantasy. Try going and playing the original after finished FFX or something. Egad, you miss all the nice things they added along the way.
I think that’s also part of the point - the fixed camera angles gave everything a constrained viewpoint that made things more tense and dangerous, both on the subliminal (“I know I can’t see everything here, and it all feels…cramped.”) and conscious (“Damnit, I can’t see that zombie!”) levels.
In contrast to the OP, I actually found the MGS3 controls pretty easy to manage. After MGS3, MGS1 was completely unplayable for me and MGS2 wasn’t much better.
Apparently the RE characters had a scarcity of both supplies and cerebellums.
Fun story: control related, but not really their fault. I was playing the Japanese version of MGS2. I got to the part where you had to do escort crap with Emma. I missed or couldn’t read the part about how you push triangle or whatever to grab her by the hand. I did know you could push square (I think) to put someone in a choke hold and drag them. Then you had to push it intermittently to keep them from escaping. Well I brought her all over the level choking her, having to reload if I accidentally snapped her neck… Eventually I accidentally found the “lead” button.
I think the analogy to the silent movies helps my point, not yours.
And the ‘Slender’ game has precise controls and a player-controlled camera, yet is acknowledged by many as a scary as hell game.
RE1 and RE2 aren’t evidence that you need crappy controls to have a scary game, they are evidence that you can have a scary game in spite of crappy controls.
