:smack:
Castle Crashers. Not Dwarf Fortress.
It blows* for you*. It doesn’t blow for me or for a lot of other folks that are very good with using the controller in First-Person Shooters.
Holy CRAP! I just ripped a movie…Mars Attacks…the AppleTV template wasn’t very impressive, 40 fps or so…then I ripped it using the iPhone profile.
180 fps, 15 minutes to transcode a 1 hr 43 minute movie.
The Wii would be a really good platform for FPS games, if it was going for that audience. I played a bit of Metroid Prime 3 and I found the controls felt very natural.
drools
The first few times I played a console FPS I totally agreed with you. But, I started to get used to using a controller and I don’t mind it at all now. I am willing to bet that there a ton of XBox Halo players who have never used a keyboard and mouse and would have the same trouble you have when switching over.
I think Modding is PC’s biggest advantage. I don’t know why companies who make cross platform games don’t find a way to make the maps and whatnot crossplatform so that something someone creates on a PC can be copied to the Xbox360 hdd, the PS3 or the Wii.
When I play an FPS I want, as I mentioned before, realistic shooting. The only FPSs I will play are those where you can aim a firearm using realistically-modeled iron sights. In other words, not just a crosshair in the middle of the screen. I want a system where you hold down the right mouse button, and the perspective zooms into the rifle’s rear sight, with the focus adjusted realistically so that the rear sight itself is blurred and the post of the front sight is in focus. In other words, an actual sight picture that you would see when aiming a rifle in real life.
This type of system can only be effectively modeled using a mouse. First of all, there needs to be a way of toggling between non-aiming and aiming mode with the firearm. On a mouse, that is accomplished by holding down the right mouse button. The left fires. Moving the mouse points the rifle. In real life, when you aim a rifle, you actually move your forearm and your hand. Thus, using the mouse to model this action is much more intuitive than using THUMB JOYSTICKS, which is what a console controller would use. On a real firearm the only purpose of the thumb is to operate the safety, cock the hammer or release the magazine. All of the aiming is done with the arm and hand (and eye, of course.) Not the thumb. My thumb is not coordinated to the movements of a firearm in my mind.
The thumb is good for mashing a button, or roughly moving a joystick. It is a rough implement of the body. The thumb is NOT GOOD for doing anything involving precision. To move something in a precise way, you need to use all the muscles of your arm and your hand. That is the way actual precision activities take place in real life. A master carver does not carve a sculpture with his thumb, he carves it with his entire arm and hand. An artist doesn’t paint a picture with his thumb, he paints it with his entire arm and hand.
Obviously I don’t put first-person shooters in the same category as high art, but in a good shooter with actual ballistic modeling (as opposed to just blasting away) you need to aim with precision in order to shoot well. And this requires the use of your entire arm and hand. Hence, the mouse.
Argent Towers I can value and understand your feelings. I feel the same way with racing game. I’d prefer a wheel and simulator type application (the aformentioned Forza) over an arcadey OutRun type program any day of the week.
but.
‘I hate games that don’t model an iron sight, they suxx0rs’ is pretty damn funny, considering iron sights, in general, suck. 
I’m just glad that competition improves the breed and there’s enough out there for everybody. Doesn’t make one side or the other RIGHT or WRONG.
Playing COD2 with the iron sights on the Garand…one of the most fun gaming experiences I can think of. Battlefield 2 does an amazing job with the iron sights too, especially on the G3 and the M16. Of all my rifles (and I have 9 of them) the only one with a scope is a .22. I love iron sights.
It blows for me too. I hate using the double thumb controllers. The mouse is much more intuitive, as Argent says for aiming, but I find it a heck of a lot better (and easier) to use just for movement and looking around, too.
That’s because you haven’t practiced with them.
Yeah, actually I have. I don’t like them and I never will.
Good. Then it’s all about personal taste.
PC games reign supreme due to the amount of customizing you can do. Every PC game (unless ported from a console, cough GTA4 cough) lets you customize your controls to however you want. This is extremely important to long time gamers who have adopted a set scheme that they feel comfortable with. Nothing pisses me off more than a modern console game that won’t let you adjust the controls. Want L trigger to be fire instead of R trigger? Tough beans! But hey look, we have bloom lighting and ragdoll physics! :rolleyes:
Some console games allow you to switch between sets of controls, but for any real gamer that isn’t enough. With PC games it doesn’t matter what kind of wacky control scheme you want, if you want the 3 key to jump and the space bar to move left, you can make it happen. And at the end of the day you prefer the XBox controller, you can plug that in to your PC.
It doesn’t stop with controls. What if you don’t like an enemy respawn rate? With a PC game you can often just open an .ini file and change it yourself, or download a mod to do it for you. PC games also let you tinker with graphics settings. Don’t like shadows? Turn 'em off and enjoy a huge frame rate increase! Console games don’t let you adjust anything. That’s what it comes down to.
Console shooters are floaty. That’s because the controller is terrible.
I was at the WCG Canada qualifier and pretty much everyone was on the floor over how poorly Halo 3 played. It looked especially poor after the 1.6 qualifier and the Call of Duty 4 (PC) tournament.
So don’t bother saying that shooters play well on consoles. So slow and floaty.
Concerning the last paragraph, though, it’s not even in the realm of possibilities. I wouldn’t want to make a mod, wouldn’t want to tinker with .ini files, or do that stuff. I just want to play the game.
Understandable. I’m not really a tinkerer myself, but at least it’s a possibility. For myself adjustable controls and graphics settings are a must.
As much as one would want the ability to do that, I don’t.
While people might be able to “get along” with joysticks for FPS’s, I am 100% confident that if you had a good player using a keyboard+mouse take on a good player using a gamepad, the keyboard+mouse guy would win every time. The mouse provides faster and more exact movement, the keyboard provides quicker access to a variety of extra buttons and controls. This isn’t really arguable.
What is arguable is whether the game suffers as a whole if everyone is hamstrung by the same controls (which still keeps things equal, so it could be argued that it doesn’t matter). I feel that taking a great control system proven to already work wonderfully and replacing it with an inferior one drops the quality of the game.
I really don’t think it’s wrong to admit that PCs and consoles each have their plusses and minuses. PC games reign in the area of FPSes and strategy games, providing better controls and customizability. But they’re expensive and socially insulating. Consoles are better in the party and 4-person “social” games, are cheaper, and do a much better job of bringing people together.
So, for you, it’s not about personal taste. It’s about playing which platform offers you better controls.
If only there were a demonstrable way to prove such a thing. Unfortunately there isn’t.
tell you what. If I were playing an FPS on the PC and not on a console, I’d be, at least initially, the one hamstrung.
Sorry, thought when you said “about personal taste” you were referring to just the preferred controllers, not just taste between console/PC in general. I prefer each for its relative strengths. I’ve had great fun on a PC, great fun on a console.
And while obviously being used to the controls helps somewhat, it’s doesn’t mean the two are equal, especially when you’re taking two highly skilled players. And while there may not be a current way to set up such a 1v1 format between a PC and a console player, it’s undeniable that the mouse, while aiming, is both 1) faster and 2) more exact. What benefits does a joystick provide?