One day in the not too distant future this very casual gamer is going to buy Portal and see what all the hubbub is about. But, I can’t really decide if there’s a major advantage to buying it on the PC or the 360. I have my 360 hooked up to a 43" plasma, so if a big screen is key that’s important. I sometimes have the TV on in the background when playing slow-paced strategy games like Civ IV so in that case a PC might be better. I’m not sure what the control scheme is like for Portal but is a keyboard/mouse dramatically better or worse than a gamepad for this particular game?
The game is first person, so if you like first-person games on the 360, it’s a matter of which one you want to buy. I loathe first-person games with the gamepad, so I’d never consider my 360 with it.
Well, I’m not much for FPS games. I just loaded Half-Life on my PC for a buck to give it a try and I’m noticing that my fingers are really not used to controlling a game via keyboard and mouse. I can see how the versatility of a keyboard and its myriad buttons would be useful and the precision a mouse offers when shooting, but I found myself losing track of the buttons in a hurry on the keyboard when trying to do multiple things at once like crouching, walking and shooting. Button combos were also a challenge.
But, having played a little Halo on the 360 I understand how much trickier targeting is with a gamepad. Moving is a pain on a keyboard. Thoughts?
Well, Portal is much more about targeting than running and jumping, if that sways your decision.
Portal has several sections where you’ll need to rotate yourself 180* in midair to fire off a properly-aimed portal. Sometimes you’ll need to do this repeatedly to “juggle” yourself around - god, that game was amazing…
…anyways, PC for sure. I can’t even imagine playing it on a console.
It’s not a problem on the console. It doesn’t require any twitch reflexes or shooting anything so the controller isn’t an issue. On the portals where you need to aim mid jump you can just keep bouncing in and out of the portal and adjust your aim over several bounces if you want. I don’t really get the problem people have with controllers, sure if you’re playing PvP multiplayer then the experienced mouse/keyboard user will probably do better than the experienced controller user, but if you’re playing single player on a game designed for a console it’s no big deal, you just get used to the controller.
And I can’t imagine playing any first-person shooter on the computer!
Which is cheaper?
You think “juggling” is something, you should try the “Out of the Blue” achievement on Portal: Still Alive. To get the achievement, you have to play through the entire game entering only the orange portals. Makes the “climbing platforms” part at the end of level 18 a real chore (but I still got it, 200/200 baby!).
Anyway, I love love love the console, and Portal rocked on the 360. However, there are definitely some things that are done much more easily with a PC, thanks to the speed and accuracy of mouse aiming. Still, I don’t think my enjoyment of the game was in any way lessened because of that.
Portal controls like crap on the 360, just like any FPS does. Sure, you think it controls adequately if that’s all you play or if you’re playing a game like Halo 3 in which you have no other choice, but comparatively, there’s no contest. You can do amazing things in Portal on the PC with a mouse that are absolutely not possible on a controller. Same deal with any of the other FPS type games that have been ported, the PC version is ALWAYS superior if you can manage it. Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Orange Box, all of them, same deal. Not just the controls, but the graphics, game options, and hell, even the price are better.
It’s really sad that they keep catering to console players, because all it’s doing is dumbing these games down.
Well said, Collaborator.
No one believes me when I tell them consoles are making people stupider so that they can one day gain sentience and rise up against their fleshy masters, leaving only the PC elite to fend off the hordes of redrings and flying wiimotes, but oh, when it happens, they’ll rue the day they bought their inexpensive systems!
I just hope the revolution waits to happen until sometime next year, after Mirror’s Edge comes out on PC.
Hell yeah. One of the most annoying aspects of Fallout 3 is that ridiculous Auto-Aim they included for the console gamers. There’s no way to disable it currently, either.
Try to shoot at a mine at someone’s feet and the bullet will zip up to their legs! Shots at the head will zoom down to the chest, etc.
Because explain slowly (because I’m a dumb console player) what things you can do with a mouse and keyboard that you can’t do with a controller across all of gaming (not just FPSs).
To the OP: It’s going to come down to your preference.
Do you have a machine that will play portal smoothly? (most likely, that engine is pretty old). Do you like playing with the keyboard and mouse? Do you prefer the controller? Is the rest of your family most likely to want ot use the TV or the computer for THEIR entertainment.
Both games are pretty much identical on both platforms. The PC will give you higher rez and higher video quality (as long as you exceed the required specs), but the game play is the same. As mentioned above, the mouse will always be more accurate and quicker, but there’s a bunch of console players out there who got through the game just fine with the control pad.
I bought the Orange Box on a whim for the PS3. I never played a FPS on anything but a PC before this and was worried I wouldn’t enjoy the experience with the PS3 controller. But, after 10 minutes of one of the games I was used to it. And, Portal was absolutely no problem at all. It’s a fun game. I don’t know if the version in Orange Box is different from what is found for the PC or XBox.
As far as watching tv. It’s a pretty fast paced (or can be) game, so watching TV isn’t as easy an option with the game while playing.
React quickly and precisely. The ability to spin around, jump into the air, and nail someone with a headshot.
There’s many reasons for this i’ve seen passed around over the years: Sensitivity of the sticks being wonky, thumb incapable of precise movement, the way the controls are laid out in the games, etc. Controllers are incapable of minutiae movement. That’s exactly the reason so many console games come with auto aim and etc, because it’s extremely difficult for anyone less than a master to put the cross hairs EXACTLY where they need to go.
Aiming on the fly with a controller isn’t that difficult. It’s a matter of skill. Mouse elitists are just good at the mouse and not the controller.
So really the question would be what your favored method of FPS is.
I haven’t found that to be true. I can pull off headshots while moving in Halo or Rainbow Six.
I own both the PC and 360 versions of the game (yes, it was good enough that it was worth paying for twice, IMO–not many games can claim that). For most FPS games, I prefer the mouse and keyboard, but for this one game, I honestly prefer the 360’s controller to the keyboard/mouse combo. I’m not sure why, but the controller felt more intuitive for me. YMMV. However, if you’re going to do the speed runs and fewest steps, I found the precision of the keyboard/mouse (not to mention the “cheat” of box jumping) to be more useful.
Also, the PC version allows you to download fan-made maps/puzzles, whilst I haven’t seen a way to do so for the 360.
In an Xbox 360 Team Fortress 2 tournament broadcasted on Gamespot’s website, in the championship match, a pyro couldn’t hit a medic who was running up the ramps on 2fort.
That’s why you don’t play first person shooters on consoles.
And there is no way you could make many of the gold time challenges with a controller for Portal.
Not quite true. I gold timed about half of them with the console version, though it IS easier to do in the PC version. It’s the fewest steps puzzles that get me every time on the console.