I got a belated birthday gift of Bioshock Infinite last night. I tore it open and was very excited to play it before I noticed it was the PC and not XBOX version. Oops. Instead of offending the gift giver and also because I’ve been way too excited to play, I loaded it up onto my laptop and the game is gorgeous.
Unfortunately, I’m just not a keyboard gamer. I tried but I just like the feel of a controller, so I ordered the XBOX controller for PC. As I’m waiting for it to arrive via Amazon Prime on Friday, I feel as if I’ve just opened a whole new world of gaming.
I’ve always been a console gamer and have avoided PC games because I don’t like the interface, but now I’m wondering what PC games after Bioshock Infinite that are controller compatible.
Any recommendations on games that never ported over to the consoles? S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat looks like it’d be right up my alley.
Get the Pinnacle Game Profiler software. It lets you remap the controls, adjust sensitivity etc. and store these settings for each game. This can make just about any game work with a controller.
Playing games on a laptop is generally a pretty crap experience, yes, unless you hook up a bunch of peripherals and basically turn the thing into an underpowered desktop instead.
That said, there’s really no “standard” for this; Some games just WORK with a controller, and other require large amounts of fumbling.
I don’t really have recommendations because mostly I get the games I want to play with a controller for a console, and the games I want to play with mouse/keyboard for the PC. It’s doubly hard to play the “Recommend me some games” game when we don’t have any idea what game types you like… and that’s compounded by the fact that most games that would benefit from being played on a controller also get released on consoles, so you’ve probably already had a chance to play them.
So I guess what you’re really asking is “Are there any PC exclusives that work well with a controller?” ?
Most modern games that can be played with a controller (basically most games where playing with a controller makes some sort of sense), have controller support on the PC.
This is specially true of multi-plats. However, when you get into the realm of PC exclusives, the vast majority are competitive multi-player shooters (many of which do not support gamepads, and you’d get rolled over playing with one anyway), MMO’s with a style of combat that requires more buttons than your average game pad has, Strategy games where mouse and keyboard interface is usually taken for granted, and indie games where gamepad support is spotty, and occasionally where the game is actually built around the keyboard/mouse combo.
You can take a look at the steam store page for a game and it’ll usually tell you how gamepad friendly it is. There are third party software that will map keys to your gamepad, but how well that works is going to vary from game to game.
Off the top of my head -
Native support
some racing sims are gamepad friendly (though a wheel is preferred)
some flying sims are as well
Hotline miami
Magicka
Work well with xpadder/other 3rd party mapping software:
Guild wars 2
Civ 5
I’m sure there are lots more, but you’ll have to check them out on Steam or elsewhere to be sure. Usually googling the game with “gamepad” afterwards will get you a forum psot or two on how well it cna be done.
But yeah, multi-plats are the strongest with gamepad support. Pick up Skyrim on PC. You can play it with a gamepad, and it’s essentially an entirely different game from the console version thanks to mods.
In the indie space, a number of “Japan styled” PC games play well (“much better” actually. Playing Hydorah or Ys with a keyboard is painful) with a controller:
If you have not already played Assassin’s Creed or the Batman: Arkham games, those work really well on PC with a controller. Which is not surprising, since they’re console-first games.
