I ask myself that every time I play an FPS on my PC, especially if it's a multiplatform game. Turning is so slow, and not having number keys or a scroll wheel to quickly switch weapons drives me crazy. I think the gamepad is one reason why we have a two weapon limit in most shooting games now. +1!

I've only recently starting buying FPS's on PS3 as they've tumbled in price. I found The Darkness 2* pretty fiddly as was Bioshock 1 & 2. The most intuitive were Bulletstorm, Singularity and Vanquish (all underrated). Crysis 2 was good but it wasn't a game that I just blasted my way through.

*Re the Darkness 2, I have completed it and can't be arsed to sell it for £5 or so. Therefore, if anyone in the UK wants it and doesn't mind sending a stamped addressed envelope, then PM me and we'll exchange addresses.

Very Carefully. Learn the controls during the campaign, practice if you can, and finally Learn what settings work for you.

I haven't played Rage, so I'm not sure how it works with a gamepad. Care to elaborate? Most console shooters I've played recently have two weapon limits, so that's all I have to draw experience on, so please forgive me if I'm incorrect in my assumption. ;]

Well... It has a combination of a decent system and an excellent system. Basically, you get a selection of 9 weapons and you can make 4 of them favourites - your favourites are selected very fast by tapping an arrow on the d-pad, while the other weapons can be selected by using the inventory, which is rather clunky, but other games successfully did a weapon selection wheel (game pauses and a ... well, wheel that allows you to select a weapon from larger selection appears on screen). I would like to see these two systems combined, as that would make for a flexible and fun system.

Just if that's not good enough, Rage also had a weapons upgrade system and quick-useable inventory items that you can flick trough in-game, without using the inventory. So yeah, Rage is actually a fairly complex FPS that uses a controller.

Circumventing this by two weapons systems is not console limitation - it's design laziness.

It's not flame just personal opinion...

I'm the other way around, I'm no good with mouse and keyboard and prefer using a controller. I love PC games but I just wish older games had controller support, I'm no good with the mapping software thats out there. I get destroyed playing PC games online and try to get better but I just don't get it so stick to single-player games and mods.

So it's kind of like Chronicles of Riddick? That had a weapon wheel and you can assign two things to hotkeys to quickly switch between them. Thanks for taking the time to elaborate on that.

I suppose. Didn't actually play Riddick on a controller - but if what you say is the case, the game's nailed it.
Shocking as it might be, I come here to discuss videogames :-P

;) oh u.

I've played some PS2-era console FPS games on gamepad (and just dealt with it), but as I've told before, Halo 2 on XBox... I just couldn't handle it no matter how much I tried. I eventually broke down and got also the PC version of Halo 2, and it was a delight to play compared to the XBox version. Suddenly I was doing 100x better in the frantic firefights of the game, throwing plasma grenades with precision etc.

The aiming with an analog stick does feel a bit like controlling a robotic arm with a remote controller (so, it would feel more natural to maybe tank and mech games, rather than fast shooters), but maybe the biggest problem I have with gamepad FPS controls is that I can't access the face buttons while I am using the right thumbstick. In Halo 2 this meant that I couldn't e.g. jump and aim at the same time, just because I don't have two thumbs on my right hand. No such problem with the PC version, aiming while jumping could be achieved effortlessly.

So, if and when I use consoles, I prefer playing anything _but_ FPS games on them. Frankly, maybe I prefer the PS2 times when certain genres were more console-specific (better for gamepads), while some were PC-specific (like FPS and RTS). There was even more reason back then for me to buy a console to complement the PC game collection.

I don't. Just don't.

Consols or FPS? I realized from your post, ironically enough, it was with the advent of FPS that I gave up consols. One has nothing to do with the other but it's an interesting coincidence.

I feel the same about a mouse.

It just doesn't feel like I'm playing a game if I'm using a mouse. Just pointing and clicking at where I want to shoot, it removes the fun a great deal. Plus I feel it makes it too easy.

I'll agree early console fps like n64 era and some ps2 titles had some control issues, but they were still tremendous fun.

And fps games this gen and many last gen had tight controls, I had no problems whatsoever aiming exactly where I wanted.