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I've noticed that some games seemed to have controls selected by people that have never played the game.

Probably the most notable example is The Ultimate Doom, the copy you get from Steam. Moving to WASD isn't necessarily wrong when you're playing a game that naturally uses a mouse. I mean that's why they moved to WASD in the first place. But, splitting the movement between both hands and forcing the player to find another way of hitting the fire button is rather poorly considered.

I'd be really curious as to what was going on in their heads when they made that decision. Doom allows one to use a mouse, but due to the mechanics involved there's no advantage at all to it and ultimately you end up with an extremely clumsy method of controlling the character.
Grim Fandango. Luckily the fantastic story makes up for the awful controls =(
I can think of 3 games with horrible controls, right now. Those games are Gothic 1, Gothic 2 and Mafia. It is very unfortunate that Gothic 1 and 2 have horrible controls because they are both really good when it comes to everything else.
Post edited May 12, 2012 by macuahuitlgog
Gothic's controls are needlessly complicated
I'll second Grim Fandango. I found it works better with character-relative movement than camera-relative movement, but it's wonky as hell either way, and Manny likes to get caught on corners and turn around at high speeds no matter WHAT you do.

The worst, though, is the original System Shock. I remember it being kinda annoying at the time, but when I dug the game back out of the box last year, I had to use a key remapper just to get it to a playable state. It's like ergonomics didn't even exist as a concept at the time! Perhaps I've just been spoiled by WASD.
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Austrobogulator: Grim Fandango. Luckily the fantastic story makes up for the awful controls =(
This. Tank controls need to stay with survival horror and tanks. Manny looking at things is a nice touch though.
I actually like the controls in Gothic. Gothic I is a bit clumsy indeed, but I think that II does it perfectly. Tip: learn how to use A and D for strafing.

System Shock 2. Not terrible as such, but they've all gone tits up and unfortunately I cannot play the game any more.

But in general, I dislike having too many buttons to press. Some FPS' are guilty of this, though it's mainly a MMO thing. I pretty much have my entire hand's reach of buttons doubly mapped in WoW and I still run out.
My brother changed from WASD to ESDF so that he could get those extra few buttons in.

edit: oh and GTA4. The PC port was criminal.
Post edited May 12, 2012 by FraterPerdurabo
grand theft auto 3 and vice city it's worse the resident evil 1 > outbreak and tomb raider 1 > 3

BUT, I got used to the control scheme and the better I got, the better the game got

So I have a stance that while control schemes feel clunky at first, you just got to adapt to it and the game gets better
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Austrobogulator: Grim Fandango. Luckily the fantastic story makes up for the awful controls =(
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Gazoinks: This. Tank controls need to stay with survival horror and tanks. Manny looking at things is a nice touch though.
I thought Grim Fandango uses a point and click control scheme
Post edited May 12, 2012 by Elmofongo
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Elmofongo: grand theft auto 3 and vice city it's worse the resident evil 1 > outbreak and tomb raider 1 > 3

BUT, I got used to the control scheme and the better I got, the better the game got

So I have a stance that while control schemes feel clunky at first, you just got to adapt to it and the game gets better
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Gazoinks: This. Tank controls need to stay with survival horror and tanks. Manny looking at things is a nice touch though.
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Elmofongo: I thought Grim Fandango uses a point and click control scheme
Nope, you move Silent Hill/Alone in The Dark style and press Enter to interact with things.
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Elmofongo: grand theft auto 3 and vice city it's worse the resident evil 1 > outbreak and tomb raider 1 > 3

BUT, I got used to the control scheme and the better I got, the better the game got

So I have a stance that while control schemes feel clunky at first, you just got to adapt to it and the game gets better
Vice City controls aren't that bad except the fact you don't see any of Num-locked controls anywhere in menu. That was few wasted hours until I learned to fly helicopters/planes/drive bike on rear wheel...
Post edited May 12, 2012 by IronStar
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Elmofongo: grand theft auto 3 and vice city it's worse the resident evil 1 > outbreak and tomb raider 1 > 3

BUT, I got used to the control scheme and the better I got, the better the game got

So I have a stance that while control schemes feel clunky at first, you just got to adapt to it and the game gets better


I thought Grim Fandango uses a point and click control scheme
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Gazoinks: Nope, you move Silent Hill/Alone in The Dark style and press Enter to interact with things.
well that should not be a problem to me since I own and still play constantly all the resident evils before 4 should I ever play Grim Fandango
Yeah, it's not terrible or anything, but it can be a but annoying in places. Controlling entirely with the keyboard makes it a good laptop game thi
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Gazoinks: Yeah, it's not terrible or anything, but it can be a but annoying in places. Controlling entirely with the keyboard makes it a good laptop game thi
Once you do something about the Fn key that's often by the control and disable the windows key. I think the other one is dealing with the ctrl + alt + direction key which Windows 7 uses to reorient the screen.

Not the game designers fault, but one of the things that happens when MS is allowed to assign hotkeys and demand buttons be added to keyboards.
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hedwards: I've noticed that some games seemed to have controls selected by people that have never played the game.

Probably the most notable example is The Ultimate Doom, the copy you get from Steam. Moving to WASD isn't necessarily wrong when you're playing a game that naturally uses a mouse. I mean that's why they moved to WASD in the first place. But, splitting the movement between both hands and forcing the player to find another way of hitting the fire button is rather poorly considered.

I'd be really curious as to what was going on in their heads when they made that decision. Doom allows one to use a mouse, but due to the mechanics involved there's no advantage at all to it and ultimately you end up with an extremely clumsy method of controlling the character.
The first Gothic must have had the controls designed by someone who was very, very high...

I see now that I've actually read the thread that Gothic is the most popular example;)
Post edited May 12, 2012 by orcishgamer
Great control throughout the entire rest of the game, but the stupid ass jumping sequences in the dream segments of the first Max Payne don't jive with the control scheme. I'm getting angry just thinking about them right now...
Post edited May 12, 2012 by EC-