I started gaming on consoles 2 years ago and it took time to get accustomed to the controls but I still think one must be crazy to play ordinary FPS/TPS games with a gamepad with no auto-aim.

Weird reactions. I thought I was as hardcore a PC gamer as it gets and I'm totally okay with gamepads for shooters. I've played one or two shooters in the past via gamepad on PC (splitscreen games like Serious Sam or Kane & Lynch) and couldn't complain, this year I got a PS3 and also quite a few shooters for it and I still cannot complain. Of course the pace is a little lower but the games that control like complete shit are exceptions in my opinion. For instance Resistance - Fall of Man. In some endlessly dumb attempt to make shooters more playable on gamepad they added some completely insane behaviour to the aiming stick, weird acceleration and an abomination of a sensitivity curve which makes you either aim too fast or too slowly etc. but that's by far the worst case I've seen in that generation (and frankly I *still* enjoyed the game a lot).

Now, I've heard form multiple people that The Darkness is supposed to control like shit so who knows, maybe OP has just picked the wrong game to start playing shooters on console. :P
Well, or they could just add an absurd amount of weapon spread like in Halo: Combat Evolved or Shadow Run so no matter whether you're a sniper legend or blind, you still have the same chances of hitting. :P (note that I haven't played the Shadow Run shooter myself but most reviewers pointed out that in an attempt to make cross-platform gaming possible the devs removed the PC gamers' advantage via extreme spread)

For me the console FPS games I've felt are fine are those where the gameplay seems heavily customized for slower reactions, for example:

- The enemies move quite slowly, and take their time aiming at you etc. before they shoot at you. So you have lots of time to get the sight on them. I'm mainly thinking of games like the few Medal of Honor or Call of Duty games I have played on PS2 (and PSX, e.g. the very first Medal of Honor game).

- Console FPS games seemed to popularize the "gallery shooting" FPS gameplay, where you don't necessarily move around that much, but concentrate on aiming and shooting at incoming enemies from one spot. Later this evolved to the cover-based gameplay, but in its heart still the same thing. So none of the split-second counter-strafing while shooting in a middle of hordes of enemies, like I've used to as a PC gamer since Doom times (well, maybe Quake, the enemies in Doom generally moved pretty sluggishly and it had heavy autoaim, so I could play it successfully with keyboard only).

So I think that is why Halo 2 XBox was so painful to me, because it felt more like a PC FPS game, ie. you did need to move around quite much during the action, shoot and fling grenades while running around to reach the enemy from the back and then run the other way etc. So at times it was easily as hectic as PC FPS games, but gamepad controls seemed to make my reactions considerably slower.

So I guess it is hats off from me to people who became masters with the XBox version (in Legendary mode) using a gamepad. I just had to give up after trying to pass the early hangar assault part a few hundred times. I switched to the PC version, and with a few retries I passed the same part (in Legendary mode). Actually that hangar assault was IMHO probably the hardest part in the whole game, so maybe if only I had passed it, maybe I would have finished the XBox version with a gamepad after all...

I can confirm that that hangar bay on the first level is the most difficult area of Xbox Halo 2 on legendary difficulty. That was ridiculous. I was only able to beat it by hiding behind marines (who strangely have much more health than you) and getting elite to kill each other with friendly fire. It stopped being an fps and turned into a puzzle game. :/

I think it did take a couple hundred tries. XD

After that Halo 2 legendary became much easier. You just had to account for insane health/ reaction times and game flaws in the AI. Honestly it wasn't very much fun but the difficulty level before it was way too easy. I wish they made it more like Halo 1 legendary.

It's all about forcing position. In multiplayer, you predict their movements and try to set yourself up for the right shot, while keeping yourself out of their sights. In single player, it's all about crowd control, keeping them in front of you and knowing when to move to another safe spot.

Remember that both sticks work together. Fine adjustments to your aim are often easier to do by simply moving yourself, rather than the aimpoint alone.

Someone mentioned that before, and it is a good point as a PC FPS gamer wouldn't probably use that tactic with digital WASD controls almost ever.

But I feel that is maybe more suitable for the "shooting gallery" kind of levels where you are not really in the middle of the enemies, but they are approaching you from one side and you are mainly facing to one general direction. In e.g. that Halo 2 hangar bay scene, I recall it was more like running zig zag so that the enemy Elites wouldn't hit you while you keep shooting and throwing grenades at them (and maybe collecting more ammo/weapons), or approaching an enemy soldier from behind silently, put a plasma grenade on his back, turn 180 degrees and run in circles to safety from the incoming fire.

That just proved to be too much for me with a gamepad. If felt more like I was remote-controlling R2D2 while fighting the enemies.

One word: auto-aim

The challenge maps in TimeSplitters 2 are the true proving ground for gamepad FPS aiming.

With a Wii Remote or not at all.

Some fps are perfect designed for consoles and they can be play really well but they need to be limited and slow Halo and Killzone are good exemples

This. It blows my mind how many supposed "hardcore" gamers just say that it's impossible to play an FPS well on console and aren't able to see all those little adjustments that the *good* console FPS developers make to the gameplay to make it work perfectly. Ultimately console shooters are just different, not worse (at least the good ones).

OK, tomorrow i will try Crysis 3 on X360. Than i can say more.

Shooters changed once they became popular on consoles. They went from arena type levels with lots of strafing and split second weapon switching to corridor levels and a 2 weapon limit. It's pretty sad. I only use a gamepad for platformers, for everything else I prefer M&KB. Just curious, but has anyone beat Shadow Warrior or Hard Reset on insane with a gamepad? Those are similar to the old school shooters and both are quite hard. I wonder how many people use a gamepad for them.

Unless it is the sort of came that has a cursor, I always use a controller. I find it better. [tangent]That said, FPS are pretty much my least liked game type, and it saddens me to see most games now are basically FPS games only with your character on the screen rather than a camera shoved in their eye. [/tangent]

I prefer a controller for several reasons. One being I prefer gaming on the sofa. Its really difficult working out a comfortable way to use a keyboard and mouse for more than a few minutes on the couch. The other reason is while a lot of people (rightly so) make the argument that a mouse is far more accurate in intuitive to use than the right analog stick, I believe the use of the left analog stick in place of a digital keyboard almost makes up for this. Especially once I realized one day I actually use both sticks to aim in most games.

I have a PC hooked up to my TV in the game room. I still use an xbox360 controller for everything where I can. To the point that if I have to use the keyboard I will likely not play the game at all. Not because I don't thik the game is worth playing, but simply because there will be another game that I can use a controller with that I will lazy up to first.