Best Played With a Controller: A Video Game Rant

[Extra-Ordinary]

Heh, other way around here. The keyboard confuses me in the heat of the moment and I'm not even any good at aiming with the mouse on my desktop (seriously, I've lost track of the amount of times I've accidentally opened the wrong program or closed instead of maximised because of my terrible aim). Controllers will always be the way of truth for me.

Same here.
I've been a console gamer for so long when I went over to a friends house and actually tried playing on a PC I was really uncomfortable with the controls, especially the aiming.
There's another reason that I prefer the joystick over the mouse. I read it in The Art And Design Of Gears Of War 3, and I'm going to paraphrase here:
"The mouse certainly has superior aiming over a controller, but when your shooting a deafeningly loud, heavy piece of hot metal, maybe accuracy is somewhat beside the point."
I can't help but agree with that but I'm a lifelong console gamer so I'm not without my bias.
And before you tell me that PC games have controller options-
I'm aware of that.
I don't care, I'm not switching.

 

[Zeckt]

I play every game with a keyboard / mouse these days especially since your free to regulate the controls as you see fit. I understand your problem with holding down a button but I personally designate the middle mouse button for sprint in all my games. Using a razor naga mouse I have 12 buttons customize as I please. It took getting used to but I am now confident enough that I feel like I have MORE control then a ps3 or 360 controller can ever give me.

If you have an issue with controls on pc, then maybe it's time to take a look at a gaming mouse to fix that problem. There are solutions if you look, using a mouse that's made to simply browse the web for gaming is your issue. If your a gamer, then use a well you know ... gaming mouse. There is absolutely zero issue on holding down any button it, unlike 360 controller buttons that have a habit of caving in. I have had MANY issues with 360 controllers, but absolutely none with my gaming mouse. Just saying.

 

[Maxtro]

Two solutions:

1. Buy a 360 controller for Windows.
The vast majority of games on PC that support controllers have built in 360 button icons.

2. Use your PS3 controller and install MotionJoy http://www.motioninjoy.com/
You also need a bluetooth adapter for your computer. This is the method I used for a number of years but eventually got tired of having to sync my PS3 controller between my PS3 and computer. Plus, all games had 360 icons which kept throwing me off. I ended up buying a 360 controller that I just use for PC games.

Right now my biggest gripe is PC games that don't support controllers. I hope to God that Bioware gets their shit together and has controller support for Dragon Age 3.

 

[danon]

Well a gamepad is mechanically better for some games that's a fact. It's not like pc is limited to mouse and keyboard. I think it's kind of weird to arbitrarily limit what a pc can do.

 

[Something Amyss]

but on the keyboard, they decided to relegate this button to the left shift key.

Now, since they have the jump button set to the space bar, this forces your hand to tilt at an odd angle since you use the sprint almost as much as you use the jump.

Maybe it's my recent revived attempt at playing (piano) keyboard, but this doesn't seem that odd or uncomfortable to me. Also, I'm perfectly capable of holding shift with my ring finger and space to jump with no issue.

like, perhaps the Left CTRL which is right next to the space bar and far more friendly for a human hand.

See, this is less comfortable for me.

Yes, they actually say that.

So-called "console kiddies" routinely get crap like this. Just food for thought.

Why in the bloody nine hells would they assume that me, a PC customer, would have an Xbox360?

Well, by way of a helpful hint, you don't need a 360 to have the controller. I would assume you're just talking about the controller, but the next line makes me think otherwise.

Otherwise, I would assume they would assume it because of the general ubiquity of the X360 controller these days, and the type of game is generally more popular with controller users.

Also, you act as though peripherals are new to computer gaming. This seems strange to me.

your chief goal should likely be to make the game playable on a flipping keyboard and mouse

I would assume that their chief goal should likely be to make a game the target demographic will want to buy.

Though I will also say there is no real excuse not to let you map keys. Hell, even on consoles, there's no excuse not to allow control assignment these days.

and not assume that your PC gamer is going to have a controller just laying around,

Again, the assumption of chance or accident.

***Side Note: I have beaten Super Meat Boy and Bit Trip Runner 2 in their entirety

Err...You don't link your Steam profile, but I'm certain within a reasonable level of doubt that I found it anyway. I'll just say that, with 6.7 hours on Super Meat Boy and only three badges unlocked, you haven't beat SMB in its entirety.

Now, I'm not saying badges are the end-all, but you're missing a lot of them for someone who played it in its entirety. I barely scratched the game and I have double the number unlocked. Almost exactly double, BTW. Some are optional. Others, not so much (for completion).

Hey Op, way to spread some incorrect information; http://store.steampowered.com/news/4744/

Fact is that even a super quick Google search for, "rebind super meat boy keys" would have resulted in a solution that will take far less than 5% of the time it took to write your rant, let alone actually spent playing whilst allegedly crippling your body in the process.

Oh, wow, and it wasn't even true? Wow. I'm assuming you edit this the same way you generally edit the controls of a game on Steam?

 

[Something Amyss]

I shouldn't have to dig around third party software or hunt for mods to fix a product I've bought.

How fortunate you don't have to. This is a fix from the guys who made it, and it's been available for three years.

or my game files to find a solution.

This is actually common in the PC world. Is it safe to assume, then, your problem isn't with SMB or controllers, but with bog-standard PC design? Because that changes things.

Skyrim

Obsidian and Bethesda frequently get praised for their games BECAUSE of the modding community, so your example is a bad one.

When a developer tells me that the optimal way to play the game is with a controller that is not common to the system I am playing it on, and then refuses to let me change the key bindings despite fixes being quite easily made by other parties, I feel justified in having a problem with that.

Thankfully, neither applies here.

It's just a shame you seem to continue to insist they do.

 

[GodzillaGuy92]

Neither are mouse and keyboards but how would people react if a console game used them as the primary setup and had the controller setup fucked?

We'll never know, as that will never ever ever ever happen.

And the reason that will never happen is because of how incredibly ridiculous it would be if it did. Yet when the same thing happens to a PC game, we're all apparently just supposed to accept it.

Granted, the comparison's not entirely valid; besides perhaps console-exclusive titles and only very rarely having to put up with badly done ports of PC games compared to how many PC ports suffer for the process, the primary selling point of a console over a PC is the convenience of the experience. The tradeoff for the advantages that PC gaming offers is having to sort through some crap every once in awhile, and that's not likely to change anytime soon. But is that really a good excuse for resigning ourselves to laziness on the part of the developer?

Several people have mentioned that Team Meat addressed the initial lack of keyboard mapping by adding the ability to alter them in the .ini file. Which is all well and good - certainly better than the alternative of not being to customize the controls at all - and yet, the OP didn't know about it until people on this thread told him. He went to the options menu and saw no way to fix his controls; there wasn't so much as a hint of the fact that the functionality existed. If it were me, I admit that I probably would have done a Google search and found the solution for myself, but I hardly think it's unreasonable for someone who looks at an options menu to assume that anything not included there isn't customizable. And I guarantee you that not everyone who ran into this issue created a forum thread on the topic and were subsequently clued in to the solution.

Moreover, if the developers were aware of the problem, why would they go about addressing it in such an awful way? The fact that they provided a fix in the first place shows that the problem wasn't somehow unavoidable; why not go the extra step and implement it through a patch that adds keyboard mapping - something it should have had in the first place - to the options menu? Even if we assume that this was impossible for some reason, they could have at least added an alert to the player that control customization could be done through the .ini. Could they honestly just not be asked? If BioShock can be patched to add a menu option for disabling one of its core features (the Vita-Chambers), there's no reason a game with a much simpler problem that's already been fixed can't do the same.

 

[BartyMae]

The keyboard sensitivity for Super Meat Boy blows, anyways. You can press down on a movement button, for the same exact amount of time three times in a row, and the first two you'll barely budge an inch, and the third time you'll just go flying...probably straight off a cliff. I played through with keyboard to the beginning of...Candy Lane(?), or something like that, and beat most of the dark world levels up until that point, but then pretty much just gave up. My fingers were nearly broken by that point.

 

[Samantha Burt]

Wait. So you're having trouble pressing shift and spacebar at the same time? How small are your hands?

My thoughts exactly. Isn't this kind of a mainstay in most FPS's as well?

OT: I think it's perfectly acceptable for some games to warrant a controller. Like someone said above, driving games are just appalling without some sort of analogue input, and I couldn't solve most of the puzzles in LA Noire without the vibration feedback.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

The keyboard sensitivity for Super Meat Boy blows, anyways. You can press down on a movement button, for the same exact amount of time three times in a row, and the first two you'll barely budge an inch, and the third time you'll just go flying...probably straight off a cliff. I played through with keyboard to the beginning of...Candy Lane(?), or something like that, and beat most of the dark world levels up until that point, but then pretty much just gave up. My fingers were nearly broken by that point.

I've always found I've gotten the best accuracy in SMB from my keyboard, actually. You just need to abuse the way left overrides right. So tapping left while holding down right gives you excellent air control. It's also way faster than moving a stick from one side to the other, since both actions are simultaneous. Input lag is massively reduced.

The problem there isn't that it isn't responsive, but that it's sometimes too responsive. The game is able to detect incredibly small differences in key timings.

 

[Something Amyss]

2. Use your PS3 controller and install MotionJoy http://www.motioninjoy.com/
You also need a bluetooth adapter for your computer.

Actually, I've played with a PS3 controller by plugging it in. Unlike the 360's controller, where the USB setup only charges it, the PS3 controller basically becomes a wired controller when plugged in. I think I used MotionJoy for this, to boot.

I prefer the XBox gamepad, though. I just didn't have the option at the time.

 

[Doom972]

I agree about not being able to change key bindings being a huge oversight of the developers, but making games with a controller in mind isn't something new in PC gaming. I still remember games from the 90s having those Gravis Gamepad logos on their starting screens to indicate that the game is meant to be experienced with a controller.

I don't have an X-box 360, but I do have an X-box 360 controller so that I can use it with some modern PC games. In some games it allows for better control. I recommend getting an X-box 360 controller, or any other X-Input compatible one. If you like the Playstation layout, there are X-Input compatible controllers by Logitech that use it.

 

[Something Amyss]

I agree about not being able to change key bindings being a huge oversight of the developers

You've been able to since 2010.

 

[Norrdicus]

Wait. So you're having trouble pressing shift and spacebar at the same time? How small are your hands?

My thoughts exactly. Isn't this kind of a mainstay in most FPS's as well?

I've not seen an FPS where segments are massively hard if you don't sprint 75% of the time and don't jump every second.

I want you to do something here. Put your pinkie on left shift and keep the button pressed. Now start pressing the space bar at a quick pace and keep at it for a minute. You might notice that it gets uncomfortable really quick.

Now, compare it to the feeling you get when you press Z to sprint and X to jump

Edit: the fact that most Newgrounds platformers can figure out better key bindings than those in Super Meat Boy is very ironic

 

[Samantha Burt]

I've not seen an FPS where segments are massively hard if you don't sprint 75% of the time and don't jump every second.

I want you to do something here. Put your pinkie on left shift and keep the button pressed. Now start pressing the space bar at a quick pace and keep at it for a minute. You might notice that it gets uncomfortable really quick.

Now, compare it to the feeling you get when you press Z to sprint and X to jump

Edit: the fact that most Newgrounds platformers can figure out better key bindings than those in Super Meat Boy is very ironic

Not a problem for me, but I do jump most of the time in Minecraft when I run, so I guess it's something I'm used to. I'm not holding the shift key, but my pinkie is constantly resting on it. I did just try and had no issues with your challenge, but I do see where you're coming from, I imagine SMB is a bit more frantic than most FPS's xD