Hi again Escapist Forums! So how was everyone's Summer? Specifically Steam Summer Sale, hope everyone's wallets haven't kicked the bucket yet, because for some reason everyone still throws money at the sale anyways. Though did anyone pickup Psychonauts at 90% off? That's neat.
Anyways, onto today's topic for a beating. Before that, here's a story.
You know it's a Ubisoft game when the moment it tries loading up the Ubisoft logo your com starts to choke, staying stuck at the French (Or European? I'm unsure) Developer's swirly ooh of a logo, before finally loading onto the menu. Anyways, I'm not sure how many of you guys do this, but how many of ye guys take some time off to pull a TotalBiscuit and dive into a game's Options screen first? Not to tamper with graphics (unless you're me, who spends too damn much time rigging every setting to low as much as possible), but rather controls.
Now, I'm unfamiliar with how many Ubisoft games have this whole pre-determined set of controls you can't change thing (Cause the only Ubisoft game I've spent time with so far was the now defunct Might and Magic: Duels of Champions), but what pisses me off about a game is when they refuse to let you modify a game's controls to your convenience. Kind of like the game's demanding you play on their terms or Eff-off.
That game was Outland, a mayan-ish metroidvania thing about Colour swapping and pretty much everything you can do across all games in the Megaman Franchise.
As you may or may not know, Outland on the PC doesn't let you reconfigure the controls (Individual buttons btw, cause the closest thing you get to 'changing' the controls is through some pre-determined setup thing). It comes with a pre-determined set of keys, basically WASD for move, J for sword attack, I to colour swap etc etc, I won't get into details but the point is, you can't tweak it. It took me a 2nd go at the game to notice that you can move with the Arrow keys on a keyboard, which was a relief given how pissed off I got during my first run with the game. The other keys though? Nope! Prepare to play this game severely awkwardly if you're using the Arrow Keys! (Though I think the alternate key for Sword attack was 'V', odd there wasn't an Alt for the Colour Swap Key).
In contrast to Outland just a few hours ago, I gave Mighty No.9 a spin. And you know the game is just begging for a beating when the start-up screen says 'This game is better with a Controller' (Or something like that, I ain't going back to get the specifics), almost as if it has a fetish of taking a piss at itself before even letting the player play the sodding game. Anyways, likewise I did what I did, configure the controls. And it well...worked.
At the risk of sounding like someone trying to say MN-09 is innocent and 'good', it isn't, but that's a story for some other time, the point is my experience with the game was a positive one, not because the game was good, eff no, but rather the controls I tweaked made it engaging enough for me to play it. (Thought tbf, I need to disclose that we only played the Intro stage so far, but given how alright the controls feel, I'm looking forward to giving the rest of the game a beating).
What I'm trying to discuss today is, would a game experience be better if a player made the call about what button does what? Like, give them the option to configure for fecks sake. Is it not a player's right to adjust an experience to their whim? Regardless if it's PC or Console.
PS: I acknowledge that Outland was a console only release before its PC port, and that the Devs may have wanted to make it feel more like a Console-ish experience on the PC. But it was weird they couldn't just point that out as part of the Control scheme as well.
Off-Topic PS: Btw, um...I see the bots are overwhelming the other Gaming related Forum, do ye guys need a hand to cleanup that? Or we're leaving that for now to nuke from Orbit later.
Anyways, onto today's topic for a beating. Before that, here's a story.
You know it's a Ubisoft game when the moment it tries loading up the Ubisoft logo your com starts to choke, staying stuck at the French (Or European? I'm unsure) Developer's swirly ooh of a logo, before finally loading onto the menu. Anyways, I'm not sure how many of you guys do this, but how many of ye guys take some time off to pull a TotalBiscuit and dive into a game's Options screen first? Not to tamper with graphics (unless you're me, who spends too damn much time rigging every setting to low as much as possible), but rather controls.
Now, I'm unfamiliar with how many Ubisoft games have this whole pre-determined set of controls you can't change thing (Cause the only Ubisoft game I've spent time with so far was the now defunct Might and Magic: Duels of Champions), but what pisses me off about a game is when they refuse to let you modify a game's controls to your convenience. Kind of like the game's demanding you play on their terms or Eff-off.
That game was Outland, a mayan-ish metroidvania thing about Colour swapping and pretty much everything you can do across all games in the Megaman Franchise.
As you may or may not know, Outland on the PC doesn't let you reconfigure the controls (Individual buttons btw, cause the closest thing you get to 'changing' the controls is through some pre-determined setup thing). It comes with a pre-determined set of keys, basically WASD for move, J for sword attack, I to colour swap etc etc, I won't get into details but the point is, you can't tweak it. It took me a 2nd go at the game to notice that you can move with the Arrow keys on a keyboard, which was a relief given how pissed off I got during my first run with the game. The other keys though? Nope! Prepare to play this game severely awkwardly if you're using the Arrow Keys! (Though I think the alternate key for Sword attack was 'V', odd there wasn't an Alt for the Colour Swap Key).
In contrast to Outland just a few hours ago, I gave Mighty No.9 a spin. And you know the game is just begging for a beating when the start-up screen says 'This game is better with a Controller' (Or something like that, I ain't going back to get the specifics), almost as if it has a fetish of taking a piss at itself before even letting the player play the sodding game. Anyways, likewise I did what I did, configure the controls. And it well...worked.
At the risk of sounding like someone trying to say MN-09 is innocent and 'good', it isn't, but that's a story for some other time, the point is my experience with the game was a positive one, not because the game was good, eff no, but rather the controls I tweaked made it engaging enough for me to play it. (Thought tbf, I need to disclose that we only played the Intro stage so far, but given how alright the controls feel, I'm looking forward to giving the rest of the game a beating).
What I'm trying to discuss today is, would a game experience be better if a player made the call about what button does what? Like, give them the option to configure for fecks sake. Is it not a player's right to adjust an experience to their whim? Regardless if it's PC or Console.
PS: I acknowledge that Outland was a console only release before its PC port, and that the Devs may have wanted to make it feel more like a Console-ish experience on the PC. But it was weird they couldn't just point that out as part of the Control scheme as well.
Off-Topic PS: Btw, um...I see the bots are overwhelming the other Gaming related Forum, do ye guys need a hand to cleanup that? Or we're leaving that for now to nuke from Orbit later.
