Poll: Console sacrifice

[CleverNickname]

It annoys me that even games I'd play on a controller either way on the PC, only really support the fucking XBox controller. Stop making me google for solutions, edit inis or get that controller emulator thingy just so I can play your delayed game on my (much cheaper, much better) Logitech controller.

Recently, only Assassin's Creed got it right. First of all, I can remap all the controls to whatever I damn well please, secondly the game will refer to Button 1 instead of X. I don't have an X.
I can't fight properly in Arkham City because "A+X" and "B+Y" confuse the hell out of me. Not only do I just have numbers (which were difficult enough to internalize), I grew up on the SNES - where A was right and B was down; it's reversed on the XBox and it makes no damn sense!

And what if you have a PS3 and a PC? X is where A is! Holy balls, wtf! More exclamation marks!!

 

[D Moness]

OK , I can't take it anymore. I recently bought Broken Sword 3 from GOG and it's driving me mad with horrid controls , camera angels and quick time events. And the puzzles are just plain boring. Problem is , I know why it's like that , so it can work on consoles.

Funny though since broken sword 1,2 and 3 have all been multi-platform (only broken sword 4 is pc exclusive) so the all had to work on consoles.

plus people are really pointing the fingers at the wrong people. How about not blaming consoles/console players but blame devs for making lazy ports one way or the other.

 

[ph0b0s123]

I think with Skyrim it is Mod-able on the PC. I believe people have already put together mods that make the controls and UI better. So for cases like this, I don't mind a game being initially consolized as long as the PC version is mod-able so the PC community can sort it out to their liking.

If a game came along, an FPS for example, where the developers say 'you must play wizz das controller' (in a German accent of course), then I will be majorly pissed.

I have not got round to it yet but didn't Witcher 2 also have a dumbed down control setup just because they may do a console version in the future?

The quick time events drive me mad though. The bridge level on Crysis 2 where I fought of loads of tough enemies to get lots of nano upgrade points, only to be sent back to the beginning of the level, just because I did not press the spacebar in a cut scene to stop myself falling of the bridge when it collapsed.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well let's just make it clear once and for all, blame the devs, it is always the devs fault.

Yes they primarily design things for consoles, but that does not mean they can't put in an extra hour and think about how shit will be put together on PC, i.e. bad ports are the result of lazy ass devs.

 

[Jandau]

I'm sorry, you lost me around the time you said Oblivion had a good interface. It was a TERRIBLE interface. Big, clunky, uninformative, ugly as hell. And it was like that so it would work on the consoles. Skyrim's interface is leaps and bounds ahead (though it's flawed in its own way).

 

[razing32]

OK , I can't take it anymore. I recently bought Broken Sword 3 from GOG and it's driving me mad with horrid controls , camera angels and quick time events. And the puzzles are just plain boring. Problem is , I know why it's like that , so it can work on consoles.

Funny though since broken sword 1,2 and 3 have all been multi-platform (only broken sword 4 is pc exclusive) so the all had to work on consoles.
.

Odd , then probably just my bad , and they were trying to capitalize on the console style action game , but now as I am still playing most puzzles feel like sokoban.

One thing I must comment on , I don't think that console players are dumber or anything , nor do I think games are dumber on consoles , but there's no way you can make a controller with so many buttons feel comfortable.

A mouse works best for FPS and RTS (maybe point-n-click adventure) and an analog-stick/D-pad works best for action games. I wish devs would just take this into account. Change the interface and control scheme , that's all I ask.

I just had to say this before this becomes an us vs them thread , and I don't want that. I'm just curios why it is so hard for devs to change the interface for a port. There is no fit-all solution in my mind.


OH and for Oblivion , sorry if you guys don't like it. It was my first in the Elder Scrolls series that I actually played properly and maybe nostalgia is clouding my judgement.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

OK , I can't take it anymore. I recently bought Broken Sword 3 from GOG and it's driving me mad with horrid controls , camera angels and quick time events. And the puzzles are just plain boring. Problem is , I know why it's like that , so it can work on consoles.

Same issue I had with Operation Flashpoint 2 , I loved Op Flash 1 , Arma 1 and Arma 2 , so when Op Fl 2 came along I bought it , only to see that the lovely menu of previous games that were intuitive to order an entire platoon around were replaced by a radial menu , best suited to consoles.

And recently I saw it in Skyrim. You remember Oblivion , and the lovely colored and easy to navigate menus. Well , then you can join me in my mourning because there's a radial menu here too.

What is it with games and console ports ? Can't they just create a different control scheme for consoles or something. It's very annoying to have a keyboard with dozens of buttons and be restricted to about 6 or so. And a mouse is not an analog stick , stop using it as such. I broke a mouse playing the Force Unleashed trying to crash TIE Fighters in that damned scrapyard mission when you have to collapse the Imperial Destroyer.

So , am I being a jerk about this ? Or is anyone else sick of seeing PC games butchered for consoles ? (PS : I bought Red Orchestra 2 just because it is PC exclusive)

And also , why can't they just make an interface API and adapt it to the machine the game is running on ? ( I suck at coding btw , so if this makes just as much sense as disabling Spanning Tree over redundant links then please say so)

Oh god trying to play Force Unleashed with a mouse is just an exercise in masochism. No wonder it was on sale for £3 something. I have noticed issues with several other games as well, radial menus happening to be remarkably unfriendly to those with mice. It's an issue stemming from lazy development. I don't hold too much of a grudge about it because the money is in the console market, but god damn it'd be nice for them to put a little bit more thought into the control issues.

 

[D Moness]

I just had to say this before this becomes an us vs them thread , and I don't want that.

I do not want that either, i mean people should play what they like(on the system they prefer).
I just grew up with controllers(mostly joke that i was born with one in my hand), it is indeed rue that a controller can not have as many buttons as a keyboard(honestly i think we hit max with this generation).
Other people have been playing games with a mouse and keyboard for ages.

Small example i have portal 1 for the pc and for the console. On the console i can play it almost blindfolded i have trouble aiming with mouse and keyboard. A mouse and keyboard setup is more accurate for people that are used to using it. Not for me though because i am not used to it.

Only game genre that is very difficult or almost impossible to port to a console are rts games. It is such a shame that devs are lazy when it comes to games for pc's(i am not a dev so i dunno) but making an menu /UI that is better for pc users shouldn't be that difficult

 

[isometry]

I like to play PC games with the controller, so that part of console ports doesn't bother me. Using software like pinnacle profiler you can assign several functions to each button and match the functionality of a KB & mouse.

Overall the ports make me happy, because it means more great games to play on my PC.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Just to clarify something because some people obviously misunderstand this.

When we say that developer are dumbing down a game because of the consoles, that doesn't mean we say that console players are dumber.
It means that they (over)simplify the game to fit the limited capability of the console. No matter what people say, PC's have much greater possibilities, in controls and in graphics.

Also no one with any serious argument is saying that it's the fault of the consoles or console players. We all know it's the dev's fault. They are the one to lazy to do it. In some cases it's the fault of the publisher who try to rush it. But I think that if the development team says "We need more time to release the PC game, release the console now, later this one", both the publisher and the PC gamer will accept it. We won't be happy about the delay, but we will be happy knowing that the developer are taking extra time to make a good port. Fix the controls, the interface, the graphics.

I means seriously, Skyrim was limited to 2 GB ram until recently. I have 6 GB on my laptop. A good gaming PC has even 8 GB while higher end PC's have 16 GB. So why the hell limit us to 2?

Why bind all actions to 1 key when we have the whole alphabet, 10 numbers and everything that times 3 for a shift/alt combination. Not to forget all the other character on the keyboard.

IMHO, there are to many lazy developer. Most games are just bad on the PC. The controls are just awful, making the game frustrating.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yup, the only possible reason for QTEs, bad camera angles, and boring puzzles is TEH CONSOLE SKURGE!

And dammit, menu confusion, too!

one thing i notice about games like skyrim is that yes it was developed for console first because that is where the initial money and market is BUT its the pc modding community that will have people playing it in 10 years and still having people buying it. but bethesda and a few other companies cant seem to grasp that concept any more and are frankly abandoning its loyal fan base.

Yes, and how much money will they get off people buying the game in ten years? Almost none? a negligible amount? Come on, if you're going to make an argument for why more attention should be paid to PCs, at least make it make sense. The amount you get off a product like a video game drops off rapidly after the 6-12 month mark. Yes, even PC games, even though they are "special snowflakes."

 

[Duncan V]

I think what people seem to forget is that Console games used to be badly ported from the PC. Now that the console is by far superior for the average gamer it is the opposite way around. Consoles need less complex controls because we dont have a hundred buttons at our hands. We need a simple menu to play easily.

That being said if a menu is very bad on a PC game it is usually shitty on the console too. Skyrim is not easy to play on the XBOX because of the terrible menu.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

The way I see it, for every "bad" port there are still 2-3 great, maybe even better PC exclusives to play.

I agree, whenever I boot Dark Souls I just feel dumb. I miss the complexity and sophistication of Diablo

Not sure if serious.

 

[lord.jeff]

I don't mind the shift tgowards controler freindly games on the PC, playing on the keyboard hurts my hands after a short while.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

That being said if a menu is very bad on a PC game it is usually shitty on the console too. Skyrim is not easy to play on the XBOX because of the terrible menu.

This. I don't know why people think that just because it doesn't work that well on the PC that it works perfectly on consoles. Despite how much I love the game, the menus in Skyrim are awful and annoying to navigate through. It almost makes me miss the menus from Oblivion. ALMOST.

 

[razing32]

Also no one with any serious argument is saying that it's the fault of the consoles or console players. We all know it's the dev's fault. They are the one to lazy to do it. In some cases it's the fault of the publisher who try to rush it. But I think that if the development team says "We need more time to release the PC game, release the console now, later this one", both the publisher and the PC gamer will accept it. We won't be happy about the delay, but we will be happy knowing that the developer are taking extra time to make a good port. Fix the controls, the interface, the graphics.

I feel the same.
I can't believe every team and every dev out there is happy with a speedy and crappy solution. But I think marketing and publishing are calling the shots , sadly.

 

[BlueMage]

Inb4 dumbed down for conso-

Game developers have long been dumbing down their games to accomodate the console gamers, leaving PC gamers with poor secondary-priority ports, if anything at all.

Nevermind.

I would comment, but I'm a dumb console peasant who's too thick to even comprehend the complex nuances of PC gaming.

Then begone peon, this conversation is for the master race.

Invisible War. To have gone from the glory of a PC masterpiece to a cross-platform, uh, "outing" - it was painful, and truly marked the coming of the End Times.

But whatever, you get over it eventually.

CAPTCHA UPDATE: HOLY SHIT LORD INGLIP WANTS ME TO IMPLOBL SIDNEY!

MY DOG'S NAME IS SIDNEY!

 

[theonecookie]

Yeah sure Blame the people who play games because the developers can't be bothered to make a decent port,who knows maybe we can blame people eat fish and chips because our soup tastes like crap and claim its got nothing to do with the cook being a lazy git