Controller Wars! X360 vs. PS2

[Fishlore]

What can be done on an Xbox controller with one thumb takes up an entire hand on a keyboard and requires quite a bit of coordination between your fingers.

Yeah, but that hand on the keyboard can walk/run, strafe, reload, open doors, throw grenades, select weapons, crouch, prone and a number of other things. I guess Splinter Cell's movement speed slider is as close to analog movement as you can get with a keyboard. Not perfect, but in addition to the other things you can do, I'd take a mouse/keyboard any day.

 

[Stigmata]

PS2 by far. The new Xbox one has stupid button placement.

Really? I think the 360 has great placement. Other than the ABXY buttons looking like they'll be a bit too high-up on the controller face for my tastes, it looks near-perfect.

Plus, the joystick layout is still far better than the PS2's. But hey, I'm a shooter guy, so I'm biased.

 

[Warbie]

Yeah, but that hand on the keyboard can walk/run, strafe, reload, open doors, throw grenades, select weapons, crouch, prone and a number of other things. I guess Splinter Cell's movement speed slider is as close to analog movement as you can get with a keyboard. Not perfect, but in addition to the other things you can do, I'd take a mouse/keyboard any day.

You can do all that with a joypad, just with the other hand. The simple fact is that movement using a keyboard doesn't offer the control or the immersion that analogue does. (I doubt a pressure sensitive keyboard would work either - trying to coordinate varying pressure on up to 4 keys would be very tricky/annoying)

Any game that involves walking/running benefits from this. Having to use another key to change speed is a distraction, and hardly intuitive. When playing a game I want to the option to move how I see fit - if that means walking slowly towards an enemy while unloading a clip into him, just becuase it feels cool at the time, before quickly nipping around a corner to reload, then the controls should allow it (especially in a game like Max Payne - which is all about recreating John Woo style shootouts)

No more should we be forced to do the stop and start, jerky walk when trying to perform delicate movements, or let the controls come between us and the game, and how we want to play it.

 

[Jack_Karverboy]

Xbox 360! Looks like it's easier to use.

 

[StardogChampion]

You can do all that with a joypad, just with the other hand. The simple fact is that movement using a keyboard doesn't offer the control or the immersion that analogue does. (I doubt a pressure sensitive keyboard would work either - trying to coordinate varying pressure on up to 4 keys would be very tricky/annoying)

Any game that involves walking/running benefits from this. Having to use another key to change speed is a distraction, and hardly intuitive. When playing a game I want to the option to move how I see fit - if that means walking slowly towards an enemy while unloading a clip into him, just becuase it feels cool at the time, before quickly nipping around a corner to reload, then the controls should allow it (especially in a game like Max Payne - which is all about recreating John Woo style shootouts)

No more should we be forced to do the stop and start, jerky walk when trying to perform delicate movements, or let the controls come between us and the game, and how we want to play it.

You can buy gamepads for the PC. The other thing is that since they're third-party, you can just wait and see what next-gen pad turns out to be the best then a PC pad gets released with the exact same button layout, woot. Some of the pads are cheap and nasty, but some of them feel better than the actual PS2 ones.

All we need is devs that make their games compatible.

 

[Direwolf]

Yeah, but they can't throw in analog movement in most of them because it could change gameplay.

 

[Warbie]

Exactly - what's the point of using a pad on a pc game that doesn't have analogue movement?