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Good Games Ruined by Bad Controllers

Posted by Bob Mackey

When Street Fighter IV was released a few months ago, I found myself a bit annoyed by every gaming journalist informing me that I had to drop another $60-$150 on an arcade stick to fully enjoy the game. Longtime readers of 61FPS know that I'm a notoriously cheap bastard when it comes to gaming, so you can probably guess my response when these earners of a living wage stressed the importance of spending an obscene amount of money on a peripheral necessary to make a single game playable. The sad thing is, they were right; Capcom's fighting masterpiece turns into an unresponsive game of chance if you happen to be using something as poorly-designed and unreliable as the XBox 360's d-pad. But Street Fighter IV alone is not the only victim of bad controller design.

I want to make a distinction between games with bad controls and games hampered by a bad controller; for the former, that little lump of plastic in your hand is not to blame. But if you happen to be a well-meaning game that's entirely reliant on the XBox 360's d-pad, then may God have mercy on your soul.

I may be about two years late to the party on this one, but with my recent (cheap) purchase of a disc featuring quite a few XBLA arcade game, I was completely psyched to sink my teeth into Pac-Man: Championship Edition. Psyched, that is, until I realized that the only four controller inputs required (up, down, left, and right) were completely fudged by that brain-dead square of plastic known as the 360 d-pad. It's hard to get angry at Microsoft, though; Nintendo's patent on the plus-sign d-pad has made less-effective alternatives a necessity. I can only imagine how sweet Pac-Man would be with an arcade stick, but some rich relatives need to die before this dream can become a reality--and these relatives don't even exist yet.

So, 61FPSers, have terrible controllers ever taken the proverbial leak in your cereal bowl?

Related Links:

The Periodic Table of Game Controllers
Bringing Sexy Back: Retro Controllers of the Future
WTFriday: Dragon Quest Crotch Buddies


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Comments

John said:

Psychonauts for the PC (without a gamepad). I can't speak about the console version, but this game was in no way designed for a keyboard. I was constantly twisting my fingers all over the place and usually pushing the wrong buttons.

April 9, 2009 3:49 PM

Roto13 said:

Well I opted for a PS3 instead of a 360. The directional pad isn't perfect, but it's certainly not bad. I just used it to play through the first Legend of Zelda and I didn't have any problem with it. I also use it for fighting games such as Soul Calibur IV and it works fine.

I think the 360 pad would drive me crazy, though. I might skip games like Mega Man 9 if that pad was my only option. (Instead I got the Wii version.)

April 9, 2009 3:53 PM

Sarcasmorator said:

It took a while to get used to, but SFIV actually plays pretty well with the 360's analog stick. The D-pad is garbage, though.

April 9, 2009 5:04 PM

John Constantine said:

Give the analog stick a whirl with Pac-man Championship, Bob. It's very responsive.

April 9, 2009 5:56 PM

LBD "Nytetrayn" said:

Indeed, I use the analog for my 360 Pac-man: CE play.  Bionic Commando Rearmed, too.

On the plus side, the Street Fighter controller should be good for at least <em>two</em> games on the 360.  Don't forget, they released Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix on there not that long ago, and the 360 controller is just as bad for that.

April 9, 2009 11:18 PM

About Bob Mackey

For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

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Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

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