The Problem With Porting Games

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Oddly, hawx works really well on the PC with a 360 controller.

[spoodie]

I don't think I've ever played the same game on both PC and console, so I can't venture an opinion on the difference, only speculation

I've got CoD4 and L4D on PC and 360. Gameplay-wise they're the same, as is the graphics quality, excepting resolution differences. It's just the controls that are obviously different and while mouse aiming can be potentially more accurate it's really down to what you're used to. I took a break from PC FPSs for about a month and my aiming really suffered, I was spazzing all over the place. Not that I'm much good at aiming with a controller either.

[TezzRexx]

I've got Ghostbusters 3 on the PS3 and swept it for PC, I felt the PC version's choice of button layout was terrible and found it hard wrangling ghosts with a mouse rather then a anal-log stick.

[FatherJack]

I'm awful at shooting with a console controller, although games like Timesplitters and Halo paved the way and made it much easier than it used to be - I'm just nowhere near the level I am with a mouse. They were among the first games to actually let you reverse the axes of the controller, something which the 360 commendably lets you set as a global preference for all games.

However I'm piss-poor at PC driving games (without a wheel, which I had years ago but no longer works) and the third-person action games are often a trial when the controls aren't that well thought-out.

So I prefer games like GTA on the consoles, but get stuck at shooty bits I could easily do on the PC, yet have trouble with the PC versions at the driving elements.

I typically buy games where they come out first, then re-buy later on another platform if there are significant benefits or improvements (like Mass Effect, GTA: Vice City) but I also share my console games a fair bit with console-only-owning friends and sometimes buy copies just to play at their houses. Case in point being the Orange Box - while a few of my friends would never consider an FPS at all and others would never consider one that wasn't a Tom Clancy-style thing or had any element of fantasy/sci-fi - Portal just deserves to be demonstrated to everyone.

Ghostbusters (PS3) was way easier to control than I thought it would be, but it's similar to most console games in that once you've forgotten the controls, you basically have to do the tutorials again to remind yourself. Oddly PC games are sometimes more 'pick up and play' - I can come back to them years later and still know basically what to do.

We have conventions which have taken years to evolve from the horrid days of perplexing one-off GUIs or those hideous dungeon crawlers where you clicked yellow arrows on the screen to move or turn. But now, for example, in RTS games you click to view, right-click to move, drag to select multiple, etc - it's universal. I rather like how Champions Online has a WoW Controls option (in all but name) - I don't have to learn a new control method, even if their previous game had a slightly different one. Any game that 'steals' my right mouse button, or horses me to click my scroll wheel can burn in game hell for infinity+1 month.

[HereComesPete]

So I prefer games like GTA on the consoles, but get stuck at shooty bits I could easily do on the PC, yet have trouble with the PC versions at the driving elements.

Wired 360 controller on the pc maybe?