Controller Showdown: Part 2
Picking up where I left off...
D-PadThe story of the directional pad or "d-pad" is pretty much the inverse of what happened to the shoulder buttons: the d-pad was once the single most important feature of a console controller, and has since languished to the point where it is typically used for in-game menus or similar auxiliary functions. Modern console games have gravitated toward the use of analog thumb-sticks and left the d-pad in the dust.
That having been said, the d-pad is not entirely unimportant, since some popular games do make good use of it. It's often used for weapon-swapping in FPS games like Gears of War, and some players prefer it over the analog stick for old school fighting games like Street Fighter II and Soul Calibur. The d-pad is just important enough to matter, but not enough to make or break a system.
This is fortunate for the Xbox 360 because it has one of the most finicky and difficult d-pads of perhaps any popular console since before the NES--more than twenty years ago. Between the 360 and the PS3, there is no contest here: the PS3 d-pad is flat-out superior in every way.
Tilt ControlsThe PS3 offers some motion controls built-in to the joystick, while the 360 does not. However, the PS3 tilt controls feel laggy and inaccurate, and I have yet to see them used for much more than novelty purposes. Most of the time I forget that this feature of the PS3 even exists, so while this is another victory for the PS3, it's a hollow one.
WeightOne of the nice things about the PS3 controller is that it's nice and light. The DualShock 3 is significantly heavier than the rumble-less Sixaxis, but the 360 controller is heavier still--particularly with those battery packs that the wireless controllers rely on.
In all my years playing console games to date, I've never really thought about the weight of my controllers before. This is because it's never been severe enough to make me notice the weight contributing to fatiguing my hands until now. That is, in a nutshell, how heavy the 360 controllers are.
Don't get me wrong: this is not a serious problem. I hardly ever notice the heft of my 360 controllers, but it's one of those small factors that combines with other things like a slightly uncomfortable R-Trigger and stiff analog joysticks that makes the 360 controller a little hard on the hands. Honestly, most players will never notice or care, but since I'm going into detail to compare the 360 controllers against the PS3 controllers, this is worth mentioning.
Analog SticksThis is by far the most important aspect of the two controllers, since they are heavily used in all kinds of console games these days. It's only over time that I've noticed much in the way of differences between PS3 and 360 analog sticks; when one is "in the zone" and not thinking at all about one's hands, there doesn't seem to be much difference.
The first thing to notice is that the placement is different. The PS3 analog sticks are aligned horizontally, while the 360 controllers place the left analog stick higher up--in a spot where the D-pad traditionally resides. At first I expected for this to make some kind of significant difference in how the controllers handle relative to each other, but I haven't been able to notice any.
The shape of the tops of the analog sticks is another story. I initially found that the 360 analog sticks tend to dig into my thumbs, partly because of the concave design of the tops, and partly because the analog sticks themselves are stiffer (provide more resistance). Over time I got used to these features of the 360 controller and sometimes I even feel like I can get a slightly better grip on the 360's analog sticks than on the PS3's. However, I would say that the convex design of the PS3 analog stick tops is more comfortable and works well.
The difference in resistance is the biggest factor in how these analog sticks affect my gameplay. I find that because the 360 controller requires more force, it is easier to snap to a certain direction accurately with the 360 sticks. That is to say that if I suddenly need to make a hard motion in a certain direction, the extra resistance seems to make my motions more accurate once I've adjusted to using the 360 controller. The PS3 controller, by contrast, requires more finesse.
There is a trade-off here, however: not only does the PS3 controller require more finesse, but I find that it allows more finesse. It is easier to hold the PS3 stick in place only a small way from center than on the 360 controller--in other words, it is easier to make soft movements.
The general gist of all of this is that I find that the 360 controller works a little better for twitch action titles like fighting games and FPSes, while the PS3 controller works a little better for games with more sim style controls like driving and flying games. That having been said, any game that appears on either console
should be tuned with that platform's hardware in mind and will therefore account for the particular strengths and weaknesses of that system's controller.
Overall, I would call this category a tie. I started off liking the PS3 analog sticks better, but I've gotten so accustomed to the 360 controller for certain titles that I think a PS3 controller would throw me off. If there is any victory to be had here one way or the other, I think it is marginal and would play a distant second to individual taste.
Coming next... still more?
Controller Showdown: Part 1
Fritzkrieg got me thinking about which console has better controllers: the PS3 or the Xbox 360. My initial reaction to the issue was to declare that I prefer the 360 controller flat-out, but upon further reflection this isn't entirely true. Over the course of a few posts, I will share some observations on how the controllers differ and why it matters.
R2 vs RTConsistent with the button naming convention started by the DualShock controller for the original PlayStation, the lower shoulder button on the right side of the PS3 controller (either the DualShock 3 or the regular Sixaxis) is called the R2 button. For the first time in the PlayStation line of controllers, this button has a great deal of analog range, which makes it consistent with the Xbox 360 contoller, which calls this same button the "right trigger" or RT.
Shoulder buttons have become a big deal. When they were popularized by the Super Famicom or North American SNES back in the early 90s, shoulder buttons were not widely used; some games flat-out ignored them, while others relegated them to seldom-used functions. Street Fighter II actually had use for 6 buttons, yet many players re-assigned the strong punch and attack actions to other buttons so as to minimize the use of the shoulder buttons. Simply put, the shoulder buttons didn't get much respect.
The N64, PSX, and Saturn continued to provide shoulder buttons, and the shoulder buttons continued to not be heavily used for the most part, even though the PlayStation decided to double-up the number of shoulder buttons to make four (L1, L2, R1, and R2). The tide began to turn when racing games like Gran Turismo and FPS games started using dual-analog functionality of the DualShock controller.
Normally when you use a gamepad style controller, your left thumb is on the D-pad and your right thumb is used to hit pad buttons. When you use a dual-analog controls, however, both thumbs are on analog sticks--so how do you hit pad buttons? The shoulder buttons solve this problem since you can hit then with your index fingers.
With the current console generation, the shoulder buttons have become some of the most widely used buttons on the controller--particularly the R1/RT button. The reason for this is simple: R1/RT is the gas pedal for most racing games and the gun trigger for most FPS games. There are notable exceptions to this rule (the default for gas in Gran Turismo 5: Prologue is still X), but you'll probably find that when you're playing modern console blockbuster titles, your right index finger is used a lot.
So which does a better job--the 360 or the PS3? I've found that the outward curved design of the 360 controller is easier to grip, which makes it easier to hold down over extended periods and somewhat easier to get a range of input out of (eg. only holding it half-way down versus holding it all of the way down). By comparison, I've heard comments that the PS3 R2 button feels "mushy," and this is fair to say.
In this category, I would award my preference to the 360 controller, but there is a trade-off: I find that the 360 controller's outward curved triggers wear on my index fingers after prolonged play. This is one factor (and not the only one) that contributes to the 360 controller tiring out one's hands during a marathon gaming session.
Coming up: talk about the analog sticks, vibration, motion sensors, and weight.
Sunny Tried Halo 3
Jeepers, Friday already! Time flies...
Fritzkrieg was over for some gaming last Sunday, and he, Sunny, and I ended up playing three player Xbox 360 games. We warmed up with some Geometry Wars 2 before putting in some time with Castle Crashers. Following that, I decided that we should try some 3-player Halo 3 deathmatch.
Two minutes into the fight, Sunny was
bored. It seems that nothing could be more tedious for her than pointing and shooting at things, so she occupied herself for several more minutes with exploring the level and literally looking to see if there was any fun to be had at all. She didn't find anything satisfactory.
Afterward I found myself wondering what sets Halo 3 so much apart from the likes of Castle Crashers or World of Warcraft. Is shooting at things that much more tedious than beating them with a stick or zapping them with a spell? Then I realized that the co-operative aspect of it was missing. In both Castle Crashers and WoW, we are playing as a team to beat up other guys, rather than fighting among ourselves.
I did once get Sunny to play--and briefly enjoy--Unreal Tournament 2004. It was a match where she, Matt, and I were playing together on a team against bots, and we were playing CTF. Sunny's comment at the time was that it was rather like Warsong Gulch, but with shock rifles.
Given that, one might think that I could get Sunny into other co-op FPS experiences like, say, Gears of War. No dice, though. The co-op factor helps, but ultimately Sunny wants something... I dunno, cute and kinda girly, I guess. Castle Crashers and WoW qualify. GoW is a shameless testosterone fest.
The next time I get Fritzkrieg, Matt, and myself together, I want to try the Halo 3 thing again--without subjecting Sunny to it. :) I only have three controllers anyway. Matt is the biggest FPS fan among us, but like any true FPS fan, he shuns the console variety in favour of PC games. I expect that he'll resist playing Halo 3 for exactly this reason, and I've figured out what to say in response:
Less QQ, more pew-pew.
Remebrance Day, Mirror's Edge, WotLK: Day 1
I try to take note of Remembrance Day each year, as I feel that it is important to honor the memory of soldiers in various conflicts throughout history. In years past I've often set time aside to play something WW II themed, and this year was no different: I logged a total of 7.6 hours of Day of Defeat: Source on Nov 11th, according to
my Steam community page. This would have been a satisfying way to mark the occasion in itself, but I managed to top that by finally convincing Matt to partake of DoD, which lead to him becoming a fast convert. He tells me that he plans to play DoD regularly from now on.
Between Day of Defeat: Source, Gears of War 2, and Wrath of the Lich King, I had just enough time to squeeze in an hour of Mirror's Edge. I've heard that it's very short, but that doesn't bother me so much--the game is very good, perhaps even excellent. It's an immersive, cinematic experience with a novel visual style and solid gameplay mechanics. It may not be the kind of classic game that will be remembered decades from now, but for a seasonal hit, it is very satisfying. I need to play more of it before I can decide if there's anything about it that I really don't like.
Actually, as a quick aside, there is one thing that I don't like about Mirror's Edge: the writing. It's easy for me to forget that the writing is even there because, like Battlefield: Bad Company or Gears of War 2 before it, I'd given up on the writing in Mirror's Edge before I'd even started with it. The dialogue is generally painful in the few spots where it isn't bland, and the story arc in general does not aim to be very challenging. I was both taken aback and shaken out of my suspension of disbelief at one point during a cut-scene where one of the characters stops to explain (obviously for the benefit of the player) what the legend of Icarus is. A note to the game directors: fans of the game who are gripped by the story and don't get the reference to Icarus will
look it up--don't insult the intelligence of everyone else by spelling it out.
So, Wrath of the Lich King. 'Tis a big deal. Sunny and I lined up at the local EB Games for the midnight release, which went smoothly and was fairly quiet. When we got home we played for a couple of hours and powered through many quests in the Howling Fjords. Unfortunately, I need to work today, or I'd be playing right now. :) I don't know if there's really much to say about WotLK. It's WoW, it's more of the same with a lot of new stuff, and it's totally fucking awesome. Even the mere
intro movie blows me away.
So sorry, Little Big Planet and Gears of War 2. I'll be back for you someday.
How To Fix World of Warcraft Config on Mac OS X
I just ran into a little trouble with World of Warcraft on Mac OS X. Sunny and I have separate user accounts, but mine has admin privileges and hers doesn't. (Actually, I'd feel better if neither account was an "admin" and there was a separate root account entirely.) What Sunny found was that WoW wasn't saving her Interface Options configuration, such that if she enabled Auto Loot, for example, it would be turned off again the next time she started WoW.
Finding information about this issue on the web was difficult. There are more articles out there discussing how to run WoW on Ubuntu than talking about Mac OS X issues. I even managed to find a thread where some Windows Vista users were having the same issue while running WoW with a non-admin user.
It didn't take much digging around to figure out where WoW writes it's config files in Mac OS X:
/Applications/World\ of\ Warcraft/WTF/
There's a simple Terminal command that you can use to make all of the files in this directory write-able for all users:
chmod -R a+w /Applications/World\ of\ Warcraft/WTF/
Having made this change, I now find that Sunny's user can save config data. She's still not able to install patches, though, but I won't try to tackle that issue here.
Game Meanderings
There are a few people at work who know enough about me that they occasionally ask me what I've been playing lately in the hope of hearing some kind of amusingly esoteric answer. Once it was Disciples II, once it was Barkley Shut up and Jam Gaiden, once it was Daisenryaku VII, once it was Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, once it was X3: Reunion, and once it was IL2: Sturnovik. Those are all since the start of 2008. One time I answered with something completely mundane like Mercenaries 2 and drew a decisively disappointed reaction.
Yesterday was one of those glorious "random gaming days" that helps to solidify my reputation as somebody who plays a lot of games seemingly at random. There's not much rhyme or reason to what I choose to play--I just get a gaming itch that needs to be scratched, and sometimes it leads me in chaotic directions.
Things started out innocently enough with a desire to play Team Fortress 2, which I did for the better part of an hour. I had a great time playing primarily Soldier and Medic, with occasional forays into Demo and Heavy. When I had had my TF2 fill, I briefly considered playing some Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, or Unreal Tournament 3, but something a little less common caught my eye.
It is strange for me to contemplate now that although I was a total addict of id Software games back in the mid 90s, it wasn't until later that I was old enough to afford copies of most of them. As a consequence of this, for the longest time the only id Software games I had were copies of Quake, Quake II, and Quake III: Arena without any of the expansion packs. When the id Super Pack was released on Steam, I officially filled in all of the blanks.
Because of this, I happened to have a copy of Quake III Team Arena kicking around that I'd never actually played. And so it came to pass that yesterday I had my first duel against Fritzkrieg, the Q3A bot that is, not my buddy who goes by the same alias. Although the graphics are dated and the gameplay feels awkward now that I'm accustomed to more modern FPSes, Q3A has aged well and I probably could have played that for the remainder of the day if I'd really wanted to.
World of Warcraft interjected for a little bit and then I took a break. I'm pretty sure I also played Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection on PS3... or was that the night before? I remember contemplating Dead Space at one point, but I ended up playing GTA IV instead. Then Fritzkrieg came over and the Little Big Planet started.
LBP would have dominated the remainder of the day, and for Fritzkrieg it did, but at some point I got tired and passed the controller off to Sunny. I then decided to fire up some old SNES games.
I nearly started playing F-Zero but quickly switched to Donkey Kong Country (and got my ass handed to me by the barrel canyon stage). Following that was a fair sized helping of Super Mario All-Stars, which segued into a taste of Seiken Densetsu 3, and I finished off the night with a bit of Chrono Trigger.
Days like that make it hard to go to work in the morning.
