Friday 6 August 2010

Gaming Gripe 01: Losing Control

You know how some things you take for granted until something comes along that really makes you notice how much you've taken it for granted? I had this happen to me just recently with game controls, at first I noticed it on Red Dead Redemption which I've still got to write my review for. In Red Dead, I found that when you try enter a door but you hit the frame if you then try and turn to go in the middle your turning circle just happened to be door size so you found yourself nose to nose with the door frame on the other side, but I brushed this off, it wasn't often that it happened and the way around this was to back off and come at the door at a bit of a run.

So I moved on and played some other games like Crackdown 2, but I finished the story ahead of my friends so they weren't looking for orbs just yet so as sort of stop gap between games I thought I would go back and get a few more Gamerscore on one of the games I've thought of as having a black mark on my gamertag, GTA IVI first saw GTA IV when a friend of mine brought it over and started showing me what it was like, and for whatever reason I never touched it again. I recently borrowed a copy off a friend so that I could try and bump up the gamerscore, and while I've now completed the story I'm not sure if I'll get most of the side missions mostly due the fact that . . . well I can't stand the game.

Some people may think I'm completely wrong, but aside from the fact that I'm finding the game dull a repetitive I'm finding the controls really awkward. You have to keep tapping the run button to sprint and hold it to run which isn't really worth it as it's not really any faster than walking. When you’re driving a boat you can press forward and back make the nose of the boat raise or lower, but this has no effect on the overall speed of the boat but the controls that leave me totally mystified are for the helicopter.

The flight controls are a lot like those knobs in a shower were you have to be a safe cracker to get the water at just the right temperature. You have to push forward on the left thumb stick just the right amount while applying just enough acceleration on the right trigger, while doing all this you have to use left and right bumpers to turn. That's 3 digits working together, but then on the final mission you find yourself in a helicopter and have to use X to fire the guns. Is it just me or is this really complicated? Especially when you compare this to say Crackdown 2 where left and right bumpers control altitude while right stick is the camera, and left stick is main controls. You then use left and right triggers to fire weapons, Oh yeah and you can press the left stick to get a boost.

You may think that I may just be me hating on GTA IV, I think that's what all the cool kids are saying now a days, but really I'm not. Red Dead is a better game by far, I'm not sure if the story is longer or shorter than GTA but it defiantly held my interest a lot more than GTA did, and I think the control issues are probably something that I’m more than likely going to have to live with especially if I want to get some more of the achievements. 

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