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What is the Best Console Controller of All Time?
Mateo Slovinsky asks: "Is the XBox 360's controller the best controller of all time? CNet seems to think so in its line up of the top five gamepads of all time. If you expected the Wii's controller, you will be dissapointed. It's a brilliant piece of innovation, but there simply aren't enough games to judge it against the best controllers ever." Which controller would you pick? What controllers have not left your hands cramped after a marathon session of gaming?
Adjustable turbo on A and B, large buttons, comfortable stick, fits on your lap or a tabletop nicely, even a slow-motion hack for those games that could support it. Next question....
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
I'm one of the guys who prefered the original "duke" controler on the xbox, but even with my largeer hands the 360 controler is really comfortable, I think they really spent alot of time on the design of it.
You mad
The wavebird was practically the only redeeming feature of the Gamecube. Sure, if you had ape hands it was kind of small, but for my 12-year old hands, it was a dream come true. The wavbird proved that you could have a decent wireless controller.
kill all the fucking niggers
Ok, at the top end of the scale, I've got to agree with assessment the 360 controller is the best ever made. Prior to the 360's launch, I'd have pointed to the Xbox S-controller, which was well ahead of anything else in terms of shape, quality of build and buttons, weight balance and overall ergonomics. The only downside with the S-Controller was that the black and white face buttons were awkward and uncomfortable to use. The 360 controller corrects this flaw, essentially by converting those buttons into bumpers and also improves the weight balance still further. Range, reliability and ability to survive being thrown on the floor after Dead or Alive 4 drives me to my snapping point are all excellent.
The Dualshock 2 was also an excellent controller in its own way, despite being a little too small for comfort. It did a good job of doing absolutely everything a modern controller needs to with a minimum of fuss and bother. However, the pressure-sensitive function of the buttons could be extremely finnicky and was hard to use properly in games that demanded it (such as the Gran Turismo series). The Sixaxis is a big improvement in this respect, but... well... I'll come to the Sixaxis later.
Leaving the consoles aside for one moment, I'm going to get a bit retro for my final pick of "great" controllers and go back to the PC's Thrustmaster F-16. I had one of these eating up half my desk-space for many years and never found anything more fun to play flight-sims with. Sure, the customisation software was all DOS based and didn't work properly under Win 95 or later, but I still have very fond memories of this stick.
Now... the bad.
Top pick here... the Gamecube controller. Not in terms of sheer, outright awfulness - you can certainly find worse examples of that. But rather because this controller managed to be the only controller to "get it wrong" so badly in a generation where everybody else (including PC accessory manufacturers) seemed more or less able to agree on roughly how many buttons a controller should have and where they should be. One huge, stand-out flaw was the pathetic cable length, particularly unforgivable on a system so heavily geared towards party games. Shelling out extra for wireless controllers became effectively essential for anybody with a living room larger than a small cupboard. The right analogue stick wasn't even a proper stick - it was a stumped and malformed nub, which was no use whatsoever for gaming and made fpses on the cube a truly nasty proposition. The mis-shaped buttons, with the huge green blob and the tiny little kidney-beans around the edge meant that you were forever hitting A when you didn't mean to. All in all, the official Cube controller felt like a nasty, $5 third party accessory.
Also high on the list... the PSP's analogue stick. Gums up with dust far too easily and is not pleasant to use even after cleaning. The rest of the PSP interface is fine and many games avoid using the little stick, but this is definitely something for Sony to tackle in the next revision.
And now the "why weren't they includeds"
Basically, because while allegedly revolutionary (although the results of this "revolution" remain to be seen), the Wii-mote at best represents a very early and unpolished attempt at a new type of controller. Accuracy is questionable at best, especially during rapid movements. Less understandable, and harder to forgive, is the positioning of the buttons. If you want to use more than 2 buttons, then you are going to get sore fingers. Using the Wii-Mote for anything other than a "wave the wand around manically" game for any protracted period is deeply uncomfortable and cramps up my hand like nothing else I've ever tried. The 360 controller is a massively polished traditional product - as good as it's going to get for regular controllers for the forseeable future. That the Wii-mote fails to measure up is perhaps inevitable given how novel it is, but it still doesn't mean that it's as good as the 360 controller.
And the Sixaxis? Well..
After playing SotN on it, I think it's safe to say the Xbox 360 d-pad sucks.
Ever since the PS2 (that seems to be the watershed for me), the damn things have become stupidly unwieldy. I hate the analogue sticks on the PS2 Dual Shock. Not per se, but they just make the whole thing so cramped. As for shoulder buttons... one each side is permissable, but what idiot decided TWO could fit on there comfortably? The damn thing feels more like a chinese finger-trap than a fun controller.
I also don't like the 4-button diamond layout that started with the SNES controller and has persisted. The thumb has one comfortable axis to play with and keep uniform button-pressing movement - side to side. Thus the three-buttons-in-a-row structure is far better.
Certainly large amounts of buttons are more easily accessible on arcade games (I've never had a problem with Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, etc), but as you're using your fingers, palm-down to access them, that's far better than trying to hit 4 - or even 6! As per the Saturn for instance - with one thumb.
I play PC games more than console games, so I'm familiar with using a good 15-20 buttons to play Counter strike, World of Warcraft, what have you - but the layout of a keyboard is so much better for that than a cramp-inducing controller. It's not the complexity of what's involved, but the fact that your most useful digits are tucked away gripping the controller, and you're expected to hit 12 buttons and 3 directional pads/sticks with your two thumbs that is dumb.
Having said that, I love the Wiimote. Aside from the jumping-about-waving aspect, its design limits you by necessity to not using more than 2-3 buttons, which is great. The Nunchuk could use one mess "shoulder button", but it's forgivable.
There is a cute "family tree" of controllers available here: http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/
I agree with you on this. The box design is no Cadillac when holding it sideways for VC games or games like Paper Mario. But I give them props for designing a multi-functioning controller that CAN be used in two different positions. In this game, the functionality is more important than the perfect comfort.
Red Steel is the the prefect example of how to screw up the pointer detection at the game level. I picked up this game at release and traded it back in a week later. Never bothered to play it very long. This wasn't due to how crappy the pointer is, but how the game interacted with the pointer. Often, it would jump around the room 'locking on' to things.
Also, as I've been finding out, a 'bright' room causes havoc with pointer detection. Trying to play Paper Mario when it's sunny out and the curtains are open is just painful. You need a good game interface and a darker room and the point works like magic. Just play Wii Play to see how well it can work. Not perfect, sure, but far from being obtuse.
I might rent Red Steel again (being a Blockbuster online member, I get a free game rental a month) to see how much was the remote sensitivity on a bright day and how much was the game interface. Since that time, I've learned to adjust the pointer sensitivity and room brightness.
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Remember the "advanced" controllers for the original Nintendo, the NES Max and NES Advantage? The Advantage was the huge, arcade-style controller. I never had one, but friends did. I didn't like it. What I did like, and own, was the NEX Max.
Now, the thing I hated about it was that "sliding" left thumb control wasn't very precise. But I fixed that by taking it apart and actually inserting the D-pad from a regular NES controller. A real simple hack that gave me the customary precision of the standard NES controller, the more "natural" and comfortable shape of the Max, as well as the all-too-important turbo buttons.
Nowdays, I like the standards Playstation2 controller to be the best. It just feels natural in my hands.
Actually they both had four. Genesis has A,B,C,START and NES had A,B,SELECT,START, not counting the dpads.
You are all a bunch of idots.
When 2D fighting games were all the rage, Sega released a 6-button controller to support Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and their own Eternal Champions game. The buttons were A,B,C,X,Y,Z (and of course, START).
The controller actually had a 7th button, called "Mode", which was used to force the controller to function as a 3-button controller (A=X, B=Y, C=Z) for a few old games that freaked when booted with a 6-button controller plugged in (Ms. PacMan, for example).
The 6-button controller was the new default button sceme, even appearing on the Nomad portable.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Wow. I cannot believe you got modded to +4, Insightful. Not by people who actually own a Wii, I'm sure.
The size of your TV does not really matter. All movements are read relative to the "sensor bar". So it doesn't matter where you are pointing on your screen. I'm sure there are others who know a lot more than I do that could explain it better.
And they do have a built-in sensitivity tool. I have it and I have not been online with my Wii yet.
Go to your Wii menu -> Wii Settings -> Wii Systems Settings 2 -> Sensor Bar -> Sensitivity
Make sure you cover the entire area given with the pair of dots. Particularly the edges. If not set properly, a third dot will often show when you get near or on an edge.
You can also set your screen type (4:3 or 16:9) and sensor bar position (top or bottom of TV). I wonder if you've even browsed through those settings.
As for the 'Nintendorks' reference, very juvenile.
"They're always after me_lucky_charms!"