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Can New Game Control Schemes Hope To Match the PC Keyboard?

Posted by Soulskill on from the precision-and-complexity dept.

An opinion piece on Gamasutra discusses how, in spite of the fancy new motion control systems that have come to console gaming, the PC's keyboard and mouse setup is still unreplaceable for many titles and genres. Quoting: "With over 100 keys to choose from (back of the box quotation right there), the possibilities are near endless, if you start to think of shift and control functions altering the purpose of keys. It means that, when the developers start to make their game, they don't have to worry about the limitations of the interface, knowing that, if all else fails, they can always assign the compass to K, even if that's a bit of a stretch to all but the pianists. The keyboard is the friend of ambition, and ArmA 2 is the testament to that, in all its surrealist, broken glory. ... It's the same reason RTS games have found a home on the PC for so long, able to use the skills people accumulate moving around windows and clicking on icons to command troops and manipulate their battle lines. Developers taking advantage of what we already know to teach us something we don't is what gaming is all about."

2 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The reason the keyboard is popular is simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    chinga tu madre

  2. Re:i love the keyboard and mouse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Depends on the game of course.

    But this is the rebuttal from a PC gamer that switched to consoles.

    I don't have to upgrade my hardware.

    For example, I bought Warhammer: AoR: My computer met the minimum specs. But it ran like a piece of dog crap tossed in to the wind. So I upgraded, spent $150 on the best video card I could find on NewEgg. That didn't work, so I went and upgraded to an Athlon 2.4 (the last, best hope for single core people on an AM2 with non-upgradeable BIOS).

    None of this helped. Everything went really well until I'd go to take a keep. PVP was pretty decent, unless it has tons of pew pew effects. When it came to keep taking I just couldn't hang, a new frame every 10 seconds for the keeps really close to OPFOR's main city, being MT that pretty much shelved me, I rolled back into a door blocker.

    It turns out, that most of the code was written to take advantage of dual core.

    That pretty much told me to stop upgrading my equipment and just start buying consoles, where everyone is on the same playing field.