Visceral Promises Better PC Controls in Dead Space 2

[Jandau]

There was a problem with the controls? What was it? Seriously, among the things wrong with Dead Space, I don't remember controls being one of them. Also, "promises better controls for the PC" is tantamount to "promises indoor plumbing". We've had it for a long time. Any failure of yours to include it is precisely that - your failure...

 

[Weaver]

I just like how developers are like "MAN! Why are PC sales so low?!?!"

Well when we can't rebind our controls, the games are capped at 30FPS and your UI was designed with a controller instead of a mouse I think it's pretty obvious why lots of us just avoid your games.

 

[Nouw]

Can someone enlighten on me on how bad the PC controls were?

 

[Je-Tze]

PC controls would have been fine--all keys were rebindable, and i was able to set them up very comfortably for myself, and i use quite an odd layout compared to most PC gamers.

THE PROBLEM was MOUSE SPEED and RESPONSIVENESS.
It took several swishes to get turned around even with "mouse sensitivity" jacked all the way up, whereas in a real game i can quickly turn 180 with just a flick. It made the game unnecesarily frustrating for me and i almost trashed it several times, but i really liked everything else so i stuck it out. But make no mistake, i am bitter at the mistreatment, and i won't shell out for the sequel until i'm sure that BS has been fixed.
An XBox controller having more responsiveness and control than a KB and Mouse is just unacceptible; that's the forte of the keyboard and mouse, screwing that up took some real incompetance.
...so, glad to hear they'll be fixing it. =)

EDIT: i see a lot of people saying the keys weren't configurable. But mine were totally remapable, including MiddleMouseButton, and other "extra" mouse buttons. I bought the game late though, on sale from steam... maybe they had already put in a patch that allowed keymapping?

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I'm sorry, Visceral, I'm sure you mean well and all, but I don't believe you. Gearbox already burned the PC community hard when they claimed that Borderlands was build from the ground-up for the PC and then it turned-out to just be a sloppy console port. Consider this news post best with a little salt. :/

 

[sigma83]

"Not to sound snarky, but with Dead Space, honestly, the way we're playing it is with a gamepad,"

This attitude really burns me. How much work could it be just to make sure that your game includes the kind of settings options THAT EVERY PC GAME HAS HAD SINCE QUAKE?!

I get that you're developing for consoles. I get that you have to make sure the game works on analog sticks. I get it. PLEASE, for the love of gaming as a medium, make sure your PC version is not shortsighted and hamstrung by idiotic decisions like 'no option to remove mouse smoothing.' The argument cuts both ways, if you release for console please make sure your game works on controllers.

I _seriously_ dislike how much focus the console market is getting because it's introducing a very real problem with control schema. Because of this 'it's made for gamepad' attitude gaining prevalence we are in serious danger of losing focus on genres which require high precision like Quake-style shooters or RTSes

The reason I say this is that the skill ceiling on something like Quake compared to the skill ceiling on Halo is not even _close_. A higher skill ceiling in a game equates to deeper play, meaning more ability to refine and hone play, meaning longevity. eSports owes its creation to games which required high degrees of control precision, Quake, StarCraft, Counter-Strike.

And do not get me started on poorly implemented contextual controls. Oh my god poorly implemented contextual controls.

 

[Togusa09]

My only control is was with the mouse on the main screen, as it took time to accelerate up to speed, then decelerate again. But as it was only the main menu, it was manageable.

Now if they were planning on reducing the overly long load times, that I would get excited about.

 

[Woodsey]

""Not to sound snarky, but with Dead Space, honestly, the way we're playing it is with a gamepad," he told CVG. "Even if you're a PC guy, if you have one, stick [your gamepad] in your PC and play the game with that.""

What the fu-

You can't just say that! Bloody morons.

Was it not possible to change the control scheme yourself? You should only have to do that if you feel like it - it's not up to you to remap every key because they're too lazy.

 

[Funkysandwich]

I don't understand how you can mess up WASD controls for PC. It's not like we've been using almost the same control scheme on PC for over 15 years now...

 

[Chaos Marine]

I thought the controls were fine myself, the only thing you needed to do was turn off the v-sync which gave you a horrendously noticeable time delay between your button presses and something actually happening on the screen.

 

[Sebenko]

I'm sure you'll forgive me for not trusting you and keeping my money.

You shoudn't have fucked up the controls in the first place. It's not like PC controls are a place of lightning change.

Was it not possible to change the control scheme yourself? You should only have to do that if you feel like it - it's not up to you to remap every key because they're too lazy.

Barely. You could remap some of the controls, and only to some of the buttons. You couldn't use the arrow keys or return key, if I remember right, among other ones.

But I run into some comments about people who are left handed and couldn't play the game properly because of the lack of key mapping,so ti will be nice if they would fix this and the slow aim using the mouse

I would be one of those lefties. I actually spent more time wrestling with the controls than being scared. And when my first thought when a monster chases me down a corridor is "Fuck off, I need to sort these controls out", that's a bad sign.

 

[GoGo_Boy]

Nice to hear that.
Mouse tracking was really unresponsive, though turning Vsync off improved this quite a bit (yet far from perfect).

 

[Ne1butme]

I played through the PC version this weekend. Used a 360 controller for the first half, but just could never get enough accuracy. I've been used mouse & keyboard for FPS since Quake and i just can't use an analog stick to aim properly. You can't whip-pan, or accurately control your acceleration. By the time i got to the shooting gallery, i was forced to use the mouse.

I'll have to try the vsync solution. great game though.

 

[s0m3th1ng]

I think the wonky control system added to the scariness of it and the immersion. I mean, do you really look around in real life like in a computer game? No...and especially not with heavy armor.I eventually learned to use the aim function to quickly whip around but not being able to freely look wherever I wanted truly added to the scariness of it...especially in the zero-g bits when you were jumping around. It made the game human and I really hope they don't change it back into a normal FPS control style.

 

[s0m3th1ng]

Now if they were planning on reducing the overly long load times, that I would get excited about.

What? The only loading time is when you first start the game, and on the tram.

 

[scotth266]

To be honest, I kind of agree with his sentiment. Certain games just feel better to me when I use my 360 gamepad. For example, no amount of fangdoodling with Red Faction: Guerilla's controls could make me enjoy the keyboard+mouse layout: the 360 controls, on the other hand, were quite easy to pick up. And the best part is, they let you customize the 360 controls too

 

[Togusa09]

Well, I can't make any guarantees about how the game played on any one else set up, but whenever I died, there was always a painfully long loading screen, that seemed at least as long as the actual level loading.

specs: Win 7, Core2 quad 2.4, ati 4890