Ico

[A Black Falcon]

Is very good.

... but not enough to get me to actually play only one game at a time, though. I'm still playing SF Rush (N64) and Batman (NES), like I was a few days ago? I'm so close to the end of Batman... at the final boss...

And as for Rush, for some reason, when I played the first one again a few days ago, something clicked and suddenly I thought "wow, this is one of the best racing games ever made!" I mean, I'd always said that Rush 2049 was the amazing one, and Rush 1 was a distant second... but putting more time into it now makes me maybe question that. Sure it's incredibly frustrating (the whole enemy car pack stays one second apart in a tiny clump, meaning if you make one too many tiny mistakes, it's straight to last place for you!), but it's so, so great... (oh, and I only use the Extreme cars, of course. :))

But anyway, Ico... um, I'm still in the first level, but it is good. Some decent puzzles so far. And that great art, of course... very odd default controls, though. Jump on triangle, drop on X? Those make so much more sense switched... same goes for the shoulder buttons. 'call' to L1, look to R1. Why put both on one side? Stupid. But at least it lets you redefine the controls, unlike far too many games! :)

[Bo Jackson]

I never had a problem with the default controls.

[Great Rumbler]

Yeah, once I too thought that it wasn't good enough to play it by itself. Then I got to the last few levels...

[A Black Falcon]

Lots of Playstation games have bad controls. Forcing you to use the dpad in menus (HORRIBLE!), using R1 and R2 and not using L1 and L2 (if you're just using two, use one pair, not both on one side!)... but triangle for the main action button? That's a new one, I think. And not in a good way, if it hadn't been configurable.

Yeah, once I too thought that it wasn't good enough to play it by itself. Then I got to the last few levels...

Darn PS2, I just don't like having to use it...

[Bo Jackson]

You guys are so weird.

[A Black Falcon]

In what way, that I still hate dual shoulder button per side controller designs?

[Bo Jackson]

And triangle for jump. It's not like it's a platformer where you're constantly jumping.

[A Black Falcon]

But X is the main button, to press triangle a lot you need to hold the controller differently from normal...

That's what's good about the GC controller, no such issues (except for Z).

[Bo Jackson]

It's only the "main" button in the west, though. And even then that's a really vague sort of thing to suggest. It's not more difficult to hit any of the others. Do you have really tiny hands or something?

[A Black Falcon]

True, in Japan circle is the main button on the PS2 controller, which would make triangle make more sense, but most games redid their default control schemes for the US...

[Dark Jaguar]

I still think that was the stupidest thing Sony of America ever did. It's caused so many unneeded headaches for them to say to companies "Okay, for completely arbitrary reasons, redo your confirm and cancel buttons in THIS territory from what you have in the Japanese version".

[A Black Falcon]

That is true, it was a weird decision... it's not like a lot of SNES games hadn't had A (on the right) as the main button, so there certainly shouldn't have been such a big deal to have circle as the PSX's main button. Sega had always had A (on the left) as the main button, though, and it makes more sense to an American to have the leftmost button be first (reading left to right and all that), but even so, it definitely added a lot of unnecessary confusion.

And why in the world did somebody think that TRIANGLE was a good back button to pair with X as the action button? And more importantly, how did such a bad design actually manage to catch on? Next and back should be next to eachother, not opposite!

[Dark Jaguar]

It doesn't "make more sense to an American". We've used the far right as confirm in a lot of cases. Our enter buttons are on the right too, as are our gas pedals, ignition switches, and so on. Heck even my moniter's power button is on the right. Reading direction doesn't have anything to do with it.

It did catch on with the Genesis, but that's the only system where it did, and most of the games I played let all the bottom buttons be used for confirm anyway.

It is worse though with the PS1 and Sony of American's odd choice. You see, for the first few years Circle WAS confirm in the US versions (FF7, FFTactics, and Metal Gear Solid). For some reason though, they changed it. FF8 and Xenogears had that bizarre choice of sending cancel to triangle, and yes, it was insane. Fortunatly it was a little more sensible with FF9 and onward.

To make matters worse, the Metal Gear series totally ignores this and circle is confirm there, and they aren't the only ones.

On the PSP in particular, the confirm and cancel buttons are reversed from the Japanese PSP (to match their crazy standard they never should have implemented), but when you play any of the Metal Gear games, since the games themselves use the Japanese standard, the standard in the OS is switched around to "match", meaning that for a moment the controls even in the system OS get "reversed" from what you are used to.

Sooo stupid... There's an argument to be made for keeping it this way since it's been like it for so long, but I'd say that if they end it now, then in the longer term it'll make things a lot simpler.

MS adapted this, but Nintendo never did. This creates even more confusion. Look at the DS and the Wii classic controller and you'll see that A is confirm once again (and it's using the SNES layout of the buttons, another confusion was introduced when Sega and MS decided to put A and B in different locations, as well as X and Y).

On the Sony systems, porting old SNES games gets even more confusing. You get the confirm and cancel "reversed" in games that originally had it the Japanese way, so you have to get used to it all over again, and when "cancel" often functions as a "dash" button, it makes it a little more out of the way. Then let's say (as a pure hypothetical) that these RPGs get released again on, say, the GBA or DS (again, purely hypothetical of course, not like this happened to to a total of 5 games already or something), and with Nintendo being true to the Japanese standard, again you have to switch around to the old style controls.

In other words, this situation is pretty messed up.

[Great Rumbler]

You guys are so weird.

Weird? I think it's an amazing game. But it's a game that slowly builds to a crescendo, not one that starts out as roller-coaster ride.

[Bo Jackson]

what does that have to do with anything..

[A Black Falcon]

GR confused the controls discussion with gameplay discussion, obviously.

DJ, "X confirm triangle cancel" isn't in just a few games. I have a bunch of PS1 games that do that horrible thing for their control systems...

It is quite annoying that different games use different things, though. In every game you have to look it up pretty much, because most will have X for confirm but a few have circle (another would be Soul Blade), and some have triangle for cancel and others have circle (and ones with circle for confirm have X)... on most consoles there is a standard forward and back button!

It is true that on SNES some games had B for accept, but A was the general thing. It was nothing like the PSX.

Oh, and you're definitely right about confusion for controller design with the CC. N64 and Genesis games would be kind of odd, any way you map them... B=A, Y=B, cstick for the cbuttons, or something weird like that (for N64)? Or are A and B mapped as A and B, despite their quite different alignment? Either way, it's bad design, particularly in removing the C buttons... and for the Genesis, which had ABC XYZ, it is just as confusing with buttons in a different order... but unless Nintendo released like three different controllers for the VC, I don't see any way to avoid at least some of it, considering that the different systems did use different orders.

Those points about the PSP sound pretty annoying too.