*complains*

[lazyfatbum]

I finally played on the 360 and as most of you know the store demos dony have PDZ. How smart of Microsoft, make sure your best launch game is well hidden at the kiosks.

But anyway, I played Kameo and Donkey Kong World.

In Donkey Kong World, you play as a very realistic Donkey Kong who fights very realistic Kremlings, the whole game looks pretty and feels good to play with most of its gameplay centered around the idea of being able to do ape/monkey type moves such as swinging and grappling on to surfaces and picking up white women. I could totally see Beyond and Good and Evil smiling at me from behind the screen, especially with the way the game will go in to moments of slow motion and look like a cut scene but you're actually playing.

Fighting the two T-Rex off of Ann with the water splashing everywhere was simply gorgeous except for one problem. I had no fucKing Kong idea what I was doing. It would flash up: USE X TO JUMP. So I pressed what i thought was X and DKK punched the wall, I pressed a different button... nothing happened, pressed a different button and he made a funny motion that looked like a charge but stopped because of the cliff... finally, through the process of elimination I was able to make the poor icon of film special effects jump and do crazy swings over a lavish, and well lit jungle paradise or 'Green Hell' as I call it.

But fighting the t-rex was even more frustrating since you needed a combo of moves to take it down. So here's me:

*looks at screen* *looks at controller* *looks at screen* *looks at controller* *looks at screen* *looks at controller*

etc

And I stuck around to watch some other people play and they were all doing it as well which gave me insight to the idea that Microsoft sucks at button design. I hate face buttons with no differences, X never felt like X, it felt like a button, as did all the face buttons. No distinguishing characteristics other than a color-coded system that is DESIGNED (get this) to take your eyes off the screen, and look at the controller, so you can hit the right color.

Well now, there's a great idea if you're retarded. Or Microsoft. I know this was done on their first venture in to consoling but now they've made the mistake twice. Poop on their faces. Even the SNES had a difference in what the A and B felt like to the X and Y.

The shoulders and triggers were interesting and it felt weird to hold the controller with middle and index fingers wrapped around the buttons but regardless I was ready for action. ...but not for Donkey Kong World. It was time to play Kameo.

Kameo began as an action RPG for Gamecube about 4 thousand years before the birth of Christ. And here it was.

The first thing that came to mind was "Lord of the Rings meets Rare", orcs running around beating eachother and all very hilarious the hurting froin laven with the oh lady kind of ways. Kameo, a weird looking chick that looks like a Bratz doll can turn in to creatures, some of them just plain funny. A flowery plant that boxes in the style of 1904 is just awesome.

But here was the game that was going to take advantage of the dual shoulders and triggers and holy shit was it confusing. Imagine seeing this:

YOU PICKED UP AN ORC

PRESS RT TO THROW OR LT TO LAUNCH ONE OFF USE LS OR RS TO X THE F TO TAB C WITH DPAD (LT, RT AND OR LS, LR LRT O RLY?)

And I think my brain exploded somewhere around there. It was much easier to just ignore the messages and fiddle with the controls. But the messages a side, I did not enjoy playing with my middle and index on the shoulders and triggers, I just switched off my indexes when needed which, accompanied with the hunt and peck method of pushing the correct face buttons, made for a very annoying experience.

Now on to graphics: both Kameo and Grape Ape look like current gen games except for the demo in Kameo where you run through Pi number of enemies and some neat lighting effects in both games you wont find on current gen but nothing jaw dropping. Watched movies of the other launch games as well and all I can say is, unless you really really want Kameo and PDZ right now, avoid the 360. It needs about 6 months to get its price down and release some games that actually take advantage of its hardware.

Right now, it's a 500 dollar+ current gen system... that lets you play PDZ. (fuck you rtan) and the EA games.... are EA games, they look bad, they play bad, they're bad. So 6 months and we should have Gears of War-like games (graphically) on 360.

[Dark Jaguar]

Interesting. I myself never made such a mistake. I knew where the buttons where because my thumb was in the middle of them. One felt "on the top" and the other felt "on the left".

[Paco]

I really can't imagine that the simple diamond layout of A, B, X, and Y being hard to grasp. I mean, if you know where A is located then it doesn't take much logic to figure that B must be located to the right of it. Same for X and Y. It's set up EXACTLY like the DC controller, which I guess doesn't mean much if you didn't play a Dreamcast. In any case, it's not hard to get the hang of it.

I suppose if you gave the controller more than 10 mintues you would begin to appreciate it. It certainly makes more sense than triangle, circle, and square.;)

Oh, and I was able to pull off one of those nifty combos in Kameo after, get this, actually reading what it said and thinking about it for a whole two seconds. Then again, it probably helps that I have extensive play time with similar type controllers (Dreamcast, Xbox, and PS2) and I happen to like some other games with similar type gameplay and complex combos (think Prince of Persia). meh...

[A Black Falcon]

I agree about the dual shoulder button thing though... :)

[Paco]

Actually, it's a set of shoulder buttons and a set of trigger buttons. I was a bit worried how this would work out considering I absolutely despise the four shoulder buttons on the Dual Shock. To my surprise it felt good, and I'm sure after a little more play time it would become second nature, hopefully anyway (I still get hung up on games that use all 4 shoulder buttons for the PS2).

[A Black Falcon]

The ideal gamepad would have six face buttons laid out in a Genesis 6-button-ish layout (either all the same size or with the top row a bit smaller, but NOT with the right two smaller and offset like the Xbox original controller did... that made those two buttons not very useful...), dual analog with the analog stick above and dpad below like the gc/xbox, and dual triggers. With no stupid shoulder buttons above them.

[lazyfatbum]

Paco, you can call me an idiot all you want but the fact remains that the face buttons have no differences and it has the same level of frustration I feel with Sony's controller. Even the Genny 6 had different size buttons with the middle one having a bump on it so your thumb knew what the middle was.

I played for an hour and a half and never got the hang of button combos because in those few seconds of having to look at the controller to see what the correct buttons are the window for inputting the combo would have passed.

Granted, if you owned an XBox before, you would have already become used to the controller setup so the 360 would be easy to pick up and play, but as a newbie (I dont own an XBox), picking up this style of controller for the first time, I was left cold by its poor user interface.

And I wasn't the only one, in fact as I watched other people play (large age range) I would ask them if they had an XBox and they said no, and you could see them hunting and pecking for buttons. What this basically means is, if you spend a good amount of time, say for example a flagship title front to back or logging over 10 hours in a deathmatch MP game, you will effectively become used to the controller. But the XBox (and 360) controller is not designed for imediate pick up and play for first timers. This is without a doubt a bad thing.

There are many MANY PC controllers that take the simple idea of adding difference to the button feel, size, etc and give the game player a tactile feedback so that they dont have to remove their eyes from the screen. Nintendo and Sega controllers have also spent time to create a feedback for each button that feels different. This ideal facilitates imeadiate pick up and play. Now add to that the color coding system and that the buttons are arranged in an ergonomic fashion and you can learn everything there is about the controller in about an hour (to the point of it becoming second nature).

For the PS2, the only game I really play on the system is FFT, which i've been playing off and on since it came out a million years ago. And to this day, I still accidentally press the cancel button when I meant to press the accept button (on the face buttons). Or when I want to rotate the map, I accidentally zoom it out (the doubled-up shoulders) which while different in size dont offer any distinguishing tactile feedback and in a ruch can quickly become lost.

It is not an intuitive system and neither is the XBox's controller. There needs to be a difference in the buttons in order to quickly (and without looking at the controller) grasp the layout and create fluid control.

The 360's shoulders and triggers actually take the idea too far; so much difference that it becomes a pain to go from a button pushing mode for your finger, to a trigger pulling mode in a heavy situation where speed and analog sensitivity control counts. It feels clumsy but not really all that bad. Now if you would actually read my post (:D) you would have seen that I said when th message appeared containing "RT LS" etc you would have noted that I said "It was better to ignore the messages and figure out the controller on your own" in that the messages with the new terminology and confusing abbreviations were taking away from the experience.

You could argue until you're blue in the face that there is nothing wrong with the 360 controller but the fact remains that the way it is designed, it requires the player to take his eyes off the action and focus his attention on the controller because of a color coded system until he or she is familiar with the layout enough to know it tactically (without having to look). And since we are talking about the manipulation of light on a display where the goal is to overcome a challenge the idea of taking your attention off the action is simply a bad design.

[Dark Jaguar]

Why did you have to look at the controller? It's a standard ABXY layout. If they say press X, just press X. It can only be in one place.

But no matter, the thing is, getting used to the controller is something you do on the GCN too, when you first play it. Just because they are different shapes doesn't mean you will automatically know which button is the "Y" button. The game would have to actually show the Y button's shape on-screen, not just the letter "Y", for you to get that. About two GCN games that I own actually do that. One of them actually doesn't even tell you what letter to push, and that does mess me up because it's Soul Calibur 2, and it is annoying having to remember that just because it SAYS press B doesn't mean you actually press B.

I think you are making a mountain out of default. I'm not sure why you think all buttons need to have a different shape. That doesn't really help anyway since you still need to learn where "Y" is and so on.

And don't give some silly response like "Well Y is the button that feels like a kidney facing down, retard!" because you still need to LEARN that. You may now what it FEELS like without even looking, but unless you can actually feel the shape of the indented Y, you STILL need to look and see that that's the Y button up there.

[Paco]

Paco, you can call me an idiot all you want but the fact remains that the face buttons have no differences and it has the same level of frustration I feel with Sony's controller. Even the Genny 6 had different size buttons with the middle one having a bump on it so your thumb knew what the middle was.

I played for an hour and a half and never got the hang of button combos because in those few seconds of having to look at the controller to see what the correct buttons are the window for inputting the combo would have passed.

Granted, if you owned an XBox before, you would have already become used to the controller setup so the 360 would be easy to pick up and play, but as a newbie (I dont own an XBox), picking up this style of controller for the first time, I was left cold by its poor user interface.

And I wasn't the only one, in fact as I watched other people play (large age range) I would ask them if they had an XBox and they said no, and you could see them hunting and pecking for buttons. What this basically means is, if you spend a good amount of time, say for example a flagship title front to back or logging over 10 hours in a deathmatch MP game, you will effectively become used to the controller. But the XBox (and 360) controller is not designed for imediate pick up and play for first timers. This is without a doubt a bad thing.

There are many MANY PC controllers that take the simple idea of adding difference to the button feel, size, etc and give the game player a tactile feedback so that they dont have to remove their eyes from the screen. Nintendo and Sega controllers have also spent time to create a feedback for each button that feels different. This ideal facilitates imeadiate pick up and play. Now add to that the color coding system and that the buttons are arranged in an ergonomic fashion and you can learn everything there is about the controller in about an hour (to the point of it becoming second nature).

For the PS2, the only game I really play on the system is FFT, which i've been playing off and on since it came out a million years ago. And to this day, I still accidentally press the cancel button when I meant to press the accept button (on the face buttons). Or when I want to rotate the map, I accidentally zoom it out (the doubled-up shoulders) which while different in size dont offer any distinguishing tactile feedback and in a ruch can quickly become lost.

It is not an intuitive system and neither is the XBox's controller. There needs to be a difference in the buttons in order to quickly (and without looking at the controller) grasp the layout and create fluid control.

The 360's shoulders and triggers actually take the idea too far; so much difference that it becomes a pain to go from a button pushing mode for your finger, to a trigger pulling mode in a heavy situation where speed and analog sensitivity control counts. It feels clumsy but not really all that bad. Now if you would actually read my post (:D) you would have seen that I said when th message appeared containing "RT LS" etc you would have noted that I said "It was better to ignore the messages and figure out the controller on your own" in that the messages with the new terminology and confusing abbreviations were taking away from the experience.

You could argue until you're blue in the face that there is nothing wrong with the 360 controller but the fact remains that the way it is designed, it requires the player to take his eyes off the action and focus his attention on the controller because of a color coded system until he or she is familiar with the layout enough to know it tactically (without having to look). And since we are talking about the manipulation of light on a display where the goal is to overcome a challenge the idea of taking your attention off the action is simply a bad design.

I didn't call you an idiot, and I wasn't even thinking it. If anything I was thinking you couldn't find anything better to do so you resort to a favorite past-time on this board, bashing anything non-Nintendo.

I'm not sure what you mean by color coded system; every Xbox game I've played, and Xbox 360 games, have always referred to the buttons by 'X' or 'Y' etc except the black and white buttons (after 4 years I still have to look at those, and that is a pain). It is not instinctive to know where 'A' is, but it can be learned (rather quickly if your I.Q. is over room temperature). Then if you keep your brain on while playing a game it shouldn't take any thought what-so-ever (if you're familiar with the alphabet) to know that 'B' is the next button over.

Again, not calling you an idiot.

[The Former DMiller]

I see Lazy's point, but I also see the point some are making that it is a standard layout. SNES, Xbox, and the DS all have the same A,B,X,Y layout so if you've played any of them for any length of time I don't see why it is so difficult to remember where they are. Those black and white buttons on the first Xbox controller are a different story, though. I do agree, though, that shape does help in a major way to memorize button locations on a new controller. Most of the early Cube games I played included a picture of the button on-screen instead of just stating the letter of the button, which helps immensely to quickly memorize the locations. Every controller should have a mix of colors, letters (not shapes), and slightly different feels to provide for the shortest learning curve. Even if a controller doesn't have all of these things (and no current console controllers do) that doesn't mean that the controllers aren't designed well. It just means it might take a little while longer to learn them.

[A Black Falcon]

The black and white buttons are awful on the original xbox controller because of their tiny size and offset position... awful, it should have been a Sidewinder/Genesis 6-button/Saturn/N64-style six-button layout... and then they made the S and managed to make things even worse by putting those buttons in an utterly bizarre and even harder to use location! Great, Microsoft... and now they are shoulder buttons... hmm, that is absolutely zero improvement, I think...

As for the face buttons, it is true that usually buttons have some kind of physical indicator... like how six-button layouts often make the top row smaller, or there is a bump on one of the buttons, or the SNES and its indented top row buttons, the N64 and the smaller C-buttons, and of course the GC and its totally different shapes, etc...

As for the GC controller, I mix up X and Y sometimes... A and B are easy, but X and Y are both those bean-shaped ones...it's not intuitive that the one on the lower right is 'X' and the one in the center top position 'Y'... it's far better than if they were all the same size though. :)

[lazyfatbum]

Thank you DMiller, but it looks like some people think that man is born with the instinctive ability to play video games (though we are born with instincts to accomplish goals :D)

new·bie Audio pronunciation of "newbie" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (nb, ny-)
n. Slang

One that is new to something, especially a novice at using computer technology or the Internet.

Controller 'A' has buttons of different sizes and locations so that each button has a different feel and look as well as a color coded system with colors assigned to each button.

Controller B has uniform buttons with no difference in the feel or look save for a color coded system.

Which controller is the newbie going to learn or master first? Which controller offers a greater possibility of pick up and play? Which controller has more thought put in to it regarding the above?

I completely agree that someone would realize that B is next to A. But if the message appears "Press X to grab, use B to throw, pick up health with Y" You will have to look at the controller to make sure you're pressing the correct buttons as opposed to feeling for them. As people have said here, once you are familiar with the controller it's easy. My argument is that getting familiar with the XBox controller is less intuitive and more frustrating because the button layout has no tactile difference.

It's funny that Miller brought up the DS. The button layout here has no tactile difference, just a color coded system like XBox. But let's keep in mind that in the design of this handheld, you are always looking at the screen and the controller simultaneously. As opposed to holding the controller out of sight (in the lap) while looking at the display.

What i mean by color coded system, is tht when playing an XBpx or 360 game, if it tells you to press X, the X appears on the screen in a blue bubble because the X on the controller is blue. This means that in the engineering of the controller Microsoft made the conscious decision to create a controller that you will need to LOOK AT to familiarize yourself with it. With Nintendo, they took a route in the engineering that would allow players to familiarize themselves with the controller through tactile feedback so that they can keep their eyes on the screen.

Since video games require a display device for the player to interact with the digital worlds, it seems to make more sense to go th Nintendo route rather than the Microsoft or PS2 route as anything that diverts your eyes from the display is something all game developers and players want to avoid.

Now to Paco, not at any time did I make this thread with the idea of bashing the system. You have no idea how much I want PDZ and Kameo. :D All I wanted to do was complain about certain aspects of the system. Spending 500 dollars or more for a system that doesn't meet my standards for what I know from college or other study to be 'better' in design principals seems stupid to me, I also was disappointed by th graphical quality of the games which again, do not justify a 500 dollar purchase.

When I bash a system or company, you'll know it.

And before anyone starts saying it's not 500 just keep in mind that the optimized package is 400, games are 50, controllers are 50 (I would need atleast two), with tax its even more than 500. Going for a core system, it comes out to more than 500 (over 600) if you want all the extras (which I do).

My complaints in this thread have nothing to do with me liking Nintendo more or thinking they are a better company. It would be no different if I was complaining about a movie I had recently seen, any bias towards cetain people on the crew would have no influence in my factor of enjoyment. We are not logical computers, so I can say "I love Steven Spielberg films" and then say "A.I. sucked" and you would understand. Instead what is happening is that your bias towards Microsoft and their products is dictating your leap in logic to defend a design principal that is factually unsound if only in that is an irritation - hence my complants and your jump to "but even a mentally defective innocuous vegetable can learn how to use such and such controller!" which actually has nothing to do with my argument.

[Dark Jaguar]

I would understand the statement was not an absolute about the films, yes. I would then immediatly say "it would be more accurate to say "I love SOME Steven Speilburg films".

I say this because I'm pretty much convinced we ARE logical computers. Creativity is all well and good, but it must be harnessed, guided, restricted* if you will, by the light of logic and observations. *I basically used whatever word would be both accurate AND as offensive to you personally as possible.

Back on topic, letter or color, you still need to learn the layout. I'm not sure what the big deal about the color is... Though, colors do look nice and if you are illiterate, well... I guess the instructions would be meaningless anyway wouldn't they?

If they standardized this would never have been an issue. If you are going to use the old SNES button layout, I say you need to use the old SNES button naming/color (think Japanese controller) conventions.

Sony was still more or less stupid to name the buttons after SHAPES. Okay, two of them pass as letters (O and X), but square and triangle? That's retarded.

[lazyfatbum]

lmao! That's exactly how ABF posts!

I'm not sure what the big deal about the color is...

*shakes your hand*

[Paco]

Which controller is the newbie going to learn or master first? Which controller offers a greater possibility of pick up and play? Which controller has more thought put in to it regarding the above?

And the question in the end...is it really so hard to learn that you needed to make a thread about it?

I completely agree that someone would realize that B is next to A. But if the message appears "Press X to grab, use B to throw, pick up health with Y" You will have to look at the controller to make sure you're pressing the correct buttons as opposed to feeling for them. As people have said here, once you are familiar with the controller it's easy. My argument is that getting familiar with the XBox controller is less intuitive and more frustrating because the button layout has no tactile difference.

I suppose that if you are learning that layout for the first time then you would have to look at it...but after that gentle learning curve (perhaps an hour or two for complete newbies) then it shouldn't be difficult at all (unless you are trying to memorize the layout in terms of colors).

It's funny that Miller brought up the DS. The button layout here has no tactile difference, just a color coded system like XBox. But let's keep in mind that in the design of this handheld, you are always looking at the screen and the controller simultaneously. As opposed to holding the controller out of sight (in the lap) while looking at the display.

What i mean by color coded system, is tht when playing an XBpx or 360 game, if it tells you to press X, the X appears on the screen in a blue bubble because the X on the controller is blue. This means that in the engineering of the controller Microsoft made the conscious decision to create a controller that you will need to LOOK AT to familiarize yourself with it. With Nintendo, they took a route in the engineering that would allow players to familiarize themselves with the controller through tactile feedback so that they can keep their eyes on the screen.

But it says 'X'. You know where 'X' is, the color is entirely irrelevant unless you choose to take into mind. I owned the Dreamcast and Xbox since their respective launches, combined I own around 50 games for them, and I couldn't even make a good guess on the layout with respect to their colors. You know why? Because they don't matter. I always thought they were there for aesthetic reasons and nothing more.

If a game refers to the 'A' button as the [insert color here] then that's a bad design on the developers part.

Now to Paco, not at any time did I make this thread with the idea of bashing the system. You have no idea how much I want PDZ and Kameo. :D All I wanted to do was complain about certain aspects of the system. Spending 500 dollars or more for a system that doesn't meet my standards for what I know from college or other study to be 'better' in design principals seems stupid to me, I also was disappointed by th graphical quality of the games which again, do not justify a 500 dollar purchase.

It was only a guess as to why you really made the thread, because, even after all this back and forth debating, I still can't make good sense out of how you managed to make this such a big deal.

I don't know, the fact that I was able to pick up an Xbox 360 controller and immediately follow the instructions on the screen leads me to believe it's not a bad design at all, and that you simply need to give a little more time.

[Dark Jaguar]

The black and white buttons were not very well named. Being moved around didn't help. Now they have a more conventional name.

Keep in mind the SNES and NES controllers, and the DS, and everything else Nintendo has made, do some sort of reverse alphabet thing. B and then A. Well, Japanese people read backwards.

Someone: It's not backwards to them!

DJ: Duh, but to US it is, and that's who I'm talking with. It's just a fact, relative to us, they read backwards.

I will say this. Even with the GCN, total newbies to gaming look at the controller to see where the buttons are.

There will still be a few hours of learning curve for those who have never played a game in their lives with the revolution. Even with two (reasonably usable) buttons, they will be looking for a bit.

[A Black Falcon]

Sega is Japanese and didn't put the buttons backwards, though... :)

Yeah, I've noticed that about Nintendo, and it's kind of odd... the one exception is the N64, where the buttons aren't laid out conventionally. But that one makes it really simple with button size and location.

If a game refers to the 'A' button as the [insert color here] then that's a bad design on the developers part.

They often use the color/shape with the letter inside it, though...

[lazyfatbum]

lmao

And the question in the end...is it really so hard to learn that you needed to make a thread about it?

You're right, message boards are the last place I should put forth my opinions for discussion.

[Dark Jaguar]

That's EXACTLY what he said!