*complains*

[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.