Today I learned Mackerel doesn't understand the difference between good and bad PC ports.

What I find funny is Dark Souls, PTD would have been a really unobvious port if they had done two things.

1. Not capped the rendering resolution size and framerate for no reason. (Fixable with DSfix, thankfully)
2. Actually made the in game menus use the keyboard shortcuts in their tooltips. (Not a huge hindrance but it basically screams "HURR DURR I IZ CONSOL GAME")

I mean seriously, given those two things some people might not have even realized it was a console game originally.


Fortunately though the quality of porting had next to zero effect on the actual gameplay of Dark Souls(unlike with Dead Space). For people who are going to respond "shitty keyboard controls", get over yourselves, controls are fine for keyboards, though I would recommend remapping target lock to z or something.

I don't remember saying that 0:

yeah how did that even end up being accredited to chao??

Also the camera was super wonky to mouse around, something which was also generally fixable by modding/unofficial means. However, the fact that Steam explicitly says that a 360 controller is STRONGLY recommended just screams "PORT PORT PORT" in giant blaring klaxons to me. If it's on PC, i bloody well shouldn't need a 360 controller to play it, since mouse and keyboard are par for the course, with joysticks and controllers being very secondary. The issues are fixable, however, which does make it an acceptable port, even though i shouldn't have to go do ANY amount of work to have a retail game work properly on a sales platform with automatic updates. (the fact that it's actually a cool game is a nice bonus)

I genuinely don't know how that got credited to Chao.

And I guess I just don't see most complaints about the game, I very much kinda just go "Well, game itself is awesome so flaws are excusable". How much I care about problems is inversely proportional to the actual entertainment the game provides. This is why I am super critical of the flaws in games like CoD or Battlefield but could care less about the issues with the port of Dark Souls or the minor UI issues in some games and such.

Fair point, i feel the same way myself, unless the flaws get in the way of the entertainment. I admit that i haven't actually tried Dark Souls myself*, but i did see (and feel) the porting flaws on my bro's PC (bought him the game for CHRISTMAAAAAS), and quite frankly i wouldn't be able to play with a camera like that for longer than a few minutes, even if the keyboard controls were fine. It basically moved at a fixed speed regardless of your mouse movement, making it seem like small movements produced FASTER camera motion than LARGE BOMBASTIC mouse movements. That was before he patched it up via internet magic though. But still, i expect any mouse-related motion to at least be proportional to the actual motion of the mouse, so something like that really ruins the feel for me. (fixed turning rates with an apparatus that can very accurately register different motion velocities? from softwer pls)

I might be blowing it out of proportion though, Dark Souls does seem like an awesome (but hard) game if you can live with stuff like that. I mostly mentioned it because it was the most immediate example i had on mind, and because it annoys me that a now Windows-compatible game is strongly recommended to be played with a 360 controller. If i wanted to play with a 360 controller, i'd go buy an Xbox 360. A large part of the reasoning as to why i stick with PC is because i'm a complete turd with ANY console-style controller. (15 years with a mouse versus the few months where i actually played N64 with any kind of frequency)

* read: need to try it, even though i know i'll be raging up and down every nearby wall at the difficulty

Don't worry Shook, it's only hard to play with a keyboard for people who are used to controllers, PC master race members like ourselves don't wimp out because we have to press more than 4 buttons!

I missed out on the Dead Space conversation. Scary? Nah. Amazing atmosphere? Yes. The game gives off a haunting vibe of isolation the whole time, and you can hear your heartbeat, increasing and decreasing throughout the whole game. It's essentially a survival third person shooter, but it still has that amazing atmosphere.

Dead Space 2 still kind of has it, but it's lingering, dig?

Speaking of Dead Space, I just played the demo for the third one. It has definitively taken a more action-y approach to it, and the horror was all but gone. But dang, I had fun playing it.

I did not mean to do what I did in the other thread. I'm just really careless.

I disagree Shook. Some games are just better played with controllers. Most platformers, almost all beat'em ups, almost all fighting games in general, god of war-likes and action-adventure games being pretty good examples. I've tried playing Dark Souls with both controller and keyboard-mouse and infinitely prefer controller.

Better played when you can handle controllers, mind you. In every single one of those genres, i'd still prefer a keyboard on the basis of being FAR more experienced with it than any other controller.

Woohoo, hopefully I'm going to my first airsoft game in just a weeks time
I feel like I've spent a whole year preparing, to get the gear and then to find a site
And I'm still not exactly ready, but anti-fog or no anti-fog goggles, I'll be there

Keyboard-Mouse: FPS, RTS, real-time RPG requiring lots of buttons, Sims/Creative builders (ala Minecraft, KSP, etc)
Controller: Platformer, hack-n-slash, TPS, anything with vehicles (driving/flying), fighter

Basically, if the game heavily involves precise movement, ♥♥♥♥ your keyboard, I want analog sticks. If it's about aiming, whether you're aiming a gun in an FPS or your control cursor in an RTS, of course the mouse is best. If there's lots of action and the control scheme is centered around 5-6 buttons, especially if it has a controllable camera/view, controller.

This sounds about right, typically controllers work best for... reaction based games? I don't know what you would call them but basically anything where being able to move exact increments of speed quickly helps slot, and only have a small total repertoire of controls. Dark Souls kind of falls into this evil middle zone where it's pretty good for either but has a few problems with either as well.