Play games with joypad?

[smartroad]

Any console owners in? How do you play 1st person games with a controller? I have been a PC gamer since, well, the Amiga 1200 (my last console was a Sega Saturn!) so am really out of practice having played with keyboard and mouse most of my adult life.

I recently built a SteamOS machine and was trying to play Tomb Raider on it but I can't aim for sh*t with a controller! It just isn't fast enough or precise enough to actually hit anything faster then say a snail. At the beginning of the game there are some wolfs and I can't bow and arrow them to death as I just can't get to them fast enough.

Anyone got any advice?! I want to be better at it so I can play more games on a big screen, both my TV and using the Vive Theater

And why on the Steam Controller is the L/RB buttons on the top and the L/RT buttons on the bottom?! LOL

[Cmdr Tomo Rosso]

The only title I play on the PC is ED, everything else is 360/XBOne and the majority are FP(S) games. I played Half-Life and Halo:CE on the PC, but when Halo 2 arrived on the original xbox I was "forced" to confront playing with a gamepad. It did feel very awkward at first but I soon got used to it and now it's second nature, I use left stick for movement and right stick for head-look, buttons/triggers as required. I've not used a Steam controller but apart from the absence of sticks I would have thought it wouldn't be that much different from a gamepad. Iv'e recently received Tomb Raider [XBOne] and will be playing it soon so I'll let you know if I have any issues.

[bl00dh0und9]

I can see it being an adjustment but I've been on consoles since my beginning of gaming. I've tried FPS on PC and can do it for some games but prefer my PC as my strategy/Sim type games.
If you're having issues with turn speed check settings and increase sensitivity. You won't be as precise with fine aiming but lots of games seem to have a "stick" on enemies to allow for controller compensation, or to make things easy, whichever you prefer. I don't know much about the steam controller though, seems awkward not having analog sticks. Personally I think the XB1 controller is one of the best I've used, if not the best (on PC and for consoles).

[TorTorden]

Im with globus and I have played plenty console games.
No kids or SO, I have had pretty much every console under the sun since super Nintendo, and a few before.
Playing fps style games with a controller is like playing a pc game with mittens.

There is no "getting good" with controllers just "used to it".
There is no if's, but's or coconuts about it.
Aiming with a pad sucks.
And the games reflect it.

It's why we have auto aim, or bullet time etc etc built into most games, and playing pad based titles with a m&k makes aiming basically feel as you activated some kind of cheat because the mechanics of the game is dumbed down so utterly.
But you don't have any other analog inputs so I kind of prefer third person titles like GTA etc on a console both for controller and couch gaming, and of course general laziness. And for most of these games aiming really isn't important (usually)

In short it would take as much getting used as moving to HOTAS in Elite only it's backwards in matters of control..

Seriously. Only console game with almost comparable aiming fidelity and speed was the wii. Particularly the metroid games.

Halo, cod etc. Was just effing awful.

[AJH]

Consoles are good for precision of movement speed (think games like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid, where you need dynamic control over your speed, but are not good for aiming. Keyboard and Mouse is very good for aiming, but not good at variable speed movement. You can improve your aiming on a console, but it is never as natural as a mouse. An individual with little experience with a mouse could potentially get better with a gamepad than they are with a mouse, but I think pretty much universally, if someone knows both, the mouse is more responsive and precise hands down.

What you end up having to compensate in a lot of games is enemies that will move at a more or less fixed rate of speed so that you can get lined up and stay on target by matching their movement. This works relatively well for helping balance it for consoles, but is up to the developer to get right.

That said, I personally play everything on PC and choose between a gamepad (on PC) and keyboard and mouse based on whether I need variable speed movement or precision aiming. It's also worth pointing out that some games designed very heavily for console are actually more of a pain to aim with a mouse, though this is often more a result of the port being done poorly.