Back around 2003 or 2004, a good friend of mine was a huge Halo 1 fan. He played on the console and was beside himself with excitement when the game was finally released for the PC, because he wanted me to play it and see how amazing it was. He had been telling me his war stories about it for probably a year or more, and he was convinced it was better than any other FPS, while from the PC perspective I was telling him I thought other PC games were probably better. It was just one of those fun PC vs console debates between friends that we both did for enjoyment.
Up until that point I had never agreed the play the game, because I didn't want to use a console controller. He didn't want to try any PC games because he didn't know how to use a mouse and keyboard (he rarely ever even used a computer except to type some school papers). So we didn't have a common ground until Halo was finally available on both platforms.
So the day came and Joseph set me up to fail, which was actually my idea. I told him to put me on the hardest difficulty and put me in a map that he had never been able to beat at said difficulty. My in-game character became an instant sniper ninja to Joseph. I could dodge every shot, head shot every enemy even from across rooms. I ran past an enemy, jumped onto the table and then over another. While in the air I turned 180 degrees to head shot the first one before it had time to fire at me, then right as I landed next to the guy I'd hopped over, I melee attacked him in the side of the head and killed it. My first time sitting at the game I beat the level he had never been able to do on that difficulty. To put salt in the wound, I did the whole thing only using the weak gun you start with.
With the controller you are limited in the same ways as a keyboard. You can use the joystick to rotate yourself slower or faster, but the fastest you can turn is just the joystick all the way to one side. Someone extremely skilled with a controller can make fine adjustments to their aim that don't require more than maybe 15 degrees of rotation, but that's about it. If someone wants to rotate 90 degrees, or 180 while mid air, they slam the joystick over and then wait while their guy spins at some set speed. With a mouse you choose the speed of rotation without any limitation. If I quickly slide my hand over the correct distance, I can 360 in the air before I land from my jump. You can aim at extremely tiny targets at a moment's notice, because, sighted computers users anyway, use that precision constantly to click on buttons and text. You're training to head shot a monster from 100 yards while you click around and edit your latest word document, ROFL!
So yeah, it was cool for him to finally see the difference between a controller and a mouse, but it was a little sad that he never again argued with me about which was better.
P.S. It was a shame that when they ported Halo over for the PC, they didn't ramp up the difficulty. Few console fans realize that FPS console games have their difficulties lowered way down compared to their PC counterparts. This is meant to balance the differences in how the game are played (controller vs mouse). When they moved Halo to the PC but kept everything else the same, they really did the game a disservice. I didn't know any PC guys who enjoyed the game because it "felt like a console game" in that it was way too easy, and felt too linear.
- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software