Aargh, Game Controllers
According to a famous old adage, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. I wholeheartedly refute this as that has not been my personal experience in life. Over the last decade or so I have learned several new technical skills. As a carer to disabled parents, I’ve also learned to be more patient in recent years. And having grandchildren teaches you a thing or two. So I don’t buy into the concept that once people have reached a certain age, they become fixed and immutable by nature. Life presents a continuous opportunity for self improvement. Or to render all this philosophical musing down to a point relevant to this blog post, despite being a PC gamer since the late nineties and habitually using a keyboard and mouse, I have in recent years managed to adapt to using a game controller. To a degree. And that caveat is the point of contention.
Some games, especially those that are direct console ports, are by default designed to be played with a game controller. I can usually navigate the controls via a keyboard but find that driving vehicles or riding a mount is best done with a game controller. Steering, accelerating and braking using WASD and other keys tends to be awkward. Using the left thumbstick or the D-pad to turn and the right trigger to increase speed is both comfortable and intuitive. Therefore, until recently, this compromise of using a combination of both keyboard and mouse along with a game controller has proven successful. On a few occasions there have been games such as Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout which I have played exclusively using a game controller. However, and there is always a however, I have recently run into problems with one game. Namely Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, which I have been playing on the Nintendo Switch.
In essence the biggest problem I have with this game is using the left thumbstick in conjunction with the right trigger (RZ) to do freerunning and parkour. I find the thumbstick to be very sensitive and struggle with oversteering. If you collide with walls or any other object you then proceed to scale them. Plus if I press too hard on the thumbstick (L3) and push it directly down, it toggles Eagle Vision which changes the entire UI and further impedes navigation. Naturally, I thought that these problems could be overcome if I practised. Sadly after a week stuck on the same simple mission in which I have to chase a pickpocket at the start of the game, I have made no progress. Perhaps I just have a blind spot regarding this problem but I just cannot adequately control my avatar’s movements. As a compromise I looked at the viability of remapping keys or using an alternative controller configuration. The Switch doesn’t appear to support either of these.
Hence, after hitting such an impasse I’ve decided to stop playing this particular game on the Nintendo Switch. As parkour is such an integral part of the game, if I cannot effectively do it, then it seems somewhat ridiculous to continue. However, that is not to say that I am abandoning Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. I managed to pick up a CD key for the PC version for under £8 and am going to give it another go using keyboard and mouse. Because I don’t want to be excluded from a game due to this obstacle. Perhaps I could improve at playing with a game controller if I sank even more time into practising. But I bought a game to be entertained, not to embark upon the lengthy retraining of both my spatial and coordination skills. Sometimes cutting your losses is far wiser than beating your head upon a wall. Henceforward, I shall resume my former relationship with game controllers.
