Another in our long line of pointless debates/discussions about the world of gaming, in which my lack of brightness shines through...

Bill
i occasionally play RE4 in my head
imagining different "paths" through which weapons to have at what times :)
did i ever tell you, i unlocked everything in that game?
the wii vers.

Dib
nice
it was enjoyable

Bill
there are 4 uber weapons in that game
a handgun, an automatic, a launcher, and a.... shotgun/rifle?
that last one's a laser weapon

Dib
i can take the herbs, typewriter ribbons, and general sillyness of the settings of those games
but i can't understand why they insist on that contol system
or sligh variations thereof

Bill
raises tension
built-in clumsiness and inaccuracy
i'm not sure i could have unlocked all that stuff on the GC version
though the challenges were the same
the aiming wasn't

Dib
you should never allow your control system to dictate a gamer's proficiancy

Bill
that's a might new-school line of thinking you've got there
nothing "dictates" the gamer's proficiency at operating within the ruleset laid out

Dib
oh, i think mario felt that way from the beginning
press jump, mario jumps
it's almost a slap in the face of gamers

Bill
true. immediately and in a way almost consistent with physics

Dibh
ere, we are going to make you a game that is exciting, scary, fun, and different

Bill
very intuitive

Dib
and then we require you to fight with the controller to get through it
seriously, how long would it take you to complete re4 with a good control scheme
5 hours?

Bill
okay, i'll cede the point that a gamer who couldn't stop expecting RE4 to work like a shooter might have a rough time

Dib
speed runs in under 3?

Bill
i thought the control scheme was nearly perfect
i don't think i can recall any frustration, is what i mean
it did exactly what you expected it to do (if you knew the controls)

Dib
but you have to think about it
or at least i did
and plan on stops, slow turns, etc

Bill
well, you have to learn it, sure, like any game
that's to some degree true with any game

Dib
maybe it just never felt real
that a real person in situation A would react like the guy on the screen

Bill
they would have had to change everything for the game to work, though
how every enemy moved, how battlefields were laid out and configured, everything would have had to be rebalanced heavily in order not to have even the slightest hope
of preserving a sense of tension

Di
bperhaps

Bill
right?

Dib
there are games that achive solid tension while allowing you better control of your character

Bill
now, it seemed out of place in an over-the-shoulder view, in a way it never did with the detached 3rd person
but i just thought of it as "same controls, better shooting"

Dib
this all harkens back to the first games in the series

Bill
and then on wii "same controls, even better shooting, and better mobility" since you still had the quick 180 turn, but the quick 60 turn was much easier to do

Dib
where you only walk forward by pressing UP on the controller
no matter what direction you are facing
a "feature", you will note, no one else has ever implemented

Bill
yeah, radio control controls
it would be easy to abuse

Dib
im just saying that they have always used the control scheme as part of the game's difficulty

Bill
with a control scheme like that, you can put a single enemy in a room and create a rich challenge
Diband that breaks immersion

Bill
yeah but you get used to the control scheme after the first hour or so
at least i do

Dib
you learn to take it's deficiencies (i cant spel) into account
that's different than learning
it

Bill
a deficiency is when it doesn't do what you want it to do even when you hit the right things on the controller
and no RE game has ever had that problem, even remotely
rock solid engines

Dib
you and i have both been grabbed by a zombie who we knew was right there, but we couldn't turn fast enough to pop him
when we knew that we should be able to

Bill
maybe not
doesn't that just mean you approached the situation uncautiously?

Dib
when they are pouring in all around, and you are in the center of the room?

Bill
so you're taking issue with the design
not with the execution
i guess if a puzzle doesn't strike you as worth solving, they'd welcome you not to bother playing their game

Dib
no, that's not it at all

Bill
well, i would agree with you then, provided the game had not previously alerted you to the fact your character can't turn quickly
surprising a player with that kind of thing, in anything other than a tutorial scenario, is not nice.

Dib
i play the games because they are well designed, and silly fun

Bill
sure

Dib
however, i do know going in that i will basically fight with the control scheme
and that it will be present in my mind throughout
even after i have learned it and beated the game within it's rules

Bill
i wonder if you're just a more present-minded gamer than me

Dib
and that goes back to our introduction to the world of survival horror

Bill
i tend to blithely accept that "okay this is what i have to work with"

Dib
and there are many many games where i don't think about the controls, at least not nearly as much

Bill
sure
a game can be designed to have an intuitive control scheme or a non-intuitive one
and i imagine that's rarely decided by accident

Dib
and that's what i dont get
even RE4, which was a good game, doesn't rate all that high on my list

Bill
well every control scheme becomes intuitive over time, so it's a question of how much freedom the player of your game should have

Dib
i never understood how it got all of those GotY awards
because of that

Bill
well i don't know
but i do know it's control scheme felt intuitive to me
then, i have played every RE game

Dib
as have i
i just think they could be that much better

Bill
and few other survival horror series
so maybe i had little to muddle me
never played silent hill

Dib
i always liked SH better
one, because the 'horror' aspect was much more pronounced
they are creepy games

Bill
see i can take or leave that
per se

Dib
and two because i wasn't fighting the controls to do what i wanted

Bill
i like the suspense and tension, and being surprised, but i don't necessarily need horror content - blood, gore - thrown in just because

Dib
horror in RE is dogs jumping through a window

Bill
yes
well, i wouldn't call that "horror"

Dib
horror in SH is you, walking deserted, foggy streets, hearing the sound of something following you, and dragging something behind it
and knowing that when it finds you, it isn't going to be pretty
so, they did that part better
but then that isn't really what RE was going for anyway

Bill
right
the authenticity of the weapons on RE4 alone contributed much