Widescreen Gaming Forum

Controls are great, indeed. The advice on turning off V-Sync is worth noting. Was playing a couple of days ago and my first thought was, "Holy christ this is sluggish!" Turned of V-Sync and not only did the controls sharpen up (mouse-wise, that is), loading times cut down from 15-20 seconds to 1 second. Quite amazing.

As for the actual game: Loved it. Finished it an hour ago and I loved the hell out of it. Some flaws here and there, sure, but nothing that really distracts from the experience.

Graphics are superb and the gameplay is awesome. And the sound design.. worthy of a mo-f******, I dare say. Even two! (I apologize profusely for the censored word, but it's a lovely little reference that maybe one of you will get.. and we shall laugh and laugh)

While I wouldn't actually call it "scary", it's definitely tense. And yeah, I played it in full dark, headset on. Some nice shocking moments often enough - however, the atmosphere is where the fun is. Immersed me like.. it's been a while since any game has immersed me this much. BioShock did a good job of it, which brings me to my next point.

The plot whispers "this isn't right.." on occasion, especially in the "oh this makes less sense now that I have time to think about it"-department, but overall it's one of the better I've seen this past decade. It's the combo platter that makes this game really great, though.

Looking forward to Dead Space 2 already.


I sound like a fanboy, I know.

The controls only take only 15 minutes to get used to.

Can you be a bit more specific about what getting used to means? Is turning around sluggish? Is there strafe? Can you mouse assist turning so it's smooth rather than jerky? Is the aiming steady?

I've read you need to kill the monsters in specific ways and quickly, meaning quick and accurate movement is key.

[quote]The controls only take only 15 minutes to get used to.

Can you be a bit more specific about what getting used to means? Is turning around sluggish? Is there strafe? Can you mouse assist turning so it's smooth rather than jerky? Is the aiming steady?

I've read you need to kill the monsters in specific ways and quickly, meaning quick and accurate movement is key.

The mouse sensitivity is limited by Isaac's(the character) movement.

There's basically 3 different mouse speeds.

1. While standing still you can rotate the camera around Isaac, totally independent of his movement. This functions exactly the same as any normal PC game.

2. While moving and using the camera to turn Isaac, the sensitivity goes down slightly in response to Isaac having to turn his body in a realistic fashion.

3. While aiming with a weapon, the sensitivity slows down considerably and is only effective for aiming at something you are already facing towards. Don't expect to be able to spin the camera around without picking up the mouse and recentering it several times.

Don't expect to be able to spin the camera around without picking up the mouse and recentering it several times.

Ugh, typical designed for analog mini toggle control set. I don't call that a good port. If you don't take the time to design in a separate control scheme for mouse without removing the dead zone and tailoring it to the speed of digital peripherals vs analog you've done a lazy port job. Sounds like they tried to compensate for not having done that by making the camera speed dynamic, which isn't going to fool most that don't play console games.

Then again it's EA, what else could one expect from them. I had similar doubts about Ubi making the PC version of FC 2 well, and it plays like a console run n gun game, although at least it has a good control scheme. These guys should stick to publishing, at least then they only screw up the marketing end, though of course support can suffer too, but that's getting common with PC games.

[quote]Don't expect to be able to spin the camera around without picking up the mouse and recentering it several times.

Ugh, typical designed for analog mini toggle control set. I don't call that a good port. If you don't take the time to design in a separate control scheme for mouse without removing the dead zone and tailoring it to the speed of digital peripherals vs analog you've done a lazy port job. Sounds like they tried to compensate for not having done that by making the camera speed dynamic, which isn't going to fool most that don't play console games.

Then again it's EA, what else could one expect from them. I had similar doubts about Ubi making the PC version of FC 2 well, and it plays like a console run n gun game, although at least it has a good control scheme. These guys should stick to publishing, at least then they only screw up the marketing end, though of course support can suffer too, but that's getting common with PC games.

That's only in aiming mode, which you aren't supposed to use unless you already have a target in front of you. It's a deliberate design, once Isaac lifts his heavy weapon up and goes into precision aiming he isn't supposed to be able to dance around in circles like a lunatic.

The game has a very heavy focus on immerison, and the controls were designed with this in mind as well. Even simply walking around no longer functions in the usual sliding feet way we're used to. He takes actual steps like a normal person, and the camera movement and controls revolve around this body movement, rather than his body magically adapting to the player controls and somehow gliding along the floor in an unrealistic fashion.

The entire game is deliberately designed around Isaac's physical limitations. That's why it feels strange adapting to.

Edit: Also, one other thing to note is that, while in Aiming Mode, moving up and down is much easier to do, than turning side to side, as Isaac has to put more effort into turning his entire body rather than simply looking up or down.

Well I know some devs do like to limit character movement in survival horror games to add to the suspense, like the way RE plays, but honestly I think a lot of it has to do with lazy porting too.

Capcom basically pawns their PC ports off on SourceNext in Tokyo and couldn't care less whether mouse and keyboard are even properly supported. OK, that's an extreme example, not saying EA is doing this with Dead Space.

RE still plays like it was made for gamepads, and it even looks like RE 5 won't have strafe either from the dev gameplay trailers I've seen. Also, lumbering vs gliding is common in realistic games now.

None the less I'll reserve final judgment for when I play it. I don't want to get ahead of myself.

so its controls are similar to GoW and Uncharted, then?

thanks for the confirmation that my 360 pad will work with the pc version.

The Resident Evil PC ports were definitely horrible, I can agree with that. (Although Resident Evil 4 was by far the worst due to forced keyboard aiming.) Thankfully I bought the console version.

As far as I know Resident Evil 5 does not, and will not, ever have strafing at all. You're still planted in one spot while aiming, I think. In fact the controls in general seem to be almost exactly the same as Resident Evil 4, in fact, I don't think they changed much of anything at all aside from the inventory system.

(I'm hoping they add Six Axis support on the PS3 version for shaking off zombies. Lol)

so its controls are similar to GoW and Uncharted, then?

Pretty much, that seems like a pretty good comparison, although it seems to have just slightly more emphasis than those games on his lumbering movement(most likely because Isaac is supposed to be in heavy mining gear.) Imagine Gears of War, while lumbering around in a Big Daddy suit.

You got it, my take exactly on RE 5. There's been talk on Capcom's forum about RE 5 possibly adding strafe and a cover system. I might buy minimal use cover spots here and there like RE 4 had, where you can just crouch for cover, but not actually pop in and out while shooting, but I doubt Jun will buy into adding strafe. From listening to him talk he seems insistent that limited movement, among other things, are essential to adding suspense.

Oddly enough though I can play RE 4 once I got used to using the much needed Mouse Aim Fix mod better than I can some games that have built in mouse support but lousy sensitivity adjust, like Turok Evolution for instance. Sure you have to set sensitivity all the way down with the mouse aim mod, but at least you can speed up the aim by assisting it with W,A,S,D.

I even got all the bottle caps at the shooting galleries, and that's not easy with mouse in RE4. Turning around is slow though and pinpointing aim is sticky due to the dead zone. Using the quick 180 turn feature (S+Run) and selecting the right weapon for the right distance helps a lot though.

In Turok Evolution you're stuck with way too sensitive aim even on the lowest setting and turning around often leaves you disoriented as to what direction you've just turned, leaving you getting shot a lot.

I can't play shooters with gamepads so I never use that option. I was wondering however if somehow Xpadder could be used to add in more sensitivity adjust on certain games.

Imagine Gears of War, while lumbering around in a Big Daddy suit.

Great metaphor. That's exactly what it feels like. Obviously Isaac is a bit faster at the whole turning and walking thing, but yeah, Big Daddy all the way.

Honestly, I find the controls very good. They're by no means 'easy', but that's what makes them fun. They're hardly difficult to get used to, though. They feel very realistic.