Topic: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker Demo

[nickclone]

As I said in the other Metal Gear thread, I've only played MGS, the one for the Gameboy Color and Metal Gear Ac!d. I figured I'd give this demo a shot and see how it was, its needs work in only one, buy major department.

This game looks amazing, the sound is great and the action is fun. However, the controls are some of the worst controls I've ever experienced. I have no idea what they're going to do when the game is released, but the demo only has two control settings. One where you move the camera around with the face buttons and perform action with the d pad and shoulder button, you move around with the analog stick...nub. This feels extremely awkward and you will be fighting your instincts to use the face buttons for actions.

The second control setting using the analog for movement, d pad for the camera and face buttons for actions. This way feels more natural, but you can't use the analog and camera buttons at the same time. When you aim you can still move, but you move the cursor with the d pad, making aiming very slow and difficult. Plus, since you're using the d pad and not the analog, the cursor feels very slow and stiff, making aiming a pain.

Last, but not least, you can't pause this game. There is no way to stop the action, everything from checking maps to switching items is done in real time. This wouldn't be so bad if the controls weren't so weird, causing you to constantly push all of the wrong buttons, especially when some shit is going down. Anyways, this game could be great, but the controls need to be fixed.

[Xessive]

Haha consider this: these are the good controls compared to MGS Portable Ops! In my case I really appreciated the controls in the PW demo after an ordeal adapting to the PO controls! The camera in PW is definitely more intuitive than in PO, which helps with the control scheme.

It takes a bit but once you get the hang of the controls you'll start to enjoy the rest of the game. At least that seems to be the pattern with MGS games.

I don't understand why they insist on making games that require manual camera angle control on the PSP. I would have really enjoyed PO if it operated exactly like the original MGS on the Playstation; and that was back when the Playstation didn't even have analogue sticks! It was basically the SNES controller with two extra shoulder buttons.

[K-man]

The PSP just doesn't have enough buttons.

[Xessive]

The PSP just doesn't have enough buttons.

It's really just missing a right analogue stick.. and a left analogue stick.

[nickclone]

I've heard two reactions: the controls are abysmal and that the controls are so much better than Portable Ops. I haven't played Portable Ops yet, but I'm kinda worried if the controls are that wonky,

[idolminds]

The "analog stick move/dpad camera" control scheme is for the Monster Hunter crowd, since that series has the same set up. It takes a lot to get used to, and is still a bad design. Why didn't make the portable games more top-down view like MGS1? No need for dedicated camera control.

[Xessive]

The "analog stick move/dpad camera" control scheme is for the Monster Hunter crowd, since that series has the same set up. It takes a lot to get used to, and is still a bad design. Why didn't make the portable games more top-down view like MGS1? No need for dedicated camera control.

Exactly my view on the matter. I posed the same example earlier. I don't understand why they won't put the old game mechanics to better use.

Incidentally, MGS1 is currently available for the PSP on the PSN Store.

[nickclone]

I've been playing Silent Hill Origins and I just died...I died because the camera sucks! The more games I play on the PSP (3D games), the more I realize the camera seems to be a big problem. I just spent 20 minutes running around collecting health and ammo, only to die because I couldn't switch the camera to see DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ME! I'm starting to understand why the PSP is failing compared to the DS. Any game thats 2D, people don't want to play. I can't blame them, I'm not a graphics whore, but I want to play pretty games on the PSP. However, 3D games just don't seem to work on it.

[Quemaqua]

Shouldn't we be used to this by now?  Cameras in 3D games have sucked for years upon years upon years.  If you haven't learned to compensate by now, I don't know what to suggest.  That isn't to say people shouldn't be trying to get cameras to work better (and some have, sure), but it's still probably more common to see bad camera systems than good ones.  Silent Hill Origins didn't have a particularly good one, but it isn't all that different from most games of its ilk.

[idolminds]

The thing is the problem seems to be amplified on the PSP due to the (un)available buttons.

With the dpad and analog stick on the same side of the device it leads to a problem. You can control your character with either one, but you have to take your hand off movement if you want to adjust the camera. Some games like Monster Hunter actually expect you to use the stick to move and then adjust the camera with the dpad while playing! As things are jumping at you and trying to kill you, you have to hook your pointer finger over the dpad to look in the right direction. The game only has manual controls, so you HAVE to do it to get anywhere.

The other option, one that this MGS game seems to make available is having camera controls on the buttons. It works and makes moving and adjusting the camera at the same time easy, but there goes all your buttons for performing actions. So now everything is context sensitive and based on your movement which I can tell right now isn't going to always be as accurate as I'd like. You'll punch a dude instead of choking them or something, completely blowing your sneaking.

In this game I'd like to see a shoulder button toggle. Face buttons are actions under normal play, but hold right shoulder button and they toggle to camera control. With the option to reverse the toggle (ie, camera control is the normal action, and only with the shoulder button does it perform an action)

But this kind of stems from developers seemingly still designing games around the Dualshock instead of really taking into account what the PSP has and what it doesn't have. We had a lot of PS1 games that did not need analog sticks for camera controls, so why arent they aiming for that school of design?

[nickclone]

The thing about Silent Hill Origins though, is that they had the right idea to fix the camera, its just executed horribly. Pressing the left shoulder button brings the camera behind your character, but there has to be room for the camera to actually move behind your character. This causes many headaches because you spend most of your time (like most SH games) in cramped hallways and cozy rooms, so you're often stuck with a crappy view until you move yourself into the unknown spaces before you.

Seeing as how this became a problem within the first ten minutes of the game, you would think the developers would try to fix this. If you're too close to a wall and need to fix the camera: go into a first person view, then when you move forward and create enough space, go back to third person. Hell, make the character transparent along with a wall, object or whatever else is in the way of the camera. The PSP is a great system with a lot of good games, but the camera is just a constant killer.

[Quemaqua]

I dunno'... I made it through the entirety of SHO without giving any thought to the camera whatsoever.  Maybe I'm just inoculated against this stuff.

[Cobra951]

*Sigh*  There was a humble little game called Shadow Man on the N64.  It solved the camera control issues for 3rd-person games completely.  It was always behind the character, unless you chose for it to be somewhere else (and then it would stay at that circular offset until you chose otherwise).  It would get as near the character as needed to not clip through walls, or do something excruciatingly stupid (like float up and point down at the character's head).  If your character backed up against the wall, it would go into his head, with the head going transparent in the interim.  It never caused problems with judging distances or making precise moves.

So it can be done, on a humble old system without 2 analog sticks.  The fact that it almost never is done right is simply beyond me.

[nickclone]

Ok, I've put several hours into Portable Ops and tweaked the controls to the best of my ability. No matter the setting, you going to have to play finger twister with the PSP at some point. However, this is more of a stealth game and the enemies don't move around too much so picking them off isn't too difficult.

However, I haven't been able to pull off any grappling moves and it makes the recruits useless except for picking up the other recruits Snake knocks out. Maybe I'll get the hang of it later.

[Xessive]

Ok, I've put several hours into Portable Ops and tweaked the controls to the best of my ability. No matter the setting, you going to have to play finger twister with the PSP at some point. However, this is more of a stealth game and the enemies don't move around too much so picking them off isn't too difficult.

However, I haven't been able to pull off any grappling moves and it makes the recruits useless except for picking up the other recruits Snake knocks out. Maybe I'll get the hang of it later.

It sucks. I wound up with a little system of prioritizing buttons depending on the situation (if I'm sneaking around or sniping).

With the recruits you need to check their CQC skill class. If they're A or S then they're quite good at grappling and general CQC. B class can still grab enemies but they suck at face-to-face CQC. C class, don't even think about getting that close to an enemy.

Snake is the best at CQC by far, but other recruits are handy with various other skills i.e. Jonathan (first recruit) is a rescuer who can drag bodies much more quickly. Also keep in mind when you use any health kits on a character it increases their overall health, same effect with rations on stamina.

[nickclone]

I eventually figured that out, but I think it has more to do with me hitting the wrong buttons at the wrong time than anything else. I got Snake to grab a dude at one point, but thats as far as I got. I don't have a manual, so I have to keep a couple of pages open on GameFAQS as I trod through the game learning the hard way.