Or, they are intentionally nerfing the vast superiority of a mouse over a gamepad in FPS games to somehow level the playing field. This has been done before in a console-centric game.
Or, they suck.
Your interpretation is the most troublesome one. Intentionally fucking up control as an atmospheric gameplay element never works for me. Didn't you hate every stinking ice level in old platformers? I did.
I'd say negative to the nerfing - it's a strictly single player game and it does it on game pads as well. I probably didn't describe it correctly, but it's not like it's anything unusual - it's the same style of control and camera control that almost every other (good) survival horror game that I've played has. Lumbersome isn't the right word, but don't expect Max Payne/Quake style acrobatics and/or accuracy. You have to turn around to turn around, and moving the mouse or stick an eight of an inch isn't going to make the camera do a full 360. From what I remember, Silent Hill was exactly the same way.
It's not a glitch and it's not nerfing. Whether or not it's a design flaw is up in the air. To a point I agree with you, ice levels suck. So do most Wii games that just throw tiresome gestures in because they can. The thing here is completely different. It's not unusual at all, it's been done before without complaint for the most part. This isn't a case of picking up the controller/keyboard and going "WHAT THE FUCK
?!?". You'll only be disappointed if you hate Survival Horror and expected an action game. I think it's even better than a lot of the survival horror games in that it incorporates WASD controls a bit better.
As for the Ice level thing, they're a bitch because they're thrown at you and it's basically killing the controlls in the name of challenge. This is different. Think about a game like NiGHTS. The control mechanics have a lot in common with ice levels in old platformers - can't stop on a dime, turning takes time, blah blah blah. Yet, it's not a bitch at all because the game is built entirely around it. Half Life would suck with the control scheme in Dead Space...but Dead Space doesn't.
well if the choice is deliberate, why do they feel so much more sluggish on the PC?
But I've gotta agree with Que. The controls are probably not as bad as initially reported and reported and reported......and reported from that one site.
I don't think they are more sluggish. Like I said, I don't believe I've come across the problem they've been talking about. There's nothing going on in my copy that would lead me to believe that there's a bug, and the only think really sluggish is the camera sensitivity - which apparently exists on the console versions. I don't have Vsync on, so I don't know if that's the issue, but what I'm getting here is a standard controller friendly survival horror control scheme. Nothing out of the ordinary.