HCI my heartstrings

Ugh, so I was playing Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (Terrorist Hunt) the other day as I was playing it I was finding myself more and more frustrated about the positioning of the analogue sticks on the 360 controller. To the point where I decided to have a look into third party controllers that have the analogue sticks in the "correct" positions. But to no avail. It seems as though the entire gaming community has become enamoured with the layout of the 360 joypad. I found myself (dual)shocked by this, the Playstation controller is staple in my mind, I'm pretty sure when I die and rigor mortis sets in my hands will clamp up on my chest in the exact position to hold a Dualshock 2. Yeah, so I was (dual)shocked that there were no Madcatz, or whatever third party controllers, that had decided rip off the Dualshock design and create a controller for the 360. I even went as far as to check if there were some crazy mod sites out there that maybe did it, then I find that thay have actually done the opposite, and put a PS controller in a 360 controller:

What the hell?!?? Now I'm not going to making any claims that the Playstation controller was perfect, but it was a damn-site better than the 360 controller. Even the Wii-mote looks less childish than the 360 controller. My griefs don't just lie in the analogue stick positioning, the D-Pad is a joke, everyone at some point had owned a "gaypad" and I am eternally reminded of them when using the 360 D-Pad, the original Playstation made up for this with making them feel like individual up/down/left/right buttons, rather than one hefty lump of kinder-surprise plastic. Thankfully most of the games on the 360 only use the D-Pad sparingly, for maybe switching weapons etc. heaven forbid trying to use it for the retro live arcade games, Sonic was painful and Streetfighter was impossible.

Secondly, the bumper buttons, AKA "R1" and "L1", they enrage me, not only are they badly positioned, in gaming terms it feels like a mile to jump from the trigger to the bumper button*, but they are also crap at being buttons, their singular use! Let's take Devil May Cry 4 as an example (surprise) the Right Bumper is the button, by default, that you use for locking on to enemies, however holding that awkwardly placed button down whilst pulling of rapid button is not fun, I often find that I lose the target despite the button being pressed. I dunno if it is just my controller(s) but the button is not a button, its more like a light switch. flawed.

This is one of the first things that has made me feel like an old gamer. Though the Dualshock is only a few years old I have become accustomed to it, and everyone is flapping on about the 360 being the superior pad. Am I missing something? Apparently the arrangement of the analogue sticks is meant to differentiate the player controls and the camera controls akin to WASD and mouse controls, that's a maybe, I never had an issue with it in the past with the Dualshock, and it certainly doesn't let me forgive the pads other flaws.

Campaign: Dualshock 3 on Xbox 360 starts today.

Luv n' Hugs

Richie X

*and don't give me that pish about using your middle finger for the trigger button, its a trigger button -.-