Recommend me some gamepad-friendly Console Ports!

[scaryjim]

OK, OK, I know console ports are theoretically anathema to PC gaming, leaving us with poorly optimised, graphically lacking half-assed releases that are meant to set our teeth on edge as seasoned PC gamers used to bleeding edge everything.

BUT

I was off work ill for a few days last week, and one of the things I ended up doing was messing with the Dungeon Seige III demo (which my steam account had been desperate to download for about 8 months, iirc) on my HTPC (the AMD fusion bundle I won off, and reviewed for, hexus ). Well, I played through the demo once with mouse/keyboard, and it was OK but not completely compelling - the gameplay just felt clunky and wrong somehow. I'd noticed it claimed to have gamepad support in the options menu, so I figured I'd try it out, and whilst getting it to work wasn't entirely straightforward (whilst it just says "gamepad", it means "XBox 360 Gamepad"), I eventually got my old Saitek P2500 recognised and gave it a second bash through (with the other demo class) using the game. And Oh. My. God. What a difference. It suddenly felt like an actual game, that I was interacting with as intended.

So, I've now bought the game, and am loving it's medium/high settings at 1080p on my A6-3670K (average FPS is only around 24, but it feels silky smooth, probably due to motion blur), I want more HTPC + gamepad friendly games to have a go at.

So, fire away gaming hexites - which console ports (or even PC originals) play best with a gamepad? What should I be trying? I'm not really a fan of FPS, so I'm looking more for action/RPG type games

[DDY]

Alan Wake, Bastion, GTA4 and Mirror's Edge are some of the games which loosely fit your preferences that I've played on the PC and enjoyed using a game pad;

On the side, I think you should invest in a xbox 360 pad especially if you're after that console feel, it integrates seemlessly with many modern games which is not suprising considering where many of those games came from! Not only that, having gone through many a game pad, the 360 pad would be my favourite, good ergonomics, great build quality, durable, reasonably priced... I could go on.

[scaryjim]

Thanks for the suggestions

I'm using X360CE with my P2500 and it lets me map pretty much everything identically to the 360 controller. Only real difference is that the left stick and d-pad are position switched, and you loose the 2 "bumpers" but gain 2 conventional buttons. tbh I think I prefer that layout anyway, since most of my console gaming was on the PS One - it feels very familiar and homey I'd rather not chuck money at a new pad as I know I won't play games all that often - but when I do fancy sitting in front of the big screen it'd be nice to have a range of pad-friendly games to choose from

I'm pretty sure I got Mirror's Edge in a steam sale a couple of years ago - I'll have to give it a shot

[Ferral]

Darksiders is a cracking game and works lovely with a pad, same goes for either of the Batman Games.

Alan Wake, Sleeping Dogs, Spec Ops The Line, Mafia 2, Alpha Protocol, Bully, Deus Ex Human Revolution, RAGE, Resi 5, Velvet Assasin, Red Faction Guerilla & Armageddon, Alice Madness Returns, Deathspank Trilogy & Wolfenstein I have played and enjoyed using a pad. General Rule of thumb is third person action / adventure games tend to work best with a gamepad. I managed to lay my hands on Gears of War for Windows and it plays so much better with a Gamepad.

Get Games have a deal on at the minute, 2 games for a tenner, titles include :

Batman Arkham City GOTY (Not Steam version)
Darksiders (Steam)
Metro 2033 (Steam)
Darkness 2 (Steam)
Il 2 Cliffs of Dover (Steam)
Serious Sam HD (Steam)

Out of those would go with Darksiders, Darkness 2 and Batman, choose 2 for the tenner :

http://www.getloadedgo.com/

Just Cause 2 is available on the Daily Deal on Steam today which also works so much better with a gamepad.

[chuckskull]

Another vote for GTA4, lots of great mods on PC. I played it on both, much preferred on PC just because of that. Some of the graphical ones are gorgeous, along with better driving, flying and more guns.

Speaking of driving and flying, both genres are much better on PC with a pad. There are stacks of both out there very cheap, so take your pick.

Fallout/The Elder Scrolls both work pretty well with a pad I found, and again great mods out there.

If you haven't already played it on consoles Assassins Creed, not much difference between the versions, but a solid port.

Just cause 2 is a laugh, give the multiplayer mod a go for endless hilarity.

Deus Ex and Mass effect both play pretty well on pad, again solid ports but not worth it if you already played on consoles.

[scaryjim]

Cheers guys. Just snagged myself Batman and Darksiders from getgames (brilliant deal, thanks for that Ferral ), and I've been playing Oblivion on my old PC so I might snag my save game off there and install it on the HTPC - be interesting to see how well the pad works with my "sneaky sneaky" approach

[Ferral]

Oblivion doesn't actually have pad support on PC so you would need to get XPadder or Pinnacle Game Profiler to be able to use it, Skyrim though has full pad support out the box.

[chuckskull]

I've not used Pinnacle, but I've been using xpadder for years, lovely little program.

[Biscuit]

Assasins creed is another one, i havent got too far on the 3rd one (brotherhood) though as there is just so bloody much to do!

[scaryjim]

Oblivion doesn't actually have pad support on PC so you would need to get XPadder or Pinnacle Game Profiler to be able to use it, Skyrim though has full pad support out the box.

My saitek came with profile editing software, so presumably that will do the trick? Is it just a case of mapping controller actions to keypresses?

[chuckskull]

My saitek came with profile editing software, so presumably that will do the trick? Is it just a case of mapping controller actions to keypresses?

Yup, that should be all you need.

[imunkee]

If you like Racing, Dirt 3 works fine with my xbox 260 controller