When I think "shittiest game interface", I think Resident Evil.
RE has the annoying feature where they don't give you a crosshair but you're still expected to shoot zombies in the head to kill them properly, exactly the sort of convenient interface which made the PS2 so popular because apparently stupid people (who are known to be the number one purchaser of PS2 games and gaming hardware) like that sort of thing.
PC interfaces almost always need reworking, yes. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was a fairly good reworking from console to PC, though admittedly because they originally planned it for PC until the Xbox showed up, and then defected, and so on. Same went for Halo and any number of titles around the same era which Microsoft pulled the carpet from under.
What I find sucks is when people port a certain type of game to PC and pay no attention to the completely different style of game that people will expect. The crown example of this is Tetris Worlds, which on console allows four player side by side play, and on PC, allows four player side by side play... assuming you have four controllers you can hook up to the computer, which applies to approximately zero PC owners. When asked why they didn't include online or LAN multiplayer in the game, its designers, Elorg said, "What's a LAN?" (Well they didn't really, but I suspect they would if they were asked.)
There are probably a few game types which don't require much reworking but it largely boils down to GTA-style games where they have to port from controller to mouse/keyboard control, but everything else remains the same.
The funny thing is making portable game engines caused this problem. Yet portable game engines are a good idea in themselves. Oh well...
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Date: 2004-04-18 08:36 pm (UTC)RE has the annoying feature where they don't give you a crosshair but you're still expected to shoot zombies in the head to kill them properly, exactly the sort of convenient interface which made the PS2 so popular because apparently stupid people (who are known to be the number one purchaser of PS2 games and gaming hardware) like that sort of thing.
PC interfaces almost always need reworking, yes. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was a fairly good reworking from console to PC, though admittedly because they originally planned it for PC until the Xbox showed up, and then defected, and so on. Same went for Halo and any number of titles around the same era which Microsoft pulled the carpet from under.
What I find sucks is when people port a certain type of game to PC and pay no attention to the completely different style of game that people will expect. The crown example of this is Tetris Worlds, which on console allows four player side by side play, and on PC, allows four player side by side play... assuming you have four controllers you can hook up to the computer, which applies to approximately zero PC owners. When asked why they didn't include online or LAN multiplayer in the game, its designers, Elorg said, "What's a LAN?" (Well they didn't really, but I suspect they would if they were asked.)
There are probably a few game types which don't require much reworking but it largely boils down to GTA-style games where they have to port from controller to mouse/keyboard control, but everything else remains the same.
The funny thing is making portable game engines caused this problem. Yet portable game engines are a good idea in themselves. Oh well...