I just don't get how they seem to be unplayable or completely impenetrable to so many people. I'd say it's a generational thing but even many people who grew up playing PS1 games act like trying to figure them out in 2024 completely short circuits their brains
Now, would I want to play some hypothetical fast paced 3D action game from the 90s where they used tank controls because they didn't know any better? No, but they work perfectly fine in slower-paced games like Resident Evil-style survival horror or the first five Tomb Raider games (though the camera kind of sucks in those, but it took a long time for 3D games to figure out how to handle that in general)
Maybe I'm just weird for enjoying tank controls. Some survival horror games that came out in the PS2 era like Silent Hill 2 and 3 gave you the option between 2D and 3D (tank controls) movement and I always pick the latter if I get the chance
Cause they use the analogue stick when they should use the dpad. Tank controls feel fine on a dead but weird with a control stick.
Probably lots of people saying that kind of stuff about tank controls had N64 as their first 3d console. That was the case for me and it took an embarrassing amount of time to realize older PS1 games were designed around the d-pad (fighting games, too).
I had an n64 but my childhood friend and I got our games and consoles strategically to cover each base and we'd trade back and forth.
That might be it actually, good point
I'm old enough to remember playing 3d game pre dualshock 1 and like a run button, tank controls were designed to work around digital control in a 3d space, rotating your character was necessary to fine tune movement on a dpad
I must be an anomaly then cos i much prefer tank controls on a stick, although i don't map it all to one stick i prefer to map up and down to the left stick and rotate to the right stick so i have more precise control of the input.
But i also played all of the tank control tomb raiders using the stick bound to the dpad. I hate dpads they always feel horrible. Well all but the psvita dpad and to some extend the retroid pocket dpad.