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
You turn around very slowly
You can't put space between you and an enemy and turn around at the same time
Everyone who ever played one of those games died because of a combination of those two things
They died very slowly as they rotated impotently on the spot, without enough time to prevent it, but with plenty of time to take in that it was going to happen
Most games from that era had very sparce save points and limited save items
This is the standard control method of 3rd person shooters for about 10 years - this doesn't just happen once
Like anything it becomes a meme - something fun to complain about - but that doesn't mean that many people didn't legitimately resent it
I admit tank controls without a quick turn are incredibly clunky and it took RE until the third game to figure that out
Tank controls only make sense in the context of literally controlling a tank or tank like vehicle: something that moves forward with inertia, turns its main body slowly, and has a turret that controls independently. Tank controls on like a person are weird relics of a time before devs knew how to make control schemes, and are basically the controller version of the "use the mouse to move and the keyboard to aim" nonsense of the 90s.
First person controls don't particularly make more sense on a person, nor does third person over the shoulder, they are all abstractions in service of particular ideas for gameplay and storytelling.
Tank controls and fixed camera have roles and functions that are different from FPS or shoulder camera controls.
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.
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.
Its kinda crazy ... playing ROMs of NES games that I vaguely remember from childhood as being insanely difficult/frustrating and then playing them in my 40's and finding that... "Hey, this game is tough but actually playable. Why was this so hard when I was 10?"
I get a kick out of watching random YT videos discussing some notoriously "bad" video game where its pointed out that, "If you play the game by its own rules instead of the rules of another game, its actually pretty solid." As an example... randomly came across at video talking about the Die Hard NES game and it sounds pretty cool. But if you were to play it using the same rules as Commando for the NES you absolutely are going to have a bad time.
It's funny to return to PS1 JRPGs from my childhood that took literal years for me and my siblings to beat with bosses that we got stuck in for months and discover that they're piss easy with your adult gamer brain that actually understands how the stats and mechanics are supposed to work
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Turning on fast forward in your emulator to speed through grinding also helps
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Being able to Fast Forward is a freaking godsend as an adult trying to play the old RPGs...
Because they're bad. Period. I grew up with them. They suck. The transition to over the shoulder saved the genre in a time of nadir.
They're fine in fixed camera angle games when you need forward to be absolute not relative to the position of a camera that changes every scene. Relative controls in a fixed camera angle game like silent hill will have you running in the wrong direction a lot by accident. Those games have a relative control option but I always struggled to not constantly fuck up my movements.
Also tomb raider tank controls and its climbing are just better than modern uncharted climbing mechanics period. One actually requires thought and the other is just a boring spectacle
Is your issue with tank controls or fixed camera angles or both? What do you think of fixed (or semi-fixed) camera angle survival horror games without tank controls like Haunting Ground? Because the transition to an over the shoulder camera also marked a change to more combat-focused action horror in the vein of Dead Space or Evil Within, and I'd argue that fixed camera angles are a perfect match for that older style of Resident Evil-derived key-collecting style of game.
That specific combination can add greatly to the confusion, especially when the angle changes while you're moving. It was a stopgap born of hardware limitations and it stuck around way too long.
Do you just think the entire style of game is obsolete? I'd argue the fixed camera survival horror is a genre onto its own and that there's a lot of cool mood setting and artistry that is specific to fixed camera angles and can't be replicated with a third person shooter camera
I'd argue that the success of Signals shows that top-down is probably the way to go for the genre even if you're trying to channel the OG survival horrors.
They're clunky and counterintuitive and when you're playing a horror game you don't want the most dangerous enemy to be the camera or controls.
I disagree, the horror in a horror game is a function of every system together, and depriving the player of intuitive controls and information through inconvenient camera or inefficient controls is not just valid but extremely effective.
Giving the player perfect controls and agency over their information can very easily lead to them outpacing the horror of the game simply by being able to perfectly handle the enemies, who no matter how freaky they look or scary they sound, will be less scary if they objectively are less of a threat.
Theres also the point of immersion into an actual role, if you have controls that let you do just about anything, your character kind of has to be able to also do just about anything in the world or just stop being a particularly coherent character, this kind of thing was commented on all the way back in Half Life with Gordon Freeman, academia dork, being able to inexplicably outfight anyone and anything thrown at him.
Silent Hill 2 remake is gonna have James Sunderland in the cutscenes and then in gameplay he's gonna turn into Jim "Silent" Hill, action man.
A static fixed top-down angle is really constricting though and doesn't give the devs much room to play with.
Someone else pointed out Eternal Darkness which had cinematic camera angles and no tank controls and it's considered a classic
Fixed + tank controls is for 2D mech games
I actually conflate static fixed camera angles from games with 2D backgrounds and semi-fixed, cinematic camera angles from fully 3D games. How would you classify the camera in something like Silent Hill 3?
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Eternal Darkness had fixed camera and no tank controls, it was fine. I'm good either way and to me the main factor is whether it's ayed with a dpad or control stick. Dpad, tank good. Control stick, tank bad.
Katmari Damacy has the most tank like controls of any game and it rules.
A lot of gamers just generally do not think critically about video games but just take a point of view where the general gaming audiences conservative opinions and tastes are a natural truth in regards to how video games should be looked at and judged.
Tank controls are a huge cognitive load compared to anything else. Specially when the camera jumps around between scenes. Hardly if ever do people control something remotely, so you have to train yourself to think that way.
Funnily enough, tank controls are supposed to mitigate the disorientation from changing camera angles. A lot of people complain about your character getting turned around when the camera cuts when using analog controls in the REmake and RE0 remasters
Weaving around zombies and shit in the Playstation Resident Evil games is peak gaming.
A lot of games either did them badly, or did them when there were better options. (Rascal, for instance)
I looked it up and that's precisely the sort of thing I had in mind with bad implementations of tank controls (fast-paced, action-heavy 3D gameplay with a big emphasis on platforming)
Yeah, it doesn't help that the game really wasn't designed with them in mind - the switch to tank controls was a fairly late publisher-mandated thing, so there wasn't really much window to retool the game to match.
the switch to tank controls was a fairly late publisher-mandated thing
Why? Because Tomb Raider?
Publishers chasing trends to the detriment of the games they're making
Just wanted to throw in that I'm with you. Tank controls have a place and are wildly maligned. Horror games that utilize them are better for having used tank controls. The moment where resident evil really went off rails was RE4 when the horror stopped being scary, and it turned into an action game.
I guess I feel that I don't consider RE4 and future titles as having tank controls due to the precise control you're given with aiming. I might be splitting hairs with that opinion. After the success of RE4 in the way that it was guaranteed that future titles would be made with the same formula, leaning further into cinematic action and departing from horror, and the over-the-shoulder perspective only facilites better movement and gunplay.
I can play them fine, having grown up with them in plenty of titles. I think tank controls make sense for tanks, cars, quadrupeds, certain bipedal characters like robots. When it's a dude and I can't just turn my body in place by moving my feet and twisting my hips though? It's pretty jarring these days, and I always had a problem with it.
I think the only game in which I enjoyed tank controls was Brigador but thats because you either pilot a mech...or a tank. Not 100% sure if they can be called tank controls but they felt like that at the time.
It just feels a bit "weird" to control a human like that. With that said I agree its really not thaaat bad.
