Lost in Translation: Console-to-Console Porting

By Bay Posted Sunday Aug 28, 2022

Filed under: Epilogue, Game Design, Video Games 69 comments

A few days ago was my dad’s birthday and I wrote a post about a part of the dilemma I’ve been facing with this site. A lot of it is emotional slog, ‘what if I’m not enough like Dad’ and ‘what if I’m too much like Dad’. There’s also not wanting to face it yet. Because, while my dad and I did talk sometimes, he was a very online guy. It’s hard to feel properly like he’s gone because I’m not used to seeing him.  He spent most of his time in front of a computer screen, making content, playing games to make more content, etc. 

It feels weird to have no messages on G-Chat from him He refused to move from Google Chats. He wouldn’t text, Facebook Messenger, or even message on Steam. It was a running joke that for such a nerd, he could really be an old fart about tech., no YouTube links, no new posts here. So, because of that, posting here sort of solidifies it. It forces that god-awful acceptance. He’s gone forever and he’s not going to write more…Ouch.

On a much lighter note: The other issue I talked about was how we had very few games in common. So I, by extension, have very few games in common with his audience…

Shamus Young did not raise a PC game hater, let’s get that hilarious idea out of the way.

I, by mostly circumstance, haven’t played anything but Nintendo games for the last six years. I used to, and I had lots of opinions about them. Some I even wrote down and put on the internet to complain My old blog appears to be lost to time. Probably for the best if I want to keep making content here instead of trying to find a rock to hide under in my shame.. The issue is, computers are expensive, and I moved out when I turned eighteen. My own PC broke not long after. It was old, a clunker born from hand-me-down after hand-me-down of my dad’s old computers. It was never long for this world to start with. 

People complain a lot about console prices. But, at the end of the day, a laughably expensive Nintendo Switch was far cheaper than even the lowest end gaming PC.

Okay, so no PC, but the Switch still had lot of ports! It even had Skyrim, Subnautica, Minecraft, Bioshock, even Doom for some reason…Okay, those aren’t all bad. Skyrim is out of the question, I don’t play without at least a dozen game-changing mods. But how about Subnautica?  

When one of my partners got Subnautica in 2020 I was enthralled. It’s a resource collection game that went accidentally horror from the setting. You crash land on an almost entirely underwater planet and have to survive in unknown conditions, feed yourself, and try to find other survivors. You don’t know me well enough to know this yet, but this is my catnip. Horror, especially horror that didn’t set out to be horror but landed there accidentally. That’s is my favorite thing. No jump scares, no gore, just good old-fashioned dread and appropriate fear of inhospitable surroundings. Mix that with resource collection and management? Sign me up.

I sat and watched them play nearly the entire thing start to finish, repeatedly And to a lesser extent the second game. It just wasn’t as good, maybe I’ll do a playthrough and do a deep dive into that someday. Ha, deep dive. . I wanted so badly to play it myself! And then it was ported to the Switch! Perfect.

It’s visually the same to the PC version, the only thing that had to change was the controls. How hard can that be?

Fun fact; these separated controllers are a dream for someone with mobility issues, especially shoulder and elbow. No locked joints from sitting like a gargoyle over a single controller. I wish more remotes were built this way.
Fun fact; these separated controllers are a dream for someone with mobility issues, especially shoulder and elbow. No locked joints from sitting like a gargoyle over a single controller. I wish more remotes were built this way.

These controls work great for a third-person game with minor camera movement, the kind of game Nintendo actually makes. The ‘Action Camera’ joystick is in the ideal position for little adjustments. Most of the time your right hand is busy with the X-A-B-Y section of the controller, only moving down to the joystick sometimes. 

This setup, which is great for Mario and Zelda, is unimaginably bad for a first person game in a full 3D, 360 scenario; you know, like swimming?

Subnautica on the Switch requires you to be able to move the action joystick, regular joystick, and hit the A button at the same time, constantly. That action isn’t some little side thing or even combat, it’s collecting food and drink. Picture this; you’re starving to death, you took too long trying to collect creepvine samples, and now you have seconds to find food.  This should be simple, especially in the beginning area, where you’re surrounded by hospitable, edible fish. The water around you is full of food, all you have to do is reach out and grab it. The only hiccup being your lack of two right thumbs. You must move through the water with your left joystick, aim at the moving fish with your right joystick, and hit confirm, all at once.

Beautiful, lovely, stunning game.<strong> <em>A ridiculous place to starve.</em> <em>Those fish are all food.</em></strong>
Beautiful, lovely, stunning game. A ridiculous place to starve. Those fish are all food.

At best, with typical remote usage, this is very difficult, at worst; it’s impossible. I am often nervous to call tasks that require hand dexterity ‘difficult’ in a ‘everyone experiences this’ way. I have little to no range of motion on my right side, so I’ll admit this could be worse for me than others. But, I feel pretty strongly that I’m not alone in being born with only two thumbs.

Using the remote wrong is an option; use your pointer finger to press the ‘A’ button and your thumb on the joystick. It’s uncomfortableAgain, this could just be me, but the resulting ‘claw’ hand certainly doesn’t look or feel natural for such a consistent game motion., and more than that it only works half the time. Okay, how about some good old fashioned ‘aim and fire’? Point yourself at a fish with the right joystick, and then move quickly to the ‘A’ button and just hope it doesn’t try to get away? Well, it’s a fish, capable of moving in any direction. Personally, I feel like if I was a fish being grabbed, I’d try to move. But even if their motion was randomly generated without the player being taken into account, it still moves continuously. The odds of grabbing the fish easily are slim to none, leading to an increasingly frustrating game of ‘haha, you missed me’ while you starve to death.

Death in games can be irritating, but death that is entirely the game’s fault is eye-twitchingly unforgivable. 

Bad ports are common, trust me, I’m fully aware. But, this one was fairly egregious, and easily prevented by turning one of the triggers into a second ‘confirm’ button.

My other disappointment here is that I find much of the community just accepts bad ports.  Often, when complaining about them, the buyer/complainer gets a reaction like they were the idiot for not realizing that it wasn’t compatible with the console they bought it on. As if everyone can simply look at Skyrim in the Playstore/ Nintendo E-shop/ Xbox Marketplace/ strange purchase screen that just opened up on their childhood Tamagotchi, and just know that maybe Bethesda didn’t give that one their all. Skyrim is a terrible example for this, of course, because we all know it works perfectly all the time no matter where it’s ported.

This can alienate an entire group of single-console gamers. It’s easy to just say ‘get good’ or ‘know better next time’.  However, it would have been just as easy (comparatively) for Subnautica to have play-tested their game on the switch. It doesn’t take long to realize an alternate ‘confirm’ key might be necessary. On the player end, it would have lead to a couple extra seconds fumbling around when the game first booted, because a button or two don’t act as expected. Annoying, sure, but when it’s something as fundamental as feeding oneself, it becomes a necessary evil.

I feel I should point out that I am aware you can change controls for yourself. Most games these days allow you to go in and mess with the settings to some reasonable degree. However, doing so is a long and tedious process. Something that should be simple, like; ‘set a trigger to a confirm button’ is made annoying because, oh shit, those triggers have uses, and the buttons you assign things to to fix it also have uses. Of course, I’m showing by example how the problem is harder than ‘um, just fix it’ on the dev end, but them doing the work once prevents time wasted en mass on the consumer side. A factory error that is fixed on the factory-side saves a lot of time and money in the long run, even if the issue is small. Not every irritated customer has a hand saw in their home to cut down their free, unwanted extra half an inch of Ikea table. Most would give up on it as impossible and return the product without ever considering the DIY anyway. Doing so would also hilariously void the warranty, but that’s getting out of video-game metaphor territory.

Porting leads to other, much more subtle problems, as well. A port can be a lot like a translation from language to language. Google might be able to churn out that Korean song you heard on the radio but it’s gonna miss a lot of nuance. Gangnam Style when translated directly into English has ‘The man whose heart bursts when night comes’ as a lyric. I can generally extrapolate the meaning there through context, but much of it gets lost. 

An excellent example of this is another Indie-Game port ‘Deaths Door’. I grabbed it over a sale period on the Nintendo store last year and loved it. It was interesting, visually appealing, and had a combat style I didn’t hate. The main issue; the game was unimaginably difficult. You play as a crow, who works as a grim reaper. You go through some simple puzzles, encountering combat that I liken to Ocarina of time. It’s mostly button mashing provided you know how your enemy moves and attacks. Once you know your enemies pattern, you can, in theory, escape unharmed and move onto the next part of the map. At least, that was clearly the designers intention

The player character is only given four hitpoints for much of the game. There are healing spots but they feel far apart given that you can die from as little as a single mistake. The maps can be sized from medium to huge and checkpoints before boss battles only exist for the four main fight in the game. I suppose what I’m actually complaining about is the mini bosses, considering that formatting; but many of the mini bosses are harder than the main boss events in this context, so I’m calling them bosses.  This leaves the player having to fight dozens of pre-battle enemies every time they fight a boss, sometimes without healing stations in between. 

This glorious bastard is only the second major battle in the game. There is a four minute walk to the arena, no checkpoint. The lasers being avoided here are one of just four different unique attacks it can use against the player.  Gah!
This glorious bastard is only the second major battle in the game. There is a four minute walk to the arena, no checkpoint. The lasers being avoided here are one of just four different unique attacks it can use against the player. Gah!

Load in, fight your way to the boss battle, go in half dead and try to learn its pattern, die. Load in, fight your way to the boss battle, go in a quarter of the way dead, finally get its pattern down, die. Load in, fight your way to the boss battle, go in with full health, celebrate, then get crushed like a bug when it goes into it’s ‘phase two’ and changes it’s pattern entirely. 

I thought for sure someone, anywhere, was going to mention online how impossible this game was. Surely, I wasn’t a lone idiot, the only one struggling with this dark-souls-esque  hellscape. The walkthroughs called things easy, the forums were no help. I began to feel like an idiot who just didn’t dodge fast enough, perhaps I am a failure to gamers everywhere. 

Nope, this is just a Switch problem. Turns out, a lot of difficulty scaling gets thrown off when you switch to a Nintendo controller. Same game, same conditions, same amount of healing points, and same bosses. It’s just woefully harder to aim with the switch controllers so you waste a few precious milliseconds every time you attack, making you a sitting duck Well, in this case, crow.
Review: Death's Door (PC) – Digitally Downloaded
.  

My entire tangent about checkpoints and healing spots, all my time spent trying to find tricks, everything I thought they had done wrong, everything I thought I had done wrong, it all boiled down, yet again, to a ‘bad port’. Not that the resulting game was ‘bad’ per say, but considering the effort put into difficulty scaling in the original, it’s definitely a poor translation of the games true potential. Sad. 

Well, I’ve inherited my dad’s gaming setup. Soon I’ll be able to talk about games beyond what is available on the Nintendo Switch. But, while I get caught up in the PC gaming world, this is where we’re at. Maybe we’ll get into my Harvest Moon rant next, or the fall of Animal Crossing. Don’t worry, we still complain here, that’s not going anywhere. 

 

Footnotes:

[1] He refused to move from Google Chats. He wouldn’t text, Facebook Messenger, or even message on Steam. It was a running joke that for such a nerd, he could really be an old fart about tech.

[2] My old blog appears to be lost to time. Probably for the best if I want to keep making content here instead of trying to find a rock to hide under in my shame.

[3] And to a lesser extent the second game. It just wasn’t as good, maybe I’ll do a playthrough and do a deep dive into that someday. Ha, deep dive.

[4] Again, this could just be me, but the resulting ‘claw’ hand certainly doesn’t look or feel natural for such a consistent game motion.

[5] Skyrim is a terrible example for this, of course, because we all know it works perfectly all the time no matter where it’s ported.

[6] Doing so would also hilariously void the warranty, but that’s getting out of video-game metaphor territory.

[7] I suppose what I’m actually complaining about is the mini bosses, considering that formatting; but many of the mini bosses are harder than the main boss events in this context, so I’m calling them bosses.

[8] Well, in this case, crow.
Review: Death's Door (PC) – Digitally Downloaded



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69 thoughts on “Lost in Translation: Console-to-Console Porting

  1. Mersadeon says:

    I would love a deep dive of the second Subnautica. I got the first one when it was finished and, hyped up from that, played Below Zero during its Early Access phase. Maybe that ruined it for me, but I just didn’t like it a lot, and I’d love to see someone else’s thoughts on it just to maybe figure out why I couldn’t love it the same way I loved the first one.

    1. BlueHorus says:

      So would I.
      I held out until Below Zero was out of Early Access, and while it was fun, it didn’t have the same magic as the original. I’ve got theories as to why, but someone else’s take would be great.

    2. evileeyore says:

      I would love a deep dive of the second Subnautica.

      /rimshot

  2. Philadelphus says:

    So I, by extension, have very few games in common with his audience…

    Well, I’ve been stopping by regularly for over half a decade, and had very few games in common with your dad either, so I wouldn’t worry about it. I know we both loved Minecraft, and I think he enjoyed Filament after I mentioned it in the comments once, but we had diametrically opposed feelings on FTL and I’ve never played or even really been interested in basically any of the games he wrote long-form about (though I still read all of them, of course). It’s a wide audience here, with correspondingly wide interests, even if not all of them got talked about.

    Surly, I wasn’t a lone idiot, the only one struggling with this dark souls esc hellscape.

    I’m guessing that’s meant to be “surely”, though it sounds like a very apt description.

    1. Bay says:

      Man, second comment too. I must have proof-read this 60 times and still missed ‘surly’.

      As for the games, I was hopeful it was a wide enough audience I wouldn’t be stuck trying to figure out how to write another mass effect retrospective or some other such ridiculous undertaking. But so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised over how varied peoples scopes here have been.

      1. CrushU says:

        Oh, absolutely. I played basically none of the games Shamus liked and talked about; I was always here for the deep dive.

        You seem to have inherited that, so keep going. :)

        (I dislike Minecraft. And I’ve never played Subnautica, but still liked reading your take on it.)

        Also, on a personal note; my wife also cannot use her right side. Basically has zero fine motor control in fingers, which puts a drastic limitation on which games she can play. (Mostly turn-based strategy games, like Civilization, though she did successfully play League of Legends using a left-handed MMO mouse…) We’ve been looking for possibilities for better gaming. We have a Switch, but she says she can’t really use it and it doesn’t really work for her. Do you have any ideas, perhaps?

        1. Bay says:

          I feel her pain. Although mine is (mostly) under control at the moment, I have had long bouts of not being able to use my right hand or arm.

          You said you don’t like Minecraft, but I know that is a game that can be rerouted to only being very minimal mouse movement. I had a spell as a young teen when I managed to get it single-handed to my left side except for moving my head in-game. I think I just rerouted right and left click somewhere on the keyboard. But truthfully, that was ten years ago and I don’t fully remember how I managed it.

          In a long-term way, rather than a temporary solution which is what I personally needed at the time, have you looked into mobility friendly controllers and contraptions made specifically for left-side-only mobility individuals? For the switch, this appears to be compatible, and If PC gaming is on the table, something like this might be a functional way for her to game comfortably. Unfortunately, I wish I had more cheap or free options, I’m painfully aware of the annoying and consistent expense to just function like a ‘normal’ human being, but they might be worth a look if you haven’t seen them already.

          1. CrushU says:

            Hadn’t seen the Razer thing before, that might work. I’ll show it to her. Most gaming keypads I’ve seen before haven’t had the joystick, so mouse control was the main thing lacking. (She’s able to play Valheim, again with that MMO left-handed mouse, but she’s, uh, not great at the combat, ha.)

            Oh, yeah, I don’t like Minecraft, but she does. Different interests. :D

            The Xbox Adaptive Controller we’ve seen before; Basically every button is a port on the back that goes to Anything That Can Be A Switch, so you can put buttons anywhere you can reach/activate them. It’s pretty cool, very customizable, and also pretty daunting to try and figure out how you want to organize/arrange everything.

            1. ColeusRattus says:

              You could try TrackIR. It’s designed to translate head movement for sims, might work as a mouselook alternative.

          2. Mattias42 says:

            There’s a guy named Akaki Kuumeri on youtube that makes 3D printable attachments to game one-handed.

            https://www.youtube.com/c/AkakiKuumeri/featured

            He’s got files for making PS4, PS5, and XBOX controllers. And is currently working on what seems like a very cool Switch adapter, too.

            He also sells ’em ready made from an etsy store, if you don’t have a 3D printer yourself, and his prices seems quite reasonable. Bit more than the Razer Tartarus, but not by THAT much.

            Never tried ’em myself, for the record, but they seem very clever. They’re this… web of levers that wrap around the controller, so you can hit all buttons with one hand.

            All the links are in the ‘About’ section of his youtube page.

      2. mdqp says:

        Wait, we aren’t getting a painfully detailed retrospective on all the Harvest Moon games? I exclusively read writers that have penned at least 2 retrospectives tearing down sequels to great games, I guess this is where we part ways… XD

        Jokes aside, this was a fun read. I have moved to PC gaming almost exclusively for years now, but port rants are always fun, no matter what the platform, and I play almost all genres under the sun (although I might not want to read about all genres, for example I can’t figure out if a puzzle game is for me until I try it).

      3. Philadelphus says:

        Eh, if it makes you feel better, I found two typos in that short comment. (I’m so thankful for the edit window.) It happens. I point them out in the spirit of constructive criticism, and also if I can put a humorous spin on it.

        And yeah, given how well Mass Effect 2 went down, you probably shouldn’t try to write Mess Effect 2. (I kid, I kid! Do what you want to.)

      4. Blue Painted says:

        The correct number of proof-reads is “one more than you have just done” :-)

      5. Taellosse says:

        So, I guess the correct spelling of “dark-souls-esque” also escaped your proofing efforts? ;-P

        I’ll pile on to the stack of others’ reassurances – while I might lend extra attention when Shamus happened to cover a game I’d also played, our tastes only overlapped intermittently. I kept coming back for his sense of humor, his thoughtful analysis, and his periodic forays into crafting approachable and engaging explanations for fields of knowledge I understood poorly if at all.

        Succeeding as a professional columnist – which is essentially what Shamus did with this blog, albeit largely independent of an outside publisher – means that the specifics of your subject matter will end up mattering much less than developing your voice. Popular and interesting topics will bring people in, but what keeps them coming back is how you write about stuff.

    2. Lino says:

      Same here, actually. Most of my favourite Shamus content is either games I haven’t played (and don’t intend to) or games I don’t feel very strongly about. I don’t really like to read a lot of nitpicking about something I really like…

    3. tmtvl says:

      As someone who really likes D(ark|emon) Souls and doesn’t care at all about Borderlands/Half Life/shooters in general, I concur with the sentiment that having games in common isn’t worth worrying about.

      1. Erik says:

        Agree, but had to say that on first glance I read that as Dark Lemon Souls, and was wondering when it got ported to the Food Channel. :)

        1. Syal says:

          It’s definitely Pokemon Souls.

          Pokemon Black And White Tendency.

  3. Rob says:

    For the Subnautica controls problem, check out grav traps if you haven’t already. They’ll suck in nearby fish and let you grab them at your leisure. It’s a band-aid solution at best since you’ll have to survive long enough to build a scanner and find the blueprint fragments, but they saved my character’s life many times during the multi-year period during Early Access where the game would slow to a crawl while within interaction range of a fish (making catching fast fish like Peepers nearly impossible).

  4. Vernal_ancient says:

    The Fall of Animal Crossing sounds like a pretty fascinating article topic, even though I’ve only played Wild World (then again, the Mass Effect Retrospective was what got me coming here regularly, and I’ve never played any Mass Effect games)

    Harvest Moon rants sound pretty amusing too, I remember playing Magical Melodies on the GameCube. Fun game for a while, but I always got bored with it within a few in-game years. Same with Harvest Moon DS and Stardew Valley

    Really, all I manage to play these days is Stellaris, and then maybe once every week or two, so pretty much any game you cover will be outside my scope, but I’m down for just about anything

  5. King Marth says:

    Metroid Prime is the perfect example of the necessary difference in controls; I hear that Halo did much of this as well. Lock-on targeting shifts the game from the FPS standard challenge of “target this moving spot on the screen instantly with your mouse” to “pull the trigger with the right timing as you and the target move on predictable routes”. I haven’t heard of another console FPS which properly does lock-on with strafe, so I don’t play console FPS.
    This tactic would’ve worked just as well in Subnautica from a gameplay perspective, hold a trigger to lock onto interactables which shifts your left stick into strafe movement while you autotrack the target, but implementing this would require inventing this lock-on logic and marking all relevant game objects as lock-on-able.

    I hear Overwatch also does separate balancing for console vs PC. The autoturret is significantly better when you have joystick aiming.

  6. Abnaxis says:

    I just wanted to say, the images in the footnotes are great! XD

    Also, bringing up the dreaded Game Which Must Never Be Named in your second post is pretty ballsy…

    1. BlueHorus says:

      the dreaded Game Which Must Never Be Named

      Voldemort’s Day Out? ;-P

      Ah yes, the Souls That Lack Light. Hopefully this mention shall pass by unnoticed…

  7. Retsam says:

    I’ve got a Steam Controller and one of my favorite aspects of it is how well the remapping stuff works:

    1) it’s on it’s own layer separate from the games – the game doesn’t need to support it, and I don’t have to dig through their settings and deal with their home-grown button remapping UI (assuming they have one). And it can theoretically do much more complex stuff than most games, like changing thresholds and setting up multi-button combinations, though I rarely use it.

    2) Community configs. If I’m having a hard time with a control scheme (or sometimes even if I’m not), I pop open the menu and grab a community one. This is a big reason I’ve never actually used the advanced remapping stuff or… really done hardly any remapping myself.

    It’d be great if consoles had this level of customization.

    I think they’re starting to get there: I believe PS5 (and probably the new Xboxes) has its own controller remapping UI nowadays; but I think they’re mostly still thinking about it as an accessibility feature and not as just a way the consoles can make their games better. (No community support, might not be configurable per-game, etc)

    Meanwhile, my other controls-induced issue is that I travelled last month and finally decided to buy a tablet in lieu of hauling my laptop across the ocean. I got a fairly beefy Windows one, and overall, it’s been really nice. I see why tablets have been popular for the last decade or so. (Maybe next decade I’ll try this “smart watch” thing)

    But it’s been a little hit-and-miss on gaming… mostly because most Windows games haven’t put thought into tablet-based controls. It’s not surprising, I’m sure it’s a small section of the marketplace, but like I’ll play a game that seems perfect for tablets and it’s all great except that… oh yeah, I can’t move the camera at all. So close.

    1. CrushU says:

      I have a Steam controller and it never gets used because it feels so mushy to control with, compared to Keyboard and Mouse… The touchpads annoy me, I guess.

    2. Richard says:

      I want to like the Steam Controller, but it’s just too big for me somehow and I always end up feeling uncomfortable holding it.

      Perhaps I just have tiny hands, but I don’t have the problem with Xbox or Nintendo controllers.
      It feels like they scaled it for someone with much larger hands than an average human.

      1. tmtvl says:

        As someone with big hands (well, disproportionately long fingers actually) I really dig how well the SC fits my hands so you may very well be right. It’s my favourite ever controller (even more so than the classic PS1 Dual Shock controller) and I’m really bummed out that Valve had to discontinue them over patent(ly ridiculous) problems.

  8. Fizban says:

    Subnautica article with a Tamagotchi reference and possible future Harvest Moon rant? Delightful!

  9. Amstrad says:

    Ports to console aren’t the only culprits here, any number of frustrations regularly pop up when games are poorly ported from console to PC. Control issues are common, poorly implemented mouse acceleration for instance due to it being tuned for use with a control thumbstick. UI issues are another big one, where UIs designed to work well when viewed on a TV six+ feet away are now being rendered on a monitor only a foot or two away. All sort of graphical and performance issues are also common.

    I think one thing to keep in mind however is that these ports aren’t always handled ‘in house’. Often a publisher will bring on another studio to handle just the porting process. So while the original developer might have taken more care when handling the port of their project, the port-developer might be less careful.

  10. Lino says:

    Typolice:

    struggling with this dark souls esc hellscape

    Should be “Dark Souls-esque” (or “Dark-Souls-esque”? I don’t know, I’m not an English major, I’m just the Typolice).

    As for bad ports, I completely feel your pain. Except in my case it was all the horrible PC ports of the early 2000’s. In my country consoles were super expensive, so they were extremely rare when I was a kid.

    However, some of my favourite games were character-action titles which were all made with consoles in mind (Devil May Cry 3 and 4, a lot of the Spider-Man games, and a bunch if knock-offs I’ve forgotten by now).

    Not only did they have weird controls, and I do mean WEIRD controls. I mean, had those developers even HEARD of a mouse? Also, in what world is “Space Bar” NOT jump?!?! And I swear there were at least two games where “Escape” didn’t bring up the menu. In one of those cases the correct button was “Q”. In a game that used WASD for movement…

    But you know what the worst part was? For almost all of those games, the controls were not rebindable! Boy, am I goad that the PC Port Stone Age is over!

    Of course, it wasn’t all bad. E.g. when Devil May Cry 4 came out, I was extremely excited to play it. But the day before I could buy it, I broke my right arm, and the cast was such that I couldn’t really move the fingers of my right hand all that well.

    BUT! The game had rebindable controls, so I moved all of them to be closer to the WASD keys (which I operate with my left hand anyways). So my very first playthrough only used one arm! I even got an S-rank combo a couple of times. There were only one or two combos I couldn’t do, because they required too many simultaneous button presses.

    And as much as I love the recent Devil May Cry 5 with its incredible mouse support and built-for-PC PC port… Because of the mouse support, the game is actually less accessible now :D

    All that being said though, I much prefer the current setup where everything gets a proper PC version. It’s just unfortunate that the problem seems to have migrated from the PC to the Switch…

    1. Bubble181 says:

      You think that was bad, try to imagine what WASD games were like with non-rebindable buttons on people using different keyboard layouts. I use the Belgian AZERTY – it’s quite similar to QWERTY, mostly just accents and the like moving around for easier French typing, but…well, the A,W and M keys move around too. You try doing ANY WASD style movement game with the W and Z and Q and A buttons switched around, I’ll wait. Good luck.

      1. Moridin says:

        At least you can fairly easily change your keyboard layout. I’ve had to do that myself a few times because games refuse to accept that ~ isn’t to the left of 1-key on Finnish QWERTY.

      2. tmtvl says:

        Yes. I switched from an AZERTY to a QWERTY keyboard due to a lot of typing being terrible… and then I wound up switching my layout to Dvorak, so WASD bindings still don’t really work for me (which makes a certain minigame in Stardew Valley terrible).

  11. P_johnston says:

    Great job on the article it was fun to read (also A+ on the footnote game).

    As for games well I would routinely read this blog whether the game being discussed was one of my favorites or one I’d never heard of. The key from my perspective is passion. Whatever games you have thoughts, opinions, and things to talk about are the games I want to hear about. It will always be a better read when you write about something your interested in.

    P.S. I would actually love something about harvest moon. I’ve always enjoyed those type of games.

    1. CrushU says:

      I would also be down for Harvest Moon ranting.

      I did manage to get my oldest daughter interested in Stardew Valley, so… Progress!

    2. BlueHorus says:

      No interest in Harvest Moon, but I liked this article, so I’d read it. I wasn’t interested in Fallout 4 or Rage 2, either, but Shamus made them interesting enough…

    3. Syal says:

      I’ve bounced hard off watching people play them, but Harvest Moon sounds a lot more interesting when the host will be skipping to a significant event and explaining why it’s significant.

  12. Daimbert says:

    He refused to move from Google Chats. He wouldn’t text, Facebook Messenger, or even message on Steam. It was a running joke that for such a nerd, he could really be an old fart about tech.

    I can relate. I constantly quip that I’m remarkably technophobic for a software designer, as I still use a land line for my phone and in general prefer to deal with things in-person like bank tellers than with automated systems.

    Okay, so no PC, but the Switch still had lot of ports! It even had Skyrim, Subnautica, Minecraft, Bioshock, even Doom for some reason…

    One of the selling points of the Switch for me was that it had ports of the older D&D games, like Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment. Of course, then I ended up using it primarily for Ring Fit Adventure (which was ALSO a if not the primary selling point for the system) and didn’t want to keep switching the small cartridge out daily, and so never played any of those games …

    On a much lighter note: The other issue I talked about was how we had very few games in common. So I, by extension, have very few games in common with his audience…

    As others have commented, that probably won’t be that big a deal. Shamus liked FPSes and other games far more than I did, but I still enjoyed reading about them and in some cases his discussion got me to try the game out (mostly Saint’s Row).

  13. I encourage you to write about the games that interest you and not worry about catering to a pre-existing audience.

    If you write what you like, the right reader will like it.

    (Geesh, did I just wander into a Successories store with that sentence?)

  14. Bubble181 says:

    I’ll twentyfifth what others have said: don’t try to fixate on “this public liked X so I have to create content about X”.

    Shamus’ interests went very wide, and I don’t think everyone here is a music, coding, GUI, different coding, deep dive gaming, procedural content whizz.
    It’s been said before by many a commenter over the years, but I would’ve read an article of Shamus about the grass in his backyard growing if he could get a good gripe going about it. I mean, I started reading this place when Twenty-sided was actually about table top RPGs! Do you know how long it’s been since THAT’s been mentioned here?!

    Anyway, griping about bad ports, bad GUI choices, and a lack of checkpoints forcing DIAS gameplay and liking horror without the jump scares (like, say, Prey?)? There’s some family resemblance there, I’d say.

    Good luck, and we’ll be here to read soon enough. If I may offer one super tiny nitpick that’s not even a critique but rather a suggestion: this post comes in at just over 2000 words. While some of Shamus’ early posts were (much) longer, he eventually settled to around 1000 words in an article if I remember correctly. It might be worth splitting future updates of this size into slightly smaller chunks, both as it’ll allow for more frequent updates with the same amount of content, and because it’ll make keeping up easier for readers.

    1. The Nick says:

      It’s been said before by many a commenter over the years, but I would’ve read an article of Shamus about the grass in his backyard growing if he could get a good gripe going about it.

      https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=12038

  15. Vertette says:

    I agree that being able to separate a controller in two is amazing. It’s just a shame the Joy-Con’s quality vary so hard though. I’ve had two pairs start drifting on me and one that still works fine, though I use that pair less.

    On the subject, you’d think Subnautica would just take better advantage of the hardware. Most shooters on the Switch these days let you use gyro aim. It’s a pretty natural fit.

  16. Sardonic says:

    Loving these posts so far! Hope you keep writing, Bay. And sign me up for the Harvest Moon analysis and/or griping in particular.

  17. RCN says:

    Funnily enough, the case about how expensive PC gaming is is usually reverted outside the developed world.

    I played PC games most of my life. I’m not an outlier. Here in Brazil, if you know someone who was a gamer over a decade ago, either they played PC games or in Arcades. The ones who owned consoles were very much the minority of rich kids whose parents earned over 20 times the minimum wage. Today something called “Freefire” on smartphones reign king, but consoles remain a somewhat rarity.

    I won’t lie, piracy has a LOT to do with it, but often the games themselves ARE prohibitively expensive. Console games, that is. Steam and the digital market alleviated that a LOT, but support is still atrocious. I’ve only had direct access to consoles 3 times in my whole life: A Dreamcast me and my brother begged my grandmother for YEARS to finally get it in the Christmas of 2000 (actually, we wanted a Playstation, but the Dreamcast was actually cheaper for reasons too convoluted to digress here). A Playstation 2 my father got by mistake from shipping and which the shippers didn’t want to take responsibility for it. And a Wii my father bought with the extremely optimistic idea that it would help exercise (Cue the Wii meme of people playing the Wii standing vs the reality of people playing the Wii laying on the couch). None held my interest more than the family’s PC.

    I’m happy to find out he didn’t talk about you much to protect you. Shamus wasn’t exactly a conservative, but he was confrontation-averse enough that I feared it was the other way around and he didn’t talk about you in order to not upset part of his audience.

    I will tell you this, as someone who has a newborn daughter and who identified a lot with Shamus’ idiosyncrasies and his brand of mild neurodivergence, though you probably already know: what he didn’t do through words, he did through action. And doing his best to provide for you and protect you even at his expense and possibly even when he didn’t approve shows how much he loved you.

    Finally, that said, I don’t think he talked a lot about your physical disabilities, or maybe I missed it when he did it. If you’d care to explain exactly what is it you have difficulty with? If not, it is fine too.

    And don’t worry about trying to follow his legacy. I’m sure he’d be proud of you regardless of what you do or decide to not do with this blog of his. Don’t worry about the preferences of the audience. Your father rarely did. People came here to read his D&D content even without ever playing D&D. People came here to read his Mass Effect ramblings without ever playing Mass Effect. People came here to read his adventures through coding even with little to no experience with it (raises hands). Never played Subnautica or Deaths Door, but it was nonetheless interesting to read about your difficulties with them due to the lack of accessibility and sub-par porting (and, perhaps, you’re the reason why Shamus was one of the few champions of accessibility in games in this highly toxic medium).

    Best to you and your family from one of your father’s longtime fans, RCN from Brazil.

    1. Bay says:

      I’m happy to find out he didn’t talk about you much to protect you. Shamus wasn’t exactly a conservative, but he was confrontation-averse enough that I feared it was the other way around and he didn’t talk about you in order to not upset part of his audience.

      If I’m honest, it was a bit of both. He hated conflict violently and, for a guy that complained for a living, really preferred not to step on toes.

      Finally, that said, I don’t think he talked a lot about your physical disabilities, or maybe I missed it when he did it. If you’d care to explain exactly what is it you have difficulty with? If not, it is fine too.

      He didn’t mention it, no. I think my mom did on the last Diecast but I’m not sure what all she said. Someday I might make a full post about it; I don’t mind talking about it at all. But, for now I’ll put a short explanation here for anyone who is interested:

      I have a form of atypical juvenile/early-onset Rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid is an auto immune condition where your immune system attacks your joints, causing pain, swelling, and breaking them down over time. When it presents typically, you see it crop up in middle age, and on both sides of the body, in a symmetrical way left wrist-right wrist, left knee-right knee.

      Unfortunately, in my case, I have an early onset form, and it’s atypical. The joints on the left side of my body are untouched, and my right is so bad I am currently wheelchair dependent and have little use of my right hand. I do have medication now, and it’s working, but it’ll never go away, I can just manage symptoms. Maybe I’ll tell the full story about when it first cropped up sometime, might as well squeeze some content out of this BS.

      I really don’t mind questions or sharing, consider it fixing the problem on the factory side. If I answer questions here, to lots of people, it saves a lot of time answering questions one person at a time down the line, if not for me, someone else. It’s why disability-advocate content creators are so important in the first place, might as well bitch about video games and my dumb broken joints.

      1. RCN says:

        Thanks for sharing.

        My wife’s best friend has a birth defect that makes his right hand unusable and is a gamer so I have some experience with these issues.

        I also used to be conflict averse like Shamus and I understand how he must’ve felt: better to not stir the beehive and learn to live with it.

        But since my daughter was on the way I decided to put my feet down on whatever I felt were important issues, which included cutting off some longtime toxic friendships. It hurts, but I just ended up realizing I wouldn’t want my daughter growing up under their influence. I was giving up too much of myself and getting too little out of it. And it was my wife who pointed out to me how uncomfortable I felt around them.

      2. Rolaran says:

        I’m excited to hear what you have to say. I also play a lot of video games despite having what I call “janky meat chassis” issues. Not the same as yours, though I had a friend whose range of motion was quite limited. But I’m blind in one eye, and the one that isn’t fatigues very rapidly in certain lighting conditions. I’ve had games that smash-cut to bright white while a cutscene loads, that I had to stop playing because it’s like having a flashbang go off at the start of every cutscene. The more voices we have reminding people that not every person playing games is body-typical, the better devs will be about considering not just the needs a specific condition entails, but the full range of people that could enjoy their games given the proper accommodations.

  18. Ronan says:

    I’ll be there for the Harvest moon rant.

    Have you played the Rune Factory games ? I had fond memories of the first one so I bought RF5 this summer. Not the best game of its genre but it does have furries.

    I still don’t understand why we don’t see more buttons on the back of controllers. We have all theses fingers that are unused under the controller, and we’re expected to make eight different actions with the thumb and two with the index.

    1. Daimbert says:

      I still don’t understand why we don’t see more buttons on the back of controllers. We have all theses fingers that are unused under the controller, and we’re expected to make eight different actions with the thumb and two with the index.

      I recall playing a game where the buttons on the back of the controller were used more, and having that screw up my grip on the controller itself and so causing me some issues. I can’t recall the game, but that might be a reason why that doesn’t happen more often.

      1. Retsam says:

        Personally I love the Steam Controller grip buttons and almost always find using them is less awkward than the alternative.

        Like when I played Rocket League, the default bindings had both boost and jump as face buttons (e.g. A and B)… but that was terrible since you often want to jump while boosting. Moving boost to a grip button was a ton better.

    2. Bay says:

      Unfortunately, I was given Rune Factory for a birthday or Christmas by a relative who got confused and thought it was the game series I liked. I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been informed repeatedly it was basically Harvest Moon, when I had been expecting a Harvest Moon game. I inherited neurodivergence from both sides of the family and didn’t cope with things being different very well. Maybe if I had discovered it on my own I’d have liked it, I’m not sure.

  19. Octal says:

    I’d be pretty interested in hearing about Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing, honestly. I’ve never played either[1], but it’s fun to get glimpses into different kinds of games and see someone pick out what they consider most fun or annoying or amusingly buggy or otherwise interesting about a game and show it off.

    A lot of it is emotional slog, ‘what if I’m not enough like Dad’ and ‘what if I’m too much like Dad’.

    Well… I don’t think you have to be like him, or unlike him. You have some things in common with him, and you’re a different person with your own voice and opinions. I don’t think anyone’s expecting a “new Shamus”, but there’s nothing wrong with you picking up the torch if and when you want to.

    [1]Just as I’ve never played the vast majority of games Shamus wrote about.

  20. Dreadjaws says:

    I haven’t played Subnautica yet (I have Talassophobia, which is one reason I’d find this game absolutely terrifying), but I’ve read it’s a common issue. The craziest part is that the one console that could have solved this is the Switch, by allowing you to use the gyro controls to aim. I don’t understand why don’t they add this option for every first person game in the system. Every single one of them would be severely improved by it.

    It has come to the point where if I read a first person game on the Switch doesn’t have gyro controls I won’t buy it, even if they don’t have to contend with the extraneous control options Subnautica has.

    1. Retsam says:

      I don’t understand why don’t they add this option for every first person game in the system. Every single one of them would be severely improved by it.

      To give the boring answer, because it probably requires non-trivial effort for a port that’s probably low-budget (and often low revenue). I imagine gyro itself isn’t that hard – I suspect it’s basically equivalent to another joystick, but just adding new configuration options/menus to the port is probably a non-trivial task by porting standards.

      Plus, while the basics of gyro may be simple, I wouldn’t be surprised there’s some extra QA surprises like “the user can turn their camera faster with gyro which affects how things are rendered”.

      1. Dreadjaws says:

        I don’t know, Switch ports tend to sell very well, unless they’re very, very bad. A lot of games that tend to be forgotten on PC get a second life with a Switch release, due to the convenience of having the game on the go, better controls than mobile and without having to deal with something as cumbersome as a laptop for outside gaming.

        I’m sure it’s not trivial, but it really can’t be that hard for this game either, particularly considering that a) the game has already many ports, so they obviously know their way around this stuff and b) the game was originally on PC and mouse controls already can turn a camera ridiculously fast too.

        1. Retsam says:

          I don’t know that Switch ports do sell that well: I got the impression that, due to the hardware limitations, the ports are often kind of bad. Like Subnautica didn’t perform that well on my PC which is way more powerful than a Switch.

          They have a reputation for selling well, but non-Nintendo companies don’t regularly publish sales figures (especially not bad ones), and I think that reputation mostly came from the early days when there were few titles available: the competition has increased since then, but the hardware gap has only gotten worse.

          1. Dreadjaws says:

            Every review or user opinion I’ve seen on Subnautica compliments the port on performing well, so there’s that. And most ports on Switch are from either older games or indie games with low graphics needs, so they really have no reason to run poorly.

            In any case, again, portability is such a major advantage that most Switch players don’t care about a few small issues. It’s different when a port is really bad, like the Ark port, which was famously a disaster, but otherwise they seem to do very well.

  21. RamblePak64 says:

    One of the reasons I loved reaching out to your dad to work on things was because of the difference in our background. I was a Super Nintendo child of the 90’s that cut his teeth on Final Fantasy, Super Metroid, and Street Fighter, all while he was playing the earliest PC immersive sims, roleplaying games, and this brand new game called Doom. Yet I loved his insight and found conversations incredibly valuable because of that difference in background and perspective.

    To summarize, most of us weren’t here specifically for what your old man played so much as what he had to say, and the same is true here. I was actually hoping you’d have something good to say about Death’s Door! I liked that game so much I went for the “Umbrella Only” achievement, which was the worst weapon in the game! (Well, weakest) But your perspective is a very important one. I decided to look at that controller diagram, wondering if “island information” really needed to be on a shoulder button instead of a face button. Even without having any medical condition to interfere with my ability to use a controller, it’s certainly true that many games seem to expect some crazy claw grip in order to play optimally. I’m fortunate enough that I’ve generally “gotten used to it”, even if, say, a third-person action game without lock-on and with a bad camera should be using triggers for attack and dodge functions rather than face buttons. It’s something I can shrug off. It’s a new experience to read someone that can’t just shrug it off.

    What I’m really curious about is that we only have two types of common controller: the PlayStation style, where the thumb sticks are on-level with each other but towards the controller center, and the Xbox/Nintendo style, where the thumb sticks are off-set. It makes me wonder if you could have a good controller where you took the Xbox/Nintendo style, but swapped the right stick and face buttons in placement. Or, perhaps, if the Joy-Cons could be made more modular so you could change things around to fit your needs. I know there’s a number of third party options for specialized controllers, but tend to be more expensive.

    So this post certainly got me thinking and wondering.

    1. Syal says:

      Maybe replace the camera stick with a track ball under the meat of the hand so you could roll it without lifting your thumb off the buttons. Or split it up and put it on the back near your ring fingers or pinkies.

  22. Jimmy says:

    That’s two articles I have read!
    I also enjoyed this one.
    I haven’t played either of the games you complained about but I enjoy your perspective on things nonetheless.

  23. jessi74 says:

    I have enjoyed reading the last two articles. A lot of the voice, wit, and variety that I loved about Shamus is coming through. I’m pretty sure I would try an article on just about any topic that he would write about, and would be happy to extend the same to you!

    I’m so glad that I get to keep reading what is my favorite blog on the internet. I’ve been reading since DMotR, and this is the first time I’ve ever commented because I love the work.

  24. Syal says:

    Man, port issues are the worst. I’m still bitter about my Nintendo 64 port of The Typing Of The Dead.

    This is part of what makes turn-based RPGs the best games possible.

  25. tmtvl says:

    Oh man, Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons, haven’t played that in years. Not quite my favourite Super Famicom game, but I can’t think of one which has a nicer atmosphere.

  26. Tuck says:

    I stopped checking the site every day after your dad passed, because his passing filled me with a sadness I couldn’t put into words. Popped back in randomly to see a number of new posts, and your writing immediately grabbed me. I’ll be checking regularly again to hear what YOU have to say. :)

  27. Makot says:

    Out of all the games Shamus played I’ve only played Mass Effect, but it never detracted anything from my enjoyment of the read, and judging from the comments above am far from being alone in that – good article shows it merits whether the reader knows topic firsthand or not.

    So yeah, presentation of porting problems, especially in view of “human anatomy vs controller/mapping desing” is an interesting topic, even for someone who never played on a consol.

    And as i’ve mentioned before, it does look like we’ll be getting more good content :)

  28. Mephane says:

    The maps can be sized from medium to huge and checkpoints before boss battles only exist for the four main fight in the game. This leaves the player having to fight dozens of pre-battle enemies every time they fight a boss, sometimes without healing stations in between.

    This alone would be a dealbreaker and immediate reason for me to refund a game (or, if known in advance, to not buy it in the first place). I have deep loathing for checkpoint style save systems in general, but if a game designer insists on using one, they better be copious and especially in front of every difficult encounter, platforming section, jumping puzzle etc.

    Nope, this is just a Switch problem. Turns out, a lot of difficulty scaling gets thrown off when you switch to a Nintendo controller. Same game, same conditions, same amount of healing points, and same bosses. It’s just woefully harder to aim with the switch controllers so you waste a few precious milliseconds every time you attack, making you a sitting duck.

    It seems few game developers put in the effort to actually properly rebalance their game when porting to a different platform. The only one that specifically comes to mind is Vermintide 2 by Fatshark, which afaik has a lower enemy density on consoles with different hitpoint values.

  29. Skyy-High says:

    “Don’t worry, we still complain here, that’s not going anywhere.”

    Between this line and basically the entirety of the birthday post, I’m literally crying over here. It feels so similar, but also new. Bay, I don’t know you, and I didn’t know your dad except from what he put online, but goddamn I gotta believe he’d be proud.

  30. Mistwraithe says:

    I’m running late but nice article. You’ve definitely inherited some of Shamus’s sense of humour :-).

  31. PPX14 says:

    Good lord, just added up you being 24, talking about moving out at 18, and somehow then linking that to buying a Switch when your PC fell apart and you having played mainly Switch games. The Switch came out almost 6 years ago! Someone can have a 6-year gaming history comprised of the Switch?! I’m not sure how that compares with my realising that my favourite game (Jedi Knight 2) is now 20 years old and I last played it and other classics that I’ve wanted to revisit, over 15 years ago.

    As someone who now has a fair few articles to catch up on since August, the transition to talking less about such PC games (the KotORs and Deus Ex’s and Thiefs and Jedi Knights, and of course the Mass Effect masterpiece) and more about Sims and AC and such seems like it would be a natural transition really, an evolution of sorts, bridged by the Final Fantasy content. I’ve had the golden-age-of-PC content and now, even if I’m not a consumer of the games, we have been in a golden age of life-sims for the last decade or so I believe, and I happen to be exposed to it via my other half. So it is a fitting change in topics. In fact life sims almost seem to take that space that immersive sims held – the high-engagement afficionado space, the gamest of games :P

    Edit: maybe I should actually read the article before talking about life sims exclusively because you mentioned Sims and AC. Subnautica and that bird one, ooh! This is what I like about this website and indeed like from online gaming article content – an interesting array of things to read people’s opinions of.

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