So. I have 2 I hate.
I had this old gamesube one for the switch. It was a wired one by powerA. Buttons would get jammed, accidentally broke the stick by leaving it in a bad position overnight (my bad) the cover of the cstick randomly slid off (had to glue it) and the while thing was hollow.
Also, I have a keapster explorer and the dpad is awful. Sometimes it jams to the left but its just a plain bad dpad, no physical feedback at all
Hot take: Nintendo Switch Joycons. They’re a nice and clever concept but in reality they’re bad.
Too small even for casual games. The Wiimote was much better at it.
Very expensive at 80 € per set. Yes, you get two of them but in most games outside of Mario Kart you also need both. And even then they’re fine at best.
4 out of 4 of my controllers got stick drift. Nintendo had to be sued into repairing them.
On the other hand, you can play with your hands in completely different locations which is nice for being lazy on a couch.
My reasonably sized, more ergonomic, multi-system wireless controller with hall effect sticks does that for a little more than half the price.
Which one? I’d love a controller that works for PC that I can split apart like joycons
It’s a conventional GameSir controller that has a Switch mode among others. The split design of the Joycons rarely plays out, most of the time it makes the controllers unnecessarily complex and thus expensive IMHO.
Sooo you can’t play with your hands in different positions like you said?
You mean both hands have to grip one controller opposed to having a Joycon in each hand? That split-design can be an advantage, but IMHO doesn’t cancel out the shortcomings of the Joycons. I find them still too small and not grippy at all.
Here’s the comment chain as a reminder.
OP:
On the other hand, you can play with your hands in completely different locations which is nice for being lazy on a couch.
You literally replied:
My reasonably sized, more ergonomic, multi-system wireless controller with hall effect sticks does that for a little more than half the price.
So can you play with your hands in completely different locations with your “conventional GameSir controller” or not?
If not, why did you say that you could?
Single joycon is barely usable, but the Wiimote was terrible for sideways holding.
Its shape was clearly never intended for it, and the d-pad was absolutely awful, one of the worst I’ve used.
The d-pad worked as buttons (which was how most games used it, in vertical mode), but for movement it was very stiff and almost impossible to get diagonals. For a console that featured virtual console heavily and needed a lot of classic controls, that was very bad design.
I hate the Joycons so much. The clicky buttons are terrible, the split dpad sucks for games that use it for movement, the sticks aren’t great either for precision (ignoring the drift issues), and I find them painful to hold.
I think they are actually really good at very specific things, the clicky buttons are great for ace attorney and tetris
Fuck joycons
Probably that first NES controller… Those corners were hell on the palms.
Those were terrible!
Nowadays for me it’s anything that doesnt have “horns” to grip or not enough space between them.
I stil main 360 controllers though i find them a tad too small/cramped
This drives me nuts on the Switch on handheld. The Joycons have no natural “grip”, so it’s hand cramp city unless you invest in a grip case. Was it so hard to give the Joycons an ergonomic shape?
Yes, yes it was so hard. How else would they sell their dumb grips
Back in the early 90s, here in the UK, a company called Cheetah produced licensed joysticks based on Batman, Terminator, Alien³ and The Simpsons. They looked great but they were terrible to use, especially the Alien³ model which I really liked but was incredibly uncomfortable. I never bought one, just tried then on the shops, awful things.
There were some cheap ass weird ones in North America too. I remember for Christmas we’d ask for a Joycon or something like that, and we’d get “the Joycron,” which looked nothing like a controller, had a weird shape, felt like shit and was cheap as hell. The old man would be like, arrrr we saw it at the BiWay and it was 99 cents, why do you need the one thats $60? Then he would play it, and sure enough, by February you had the real one.
Switch controller hands down— the drift is annoying, but the worst is when half your controller just disconnects
The very worst controller I’ve ever used was this no-name joystick in the 90s. You had to grip like a claw, which looked kind of cool and futuristic but was awful in use. The base was tiny and it had these suction cups that didn’t work at all.
But the very very worst thing about it, was that the input was binary! It was either on or off, no gradual movements or anything. Basically it was an oversized d-pad.I borrowed it from a friend so I could try Rebel Assault, which looked so awesome what with CD-ROMs being a new thing. But that joystick ruined the experience so much! Try flying a ship through a canyon when all you can do is hard turns in 8 different directions. I constantly crashed within the first 10 seconds of the game and kept thinking it was my fault for being a crap player.
I still hate that monstrosity with every fiber of my being.Flashbacks! This reminds me of my first Gravis Gamepad (IIRC). Was a disappointing joystick, even compared to old Intellivision controllers.
It was okay with fighting games, and I do recall a nineties PC giant robot fighting game (One Must Fall maybe?)
Still, my first joystick that I actually loved and made a game much better was an old CH Products flightstick. Early flightstick, so it only added a throttle to the base, so no rudder control.
I remember playing Comanche Maximum Overkill with that stick and just popping in and out of canyons. Also Earthsiege and Strike Force Centauri. I ended up with a Saitek Flightstick, and it was even better (Independence War is a fond memory) but the difference was not as revolutionary as going from a regular joystick to that first CH Products flightstick.
Those roll-up dance mats from the old ps2 dance dance revolution style games. They were unreliable as all hell.
We ended up nailing them down to plywood. They registered waaaaay better but wore out 3x as fast.
Not a bad idea if you have the space tbh
Roll up controller. Sounds like an inevitable mess
These guys (derogatory)
That’s a carpet with a taped on fire hazard
Its also, apparently, a viable method of beating dark souls
Lmao
Is there anything that isn’t a viable method for beating Dark Souls?
I haven’t yet seen dark souls beaten purely by cosmic ray bitflips but I’m sure someone is busy with that
The U-Force
Got one for $10 at a yardsale as a kid and that $10 was 200% too much, they should have given me $10 to take it off their hands and I still would have dumped it in a dumpster afterwards.
To kid you:
My condolences
I remember trying a Terminator joystick at a friend’s house on his C64. That was a very bad controller.
Official Microsoft controllers were absolute peak with the Xbox 360…
…but modern Microsoft Xbox controllers have absolute dogshit build quality. Just the worst, constantly breaking for no reason. I’m just done with Xbox controllers because old DualShock 4’s are cheap and quality.
Back in the day, I bought the official Xbox360 steering wheel. It made me laugh because it was called wireless. It was only wireless between itself and the Xbox. It still needed a power brick to drive the motor and another wire to connect it to the pedals.
When I sold it, I almost made my money back because it was in high demand. MS had replaced it with that awful U shaped steering wheel that you held in the air like a Wii controller. It used sensors to tell when it was tilted. I never used one but the reviews weren’t favourable as I remember.
Aside from broken controllers, which I don’t think can reasonably count, the Atari 2600 joystick.
One button, a lot of resistance to push on the stick.
After that, an elderly Logitech gamepad from the 1990s that had a D-pad that rolled diagonal way too easily. IIRC it had a screw-in mini-joystick that could attach to the center of the D-pad. Don’t remember the model. White case, attached directly to a joystick/MIDI port.
After that, I think the NES controller. I have no idea why people like those or actually buy recreations. Yes, nostalgia, but the ergonomics on it were terrible. Hard buttons, sharper corners on the D-pad than is the norm today, and a squared-off controller made the thing downright uncomfortable to use for long periods of time.
Ironically, the Atari -like joystick from the 2000’s from Walmart for $15 that plugs directly into your TV with games stored in the joystick is a better joysticks than the original 2600 joysticks.
However, I would contend that the Intellivision controller was worse.
I had a Colecovision (and Vic 20), and although I will say that was better than the 2600 and Intellivision joystick, I have to emphasize to all these youngsters complaining about the original NES controllers that those were still an improvement over previous default joysticks.
Man this thread is making me mad so I’mma head out
Xbox Series X/S.
It isn’t even particularly bad by itself, but compared to its predesessors (Xbox One and Xbox 360) the Xbox Series X/S gamepad is a clear step back when it comest to build quality (just try pressing the D-Pad buttons without thinking “this is cheaply made”), and that comparison is what makes me hate it.
And what adds insult to injury is that the quite expensive Elite version of the controller is just as cheaply built as the regular model…
Oh lol. For the price of an elite you could get several 8bitdos or a used switch lol. 179 for a non custom controller is insane
I think the elite offers a lot for that price. Swappable sticks and back paddles, trigger stops, multiple profiles, adjustable tension, etc. It’s basically an OEM “custom” controller.
That being said, I like other controllers better than my elite.
Any controller using Bluetooth.
I like wired too but that’s a pretty big range lol
I never seem to get over 6 feet. 😆
You know what I meant.
Lots of controllers are BT. From random shit to some really good ones
The original Xbox controller for the North American release. I swear it was made for Paul Bunyan it was fucking massive.
I agree. That thing was HUGE. I have tiny hands too, and always struggled with it.
I also didn’t really like the N64 controller, it was kind of a weird size too, and it just had a weird layout.
Every madcatz controller I’ve used has been terrible. Xbox, Dreamcast, and PSone. Just terrible.
Classic madcatz