I agree heartily with this. I hate the fact that some of my games will not work with my perfectly fine Saitek P990, but would "just work" if I invested up to $60 in an Xbox controller. However, that doesn't mean that using the WASD controls is crippling. Most PC gamers are going to prefer that over a gamepad anyway and the game developers know this, hence why they don't bother with robust gamepad support beyond the insanely easy to implement Xbox controller support. It's not really a case of developers going out of their way to push the Xbox controller, it's just that much easier to include Xbox controller support with the game since that support is exactly the same on both the Xbox and the PC. It would actually be harder and take more effort to strip that out and add back in generic gamepad support for a PC version of a game.

Look up the mouselook mod that changes those awkward controls ....

wasd isn't too bad, but when they insist on putting several other functions nearby that you need to hit with that hand, that's an issue.

Yeah, gotta agree with that as well. If they try to jam too many functions into the key "block" surrounding WASD, then things might get a little hand-crampy. Of course, that's when my 7 button mouse comes in real handy. Move the reload, grenade toss, maybe even the general action button over there and things balance out nicely. Personally, I have very few games that require that kind of customization, most seem to stick with the default WASD plus R for reload and F for action; any additional keyboard action buttons are not the kind that require quick, reflexive key punches to use, like I for inventory or M for map.

I'm probably dating myself a bit, but WASD is for the left player and the regular up, down, left and right are for the right player with the control and alt on the left hand side for the purposes of strafing and firing.

But, as I said, WASD isn't really that big a deal.

Kalypso games, just about all of them. Most particularly Constructor, M.U.D TV, and Dungeons. Those UI's were terrible. Constructor was an emerging game, UI design for games was in its infancy, the other 2 have no such excuse.
Oh dear, I bought Darksiders, I'm playing it after AC:Brotherhood. Any tips for making it less painful?

About the only thing I could consider game-ruining would be mouse aim that is completely screwed up and no alternative control method. I can't recall that ever happening though.

I'm not real sensitive to things like this.

Chrome - The way your character seemed to be walking on a perpetual oil slick didn't help at all. Especially when you're tasked with sneaking up on a sniper behind various thin trees. I'm not going to bother with this one because of that.

Not exactly destroyed, but these deserve a mention for their clunkiness:

Penumbra Overture - Needed to really rethink the combat. What is an impressive means of control in non-combat situations quickly becomes clunky as hell.

Overseer, Under A Killing Moon & The Pandora Directive - all have really awkward controls.

Commandos 3 - Controls aren't rebindable. Which would not have been so bad had they made more standardised choices for the defaults.

Arx Fatalis - Really needs better spell casting (see: The Void). Smoother mouse look would have helped.

Alien vs Predator 2010 - Trying to fit all those controls onto a controller hasn't helped this game. Generally designed around controllers.

Dreamfall - Pretty awful controls you can't do much about. Designed for a controller again.

Dead Space - Yeah, we all know about how clunky this one is.

MDK - They got so much right. But the controls ain't in that category.

DMC4, with a keyboard.

*remembers*


AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I never really understand why people complain about this -- I'm playing through them now and the controls are fine. Movement is through typical WASD. Interacting with objects involves left mouse button. Melee combat involves holding the button and swinging in different directions. Ranged and spell combat is easier/standard ARPG stuff. Inventory is just a matter of moving through the lists either up/down or left/right and mouse/up to equip or mouse/down to drop. I mean, yes, it takes maybe ten minutes to tinker around with it but after that it is fairly intuitive.

In G1 it is action/left mouse and movement up. G2 dispensed with the need to use movement in conjunction with the action/mouse so it is even easier. I'm really not seeing the awkwardness. Note that you have to choose the alternate control scheme and rebind the keys but... I assume checking out the keybindings is standard practice for most gamers these days. Well, PC gamers. I know I do it before I start any game.

A Farewell to Dragons:

The only game I've ever given up on playing, but wanted to play. The controls were just so awful. I could not believe it.

Although it didn't completely ruin the game at the time, trying to play Ultima VI again can be a real chore. I really hate the interface, it's in that odd position between U5 (good keyboard interface) and U7 (good mouse interface).

And I suppose if you're going to mention System Shock, then you should probably mention Ultima Underworld too, but since I'm replaying UW2 without feeling too bad about the interface I'd dispute that a bit.

Get a gamepad.

I'm so sorry.

In the instance of the Undergarden they mapped the controls to the arrow keys and not WASD. You can't remap either.

A bit uncomfortable playing through an entire game with your left arm stretched across the front of you to reach the arrow keys while your right arm is on the mouse.