Game Controllers and You
This is kinda silly to point out but here we are, I mean, yes a game will be best played using the controller it was designed around. This isn't a thing to dwell on, but I had some notes.
This weekend I saw an ad for preorders of the new Fable game. Having played the first two eons ago I figured I should give the first game a run through to jog my memory. I's on gamepass so it was pretty simple to download and get running. We have the Series X black tower xbox with a nice fancy wireless lime green controller.
But not fifteen minutes into the game I started to notice something was slightly off about how buttons worked. Aside from the upscaled/updated graphics of the game, there were some abilities I remember being much simpler to use. The first time I played it was in 2005 on my husband's roommate's original Xbox. I was in college at the time and would go over and play after work or between classes.
I figured I was just really bad at the game now because I wasn't used to it anymore and forgot most of what was happening. But as I ran around I remember being able to cast spells while holding down certain buttons. So I did a quick check of the layout of the original xbox controller and what do I find: Two rows of three buttons.
That white and black button in the top are now being handled by the L1/R1 bumpers on the modern Xbox controller, meaning to get to the abilities I have to stretch my index fingers in a wonky way to reach them. The original controller only has rear triggers, no bumpers at all. The action buttons are closer together and easier to reach with just your thumb, compared that to a modern controller with the typical "+" layout.
I can play the game just fine with the modern controller, but certain actions were easier to perform using the original. Same goes for other games where the controller had a more custom layout. The biggest examples I can think of are anything meant for the Nintendo 64 being played on a modern style controller. The Dreamcast doesn't have bumpers either, just two triggers and only one joystick. If you grew up playing a game with a certain muscle memory tied to the gameplay using a different controller will throw you off.
Ever tried to play a Smash Brothers Melee or newer game with a non Gamecube controller? It's like you've never played the game before. My sons will use the individual Switch joycons with their microscopic buttons while I'm scrambling to tell the difference between X,Y,A,B when they are all the same shape and size.
In high school I could beat the Lion King game on the Sega Genesis in less than 20 minutes. Years later when I tried to play it using a modern controller, I would game over halfway through the adult Simba area because I couldn't throw the leopards without all three action buttons being in a row. The Genesis D pad also had the 360 degree range of motion that a normal D pad makes difficult. You had to swoop your thumb from front to back hitting the in between inputs in order to throw and roar and roll properly. Super difficult to do on a regular d-pad.
Now, if I had never played these games before with their custom controllers I could probably get over it. I mean, I figured out how to get through Fable after an hour or two of retraining my thumbs to not accidentally open the emote menus. But it's just like if you are trying to play a PC game on your Steam Deck that wasn't designed for controller input. It works, but it's just not the same.