Games with terrible control schemes.

[mainpatr]

I am currently playing Medal of Honor:Heroes on PSP and the default controls stink. Hit Select to jump?!?!?!?!? Tap L to melee,hold L to aim down sights. Speaking of Medal of Honor, MOH:Vanguard on WII crammed way too many controls into flicking the Nunchuck. Any other games with baffling default\choosable control schemes?

[vnisanian2001]

In Kamen Rider Black for the Disk System, you press Up to Kick. Can you think of anything dumber than that?

[kingmike]

We've all heard about Batman Forever. THERE'S FOUR BUTTONS ON THE FRONT OF THE CONTROLLER BUT THAT'S NOT ENOUGH TO WORK WITH!

I'm sure I've played worse but I'm having a hard time thinking at the moment.

[toei]

The GTA-ish games based on the Godfather used the right joystick for physical fights. Not only are the damn controls spread out and over-complicated, which is common enough now, but what satisfaction is there in punching or kicking by fiddling with some fragile out-of-the-way little joystick to fight? Front buttons, goddamit.

[mainpatr]

Dec 25, 2017 20:31:49 GMT -5 toei said:

The GTA-ish games based on the Godfather used the right joystick for physical fights. Not only are the damn controls spread out and over-complicated, which is common enough now, but what satisfaction is there in punching or kicking by fiddling with some fragile out-of-the-way little joystick to fight? Front buttons, goddamit.

There also was Namco's Death by Degrees and a bunch of other right analog stick based melee action games.

[Weasel]

The Godfather is one of the few games I can say, definitively, that the shoehorned-in Wii motion controls are objectively better than the gamepad controls. Even if it makes melee far more complicated than it needs to be (especially when a mark's weakness is something like table slams).

[magic89]

-Midtown Madness 1 are good game but car handling are...strange
if you steer car too much left or right you always roll over Why? i dont know
but i know in sequel its been fixed thank god.

-Robocop 2 & Darkman for NES
Both games made on same engine by Ocean
and controls are very slipery and hard to jump
this can be problematic because each stage had time limit and YOU CANT! backtrack to place you been before.

[ReyVGM]

I don't remember the details, but Whirlo (SNES) and Starfy (GBA) have strange controls. They are platformers, but the platforming is made a lot more difficult by the obtuse way you are forced to jump.

[elektrolurch]

Try arcade games on 8bit home computers without joystick. Very,very baffling coming from todays keyboard layouts.

[Null0x00]

Tetris on the Sharp X68000. Pressing either action button immediately drops the current tetrominos, while pressing down on the joystick handles rotating them. It basically makes what would otherwise be a standard version of Tetris almost impossible to play properly.

[blackdrazon]

I submit Mega Man Xtreme, where dash is either Down+Jump (fine, and in line with Classic Mega Man, but not as nice as a single button press), or... Start? It may not be as bad as "Select to jump" from the OP (yikes, btw), but bear in mind that Start on the GBC is not only slim and kind of hard to press in a hurry, but it's far away, which means it's hard to dash without losing your buster charge!

It can be even worse on certain later systems. Try it on the original GBA, where Start is on the left, meaning that if you want to move faster with Dash, you have to stop moving on the D-Pad! Or the GBA Micro, where Start is on the bottom! Or how about on the Virtual Console using the old-style 3DS' weird membrane Start button, which in my experience sometimes doesn't register a button press even if I'm not in the middle of a boss battle!

[Bumpyroad]

If you want to power-punch enemies in Toxic Crusaders(NES), you better get used to the 'Select' button there.

[kaoru]

Both Chocobo Tales on the DS and Godzilla Unleashed are touch/motion controls only, and their impresice nature of the former and slowness of the later totally ruin those games.

Monster Hunter also has a history of wonky controlling thanks to handhelds not having enough buttons for such a game. And the first one on PS2 is one of those mentioned "tilt the right stick to attack" games.

[JoeQ]

The Soulsborne games have mostly excellent controls... except when it comes to jumping. Running, rolling and jumping are all mapped to the B button and it works about as well as you'd expect. Platforming is a huge pain, though thankfully mosty optional. DS2 offers alternate controls that are even worse, yet you're pretty much forced to use them because for some bizarre reason using the 'stick-jump' makes you jump farther.

[ZenithianHero]

Playing on a 3 button Genesis controller for Street Fighter 2 means hitting START to change punches and kicks.

==============

Metal Slug Anthology on Wii had some crazy control schemes if you only own a Wii remote. You have to use a Gamecube controller. They didn't include classic controller in the Western release because the didn't know the controllers could be used for standard games vs Virtual Console.

Let me grab the manual for a second...

"Arcade Config"
Move your character by tilting the wii remote (upright) to simulate a joystick.
Grenades is flicking the nunchuk.
Use the nunchuk control stick to change weapon and alt attack.
C is jump and Z to fire.

Wii remote only:
dpad to move
grenade is flicking the controller.
A button is change weapons
B (which this point isn't fun to press) alt attack.
1 button fire and 2 to jump.

Tilt Wii control only:
tilt the controller in horizontal position to move.
up on dpad is jump
left is change weapon
A alt attack
grenade is 1 and fire is 2

Nunchuck only:
A button on wii remote is change weapon
B is to alt attack
Move nunchuk's control stick
jump is C
Fire is Z
Grenade is flick nunchuk

And finally perhaps the most reasonable config for Wii remote:
Nunchuk is for movement, C is change weapon. Z is alt attack.
Grenade is flicking the wii remote
A button to jump
B is to fire.