Gimmick Controls in Games

[Moonface]

I feel like calling these gimmick controls might be the wrong term, but I can't think of what else it would be called.

Anyway, after making a post last night talking about the inclusion of mouse controls in the new Star Fox game, I woke up today thinking about other games that have used a gimmick of a controller in some way and which ones did it well and which did it poorly.


Funnily enough, the first game that comes to my mind for this is Rayman Raving Rabbids. Originally it was made for the Wii and heavily utilized its motion controller gimmick, and while I haven't played that version to comment on if it was good or bad, what I did play was the PS2 port of the game. If you somehow don't know, the PS2 doesn't have motion controls, nor did Xbox 360 or PC, the other platforms the game was ported to. This meant that any minigame which used motion controls had to be changed to now use either button inputs or the analogue sticks, and for the most part it was actually okay, except for the very first minigame which still lives in my head rent free to this day.

That page claims the PS2 version uses the L2 and R2 buttons. I call bullshit because I know for a fact when I played that level it required moving the analogue sticks up and down in alternating fashion (so move one up and one down, then reverse) as quickly as you can, and it was absolutely awful. It was impossible for me to sync moving both sticks in alternate directions as fast as possible so Rayman would just struggle to move at all, and the only way I managed to beat this level was to ask my dad to take control of one stick, I took the other, and we both just wiggled them up and down as fast as we could with no care for timing and it managed to work. If there was an option to use L2 and R2 I wish I had known about it, because fuck me what an example of how horrible gimmick controls can be for a game when porting it to platforms without the same gimmicks. x.x

[Mr EliteL]

*raises hand* Ah, I played RRR on Wii. Yes I used the motion controls. Although the more I don't be reminded of the game, the better. OK I don't think it was terrible, I suppose it was tolerable at best using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk for the gameplay. But holy crap reading that minigame and what you described, F that. I just tried to alternate the analog sticks on my PS5 (three gen controllers off but doesn't matter), and yeah I can see that being hard/messing up. Sometimes I ended up turning one of the sticks instead of moving up and down.

Can't think of any other examples from any other as of yet.

[Maniakkid25]

The term you are looking for is "Waggle", btw. Yes, it was coined by the Wii's motion controls. No, it does not exclusively apply to the Wii's motion controls.

On thinking about this topic, I do actually have an example: Metal Gear Solid 3 on PS2. So, for those that have never touched a PS2, official controllers (and some third party) have a neat feature: pressure-sensitive digital buttons. See, the D-Pad and face buttons can have different functions depending on how hard you press it. Normally, this never matters, unless you are playing a game like Metal Gear Solid 3, that decided to actually use it.

See, Metal Gear Solid 3 lets you sneak up behind enemies and grapple them, at which point you can do one of two things: interrogate them for information, or kill them. Note that interrogating for information is often necessary for player progression, such as getting door codes. Kojima, the genius that he is, decided to map these two very contradictory commands to the same button, and made it pressure sensitive. A light press will interrogate the guard (note: you have to HOLD THE BUTTON to get them to continue to talk!), and a hard press kills them. You can already see the problem, can't you? Yeah, lots of dead people because you got too excited, and pressed the button harder than the game liked. I can distinctly remember this being INTENSELY FRUSTRATING! I tend to press hard in stressful situations, so you can imagine the body count I left behind just trying to progess!