Alt-Controls.com

Grand Theft Auto 4 Disappoints With Controls

Supported controls:
-Default
-Southpaw (sniping only)

Well GTA4 is out and many of you have purchased it already. I hope you are enjoying your game. If you liked the six previous iterations of GTA, then you will more than likely enjoy this one. With it’s next-gen overhaul, GTA4 does a much better job of pulling you into the story with it’s cinematic presentations, great voice acting, and believable characters. This game seems to be worth much of the praise it has received so far.

The addition of the multiplayer modes really adds value to the purchase of GTA. I’m sure that many will stick to single player only. I tried to get some multiplayer going last night but couldn’t seem to find a match, I suppose being only hours old everyone was getting into the single player game. Personally, control issues aside, the game isn’t perfect but it is pretty damn good. Now, on to the meat of this post.

The Controls:
Keep in mind that the singleplayer and multiplayer aspects of the game share the same controls. As I said before this game plays mostly like previous GTA games which will surely delight fans of the series, there is even a control option for “classic controls” which mimics the button layouts of San Andreas and company. I was really looking forward to controls more along the PC versions of the last gen games, first person style, as running backwards and shooting came in handy quite often. It is close to first person except when running on foot you can’t strafe and at the same time I can see how a strafing character would seem less believable and take away from the immersion that the GTA world strives to deliver. Fair enough Rockstar.

Sadly, there are no legacy or southpaw controls while “ON FOOT” and in turn there are no such options for aiming. It was mentioned yesterday that you can choose the analog you aim your sniper rife with yet there is no legacy option for this. This will help the southpaw players a bit but in the end it’s pretty trivial to lot of you readers out there. The major problem is found in aiming your weapons manually. This game uses an over the shoulder third person perspective for shooting while on foot, and aiming is controlled by the right stick. I believe this was the way manual aiming was done in the previous games and as this is going to be a royal pain in side for all of us.

The immediate option, modded controllers. It stinks that we have to resort to this and GTA4 will be another title where legacy mods cause more harm than good.

Legacy issues:
Since there is no strafing while running/walking legacy mods are going require that both analogs are going to be used for simple movement on foot. Another issue with a Legacy controller mod is the splitting of vehicle controls. Motorcycles can do wheelies and endos by pressing back and forward on the driving stick, respectively, and a helicopter’s pitch is controlled in the same fashion. Shooting while driving a vehicle requires the player to use both analogs, one for steering one for aiming your weapon. Split half of the functions of each job to both analogs and you got yourself a recipe for headaches and frustration.

Southpaw issues:
Southpaw players don’t have it so bad. A controller mod means you just have to get used to controlling the vehicles with the right analog. It’s a pain but (to me) it’s much more practical than the problems of created by using a legacy controller or the default layout. I have decided that I will be using my modded controller for this game. For me, driving with the right analog is less of a pain than aiming with the right analog. Going through a good portion of the single player with this layout will have me ready to game when it’s time to hop into the multiplayer portion of the game. Just my preference.

In closing, I feel that if Rockstar had seen fit to give players the option to use a legacy and southpaw styles for manual on foot aiming, and a legacy option for sniping this game would have been much more accessible to players like ourselves. It seems pretty reasonable to ask for such a change but I don’t code games. I look forward to getting your views on this issue. As a community we can discuss what options need to be added (if any) to help make this game playable for everyone and address those views to Rockstar in hopes of a patch down the road. I look forward to all of your comments. As always screen shots of the control menus can be found below.

Happy gaming folks!

Standard Controls

COMBAT
Combat 1
Combat 2
Combat 3
Combat 4
Combat 5

IN VEHICLE
Vehicle 1
Vehicle 2
Vehicle 3
Vehicle 4
Vehicle 5

ON FOOT
On Foot 1
On Foot 2
On Foot 3
On Foot 4
On Foot 5

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Multi-platform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.