we've all heard the story, but it's another thing to experience it. So interesting story I want to share with you guys. Goldeneye 64 is one of my all time favorite games and I'm quite good at it if I may say so. Good enough to win a competition at my home town at least. I often play it on an emulator and I usually use a controller. However there are special modded emulators out there that give Goldeneye full mouse and keyboard support. I set up a match between myself and one of my mates. Now I've been playing Goldeneye for years while he was relatively unfamiliar with it. I wanted to see if I could beat him with a controller and years of experience. Spoiler, I couldn't. I was able to do some damage but it was quite the eye opener. To have a true reference of how much a difference mouse and keyboard make. I hear stories about how Halo champions would get beaten by so-so players with mouse and keyboard. I was skeptical at first because although they're using a controller they are champions, but after what I just went through, I believe it now.

Nothing shall ever beat the mouse for aim.

I'm useless with almost all controllers. The only ones I'm passably competent at are the NES controller and some of the other pre-playstation/xbox era controllers. X,Y,A,B,W-tf as far as I'm concerned. Give me arrows keys; Z,X,C,V for low punch through to high kick; Shift for block, and I'm all set to take on anyone in Mortal Kombat (MK4 for anyone interested)

Perhaps it's fine if you grinded your teeth on games such as Halo from the start. If on the other hand like me you've had years of being used to not only the precision but also the freedom of mouse aim, look and movement, then even just watching gameplay clips of someone playing an fps with a controller is physically painful :P

Depends. In same cases a touch control (either with your finger, or a pen), or even with a light gun, might be even better.

For instance, I feel the mobile version of Plants vs Zombies is a bit easier to play than the PC version, as you can fast click on items dropping on the screen with your finger. Also, the PC version of Virtua Cop 2 was harder to play than the arcade version, but I guess that was partly because it was sometimes harder to see the mouse-aiming sight.

But against gamepads, yeah mouse is much more instant and accurate than an analog joystick/gamepad. Nothing new in that. Aiming with a gamepad is like moving some kind of robotic arm around, while mouse aim feels instant like how I'd wave a gun around in real life as well.

I think one good test is how to draw a circle (freehand):

- With a gamepad/analog joystick: good luck, it will probably look anything but a circle.

- With a mouse: much easier, but still somewhat awkward because you are not drawing directly to the screen, but via a mouse interface.

- With a touchpen directly to the screen: easiest.

I am just as good (or bad, accordingly) with controller as I am keyboard and mouse.For shooting games, situational/map awareness trumps reaction times 90% of the time. But since my controller broke (I broke it trying to fix a sticky analogue stick) I am stuck playing k/m on Sniper Elite 3 (awesome game).

Some have pointed out that seasoned gamepad FPS players aim using different methods than mouse players, so using your mouse-aiming habits with a gamepad makes it even harder.

For instance, if there is a small target far from you and your sight is only slightly off the target:

- A mouse player would simply move the mouse slightly to the side to get the target to the sight.

- A gamepad player would instead move his own character slightly to the side, without touching the aiming controls. That is more precise horizontal fine-tuning of aiming than trying to directly move the sight with an analog stick.

Naturally gamepad FPS game also have slight autoaiming etc. enabled so that you don't necessarily even need so precise aiming... For me a similar case was when I first tried to play Halo 2 on my XBox. Playing in the hardest difficulty, I couldn't get past the hangar battle on the first level, no matter how hard I tried. I switched to the PC version of Halo 2, and could get past that part much easier (it was still pretty hard and took several tries, but I instantly felt how I at least had a chance).

It was not only about the more precise aiming though. The Halo 2 XBox gamepad controls were located so that you couldn't e.g. jump and aim at the same time (you control both the jump button and the aiming stick with the same thumb). With a mouse, it was easy to aim even if you were constantly jumping around.

Also, the fact that the PC version was running on a hires monitor while the XBox version was running on an analog TV (my XBox has RGB SCART), it was far easier to discern especially distant enemies from the background. That mattered also in that hangar section, it was far easier to simply see those damn brown enemies of the grey background on a computer monitor, than on a TV.

I think that depends actually. Thinking of myself from my years of playing UT, I used a combination of both. Often it happened that at long range it was easier to 'aim' by moving my character, especially when I was moving and wanted to hit another moving target.

This remembers me that i won a ps3 contest in my hometown playing motorstorm and the only reason why i won was because the controls were similar to flatout pc game and i usually played that game with my logitech rumblepad 2,i got halo 2 for vista which i never properly played since i usually didn't have vista or newer os but anyway still played with using some xp patch and it's one of those windows live games i think and one stage wasn't playable with the xp patch.
Oh yeah i was leading for about 30 seconds on that ps3 game.
There was also once a ps 2 contest which i was only fourth,but i wasn't used to the controls of another racing game since i never played motoracer or what ever game was that,got a ps2 shirt anyway.
Even though i was already a PC player back in the day.Only console i ever owned myself was sega mega drive and then i went to pc once and stayed on pc.

Anyway i usually preffer mouse with keyboard when it comes to shooter games(mouse aim feels kinda like a gun),strategy or rpg(mouse aim kinda feels like a sword).The only time i use gamepad is for fighting games,racing games, oh and i even played recettear with a gamepad mostly.

It's not surprising that the mouse is more accurate since it uses the tendons and muscles and all the fine-tuned movements of the whole wrist and arm, whereas a controller relies on a single finger. The controllers with sticks are even clumsier than the Steam controller for example, which offers a touchpad, but still, even with a touchpad which brings you something akin to a mouse and how it moves, using just your thumb is a whole lot less accurate than being able to utilize your hand with a mouse.

But there is more than just shooters that rely on accurate aim for which the mouse is the best option, for now at least. Controllers allow for buttons with analogue input. If you are in a driving simulator and you use a keyboard you can acellerate or brake, but you can only press down the pedals fully. It's either on or off. You can either steer all the way left or all the way right. The triggers of the controller allow you to measure your throttle, your steering or your braking, hence giving you a huge advantage and what I believe is a more realistic feeling.
And there are specialized steering wheels and pedals you can purchase too, of course. But usually at too high a pricepoint for someone like me who really doesn't play that many racing games.

Same with a flight or space simulator. If you don't have a joystick, a controller is a passable alternative since you often have to steer into a certain direction for a long while. With a controller you can just tilt your stick left and right and thus fly in circles while you have to lift up the mouse again and again should you use it for a flight simulator. I noticed that when I tried using a mouse to play the X games and Freespace.

I think it's best to have multiple input devices and to use the one that is best for any given job. There is little point in deciding that one single input device is the best because it excels at one thing and I often use both if the game allows. In GTA V I drive and fly with the gamepad and switch to keyboard and mouse for the shooty bits. And I wish that Skyrim allowed for gamepad and keyboard at the same time since I like the pad for movement more, but I feel crippled if I have to aim a bow using those sticks. Sadly the options for that game are either gamepad or keyboard so I stick with the latter.

Yes, I really struggle with aiming using controllers, not just FPS. Was playing the serious Sam bogus detour last night and that is so much easier with keyboard and mouse. In most games I would use k+m, driving and fighting games are notable exceptions, I also like it when a game allows both, for instance GTA where I use controller for all movement and mouse to aim. I suppose that is the point of the steam controller (although I don't know as don't buy drm hardware) to try recreate controller and mouse.

Gamepad for platformers.
Keyboard/Mouse for everything else.

Of course, when I'm feeling daring I just whip out this bad boy.

Real gamers play gears of war with guitar hero controller.


Remember when most games were plat-formers and home computers used flight stick size joysticks to control them? Ahh the memories of Switchblade, Another World and Robocop 2 on the Atari ST with a HUGE joystick. Good memories but wouldn't like to go back to it, control pads are so much better.

A controller works best for me with racing, flight, sports, and FPS games.

I used-to be a wheel-only racing gamer, but these days I mainly use controllers, even with sim games like rFactor2.

A good flight-stick set is too bloody expensive, and I would rather spend that money on buying DLCs for the game, as with FSX for example. My 360 controller is more than good enough for what I seek from these games.

Even with FPS games I still prefer a controller, since I never play multiplayer and usually play on Normal.
'Yeah' I might take abit more damage from not being accurate enough, but that does not bother me at all.

However I prefer mouse & keyboard for third-person RPGs, stealth and action games, like Risen and Hitman.

Some of the games I play can't even be played with a controller, like strategy games of various types.

Likewise, many console-based games can't be played with mouse & keyboard, for example most sports games.

It's like someone else is playing with you

wow look at all the replays. A follow up to all the points being made though is that Goldeneye was a console game made for thr analog stick and yet a veteran like me and still get owned by someone else with a mouse.

The epic AAA titles are supposed to be first-person or over-the-shoulder. So that's the stuff which get shipped to the consoles, despite that their controllers simply don't work here. Lots of other genres are fine for controllers - twin-stick, racing, platformers, visual novels, beat-em-up. But the consoles insist on games that work against their input devices.

It's a bit like games for tablets. Those Android devices have all kind of crazy input - motion sensor, video camera, microphone, touch screen with multi-touch. And yet, the devs try to emulate the PC arrow keys with on-screen buttons.