As PC gaming continues to loose out on the cash front to the supposedly more lucrative console market, we’re seeing more and more dodgy PC ports of console games. These games are often much worse on PC than they are on consoles, but it wasn’t always this way. Many games from our past, present and future, though on consoles, are games that should only be enjoyed on a PC. Here are ten picks that typify this dynamic.
Supreme Commander
I bet you’re all anticipating a paragraph long rant about how ridiculous it is trying to play an RTS game with a console controller. Honestly, Supreme Commander on Xbox 360 made a good attempt at creating an intuitive control scheme, but it was the bugs and performance bugs that really pushed it into the obscene. Frame rate drops, bizarre audio and visual glitches and an unforgivable amount of freezing issues made Supreme Commander’s console version laughable for all the wrong reasons.
Dragon Age: Origins
Bioware generally do a good job of translating their games to console without any dumbing down. That said, the immensely varied nature of loot in the original Dragon Age made navigating one’s inventory a bit of a drag with a controller. For this reason alone, DA on PC felt that little bit more fluid. Being kind of like a little cousin to the classic Baldur’s Gate games, (in feel rather than thematically) it also just feels at home on a mouse and keyboard.
Diablo
When a game’s core mechanics revolve around clicking your mouse all over the screen, it’s hard to imagine how it would work with a controller. Regardless, the original Diablo saw an intriguing PS1 port back in 1998. The lack of online play was meant to be remedied by a two player local co-op mode. Whilst a cool idea on paper, it worked horribly in practice due to the inability for the second player to move any distance away from the main player. That, and it also took up a whole memory card to save your game.
