Can I get better?

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Actually, the Mario games are good ones to start with. They're well made and have accurate controls, and arent all that difficult. But again, you have to not give up so easily. Gaming isnt something that you can just jump into and be good at it instantly. It could take a good bit of time for you to really get the hang of it.

As for other games:

Sonic: Controls and camera are usually all sorts of bad in most Sonic games. Often, mistakes are NOT your fault. The series just is not very well made, and hasnt been for a very long time.

Just Cause 2: The game actually ISNT going to really give you direction. That's really not the point of it. The point is that YOU decide what to do. What it mainly tells you are "blow up things with the government insignia on them", which are all over the place. Which ones do you attack? What order do you attack them in? Do you attack them at all, or do it later? Or maybe you want to go hunting after the bazillions of items that can be found all over the map? Or do you want to drive around and shoot bad guys? Or do you want to attack a military installation? Or maybe just explore the map, trying out all sorts of vehicles? Hell, even the combat is free-flowing. Considering the parachute and hook, you have LOTS of ways of approaching EVERYTHING. There are many games like this these days, where YOU make the decisions, instead of the game making them FOR you... that's what an open-world game is all about. That being said, this particular game is bloody excellent. It's worth sticking with. You say you like open-world games and parkour and such, well.... yeah, this is a great game for you, honestly. You just have to get used to the lack of direction in it, and jump in and just have some fun.... and this game is very good at "fun". Particularly once you get the hang of REALLY using the hook/parachute, as you can do all sorts of crazy things with them. You dont need to do the more challenging bits (like the military installations) until you are ready for it, as the game will never force them on you.

Red Dead Redemption: It's a decent game, but it's made by Rockstar.... *all* of their games without exception are buggy and tend to have very wonky controls. It's still a fairly good game, but those two things really do get in the way.

Fighting games: This is a BAD genre to start with. As someone who is a very high level player and has played the genre absolutely to death, I can guarantee that the learning curve for these is an absolute nightmare for new players... particularly players who are also new to gaming as a whole. It gets even worse later, considering that single-player is not at all the point of the genre, and against actual players, well... you need to have gotten the hang of the game quite well before even facing low-level players, really. The games can still be fun for anyone, but with you being new to everything here, you have to expect that you're going to lose, and often. Some games are also dramatically harder to learn than others. Any of Arc's games, for instance, have some of the nastiest learning curves in the genre. Super Smash Bros Brawl on the Wii (or the upcoming new one on the Wii U) are very good fighting games that DONT have hyper-complicated controls... I personally think that they're probably pretty good for learning to accurately use a controller as it is (dont use the Wiimote though. Get the "classic" controller).

Saints Row: This is very similar to JC2. There's more "direction" here, as the game has alot of missions that you can do (whereas JC2 focuses on allowing you to make every conceivable choice entirely on your own without forced structure), but other than that it really is very, very similar, as it's another open-world style game with lots to do. I've heard that the controls can be wonky in this one, which arent going to help much if that's the case.

Sniper Elite: I cant say much for this one, as I've not played it. But yeah, some games will have very complicated controls (like the fighting games), and just arent going to be very good to start with. And from what little I know about this one it just SOUNDS like it has an unpleasant learning curve.

Mirror's Edge: First person parkour. ....it just SOUNDS annoying to accurately control.


So yeah, those are some thoughts on the things you've mentioned. I can only give so much in terms of recommendations as I mostly do PC games these days, and dont play any of the really recent console titles (unless they are also ported to PC, as many of the ones you've mentioned are). The 360 though at least has LOTS of different games you can try.... look up reviews on them, or even just ask questions here, and learn which ones are nice and easy to start with.

And always remember that having trouble with controls is NOT always your fault. Some games just have bad controls to start with... the sort that can mess up ANYONE.

And other than that... just dont give up, and keep persisting, and again, feel free to ask for help on here!

Have you played any of the Soul Calibur games? I have the first one on Dreamcast, and while there are plenty of moves to memorize, it seems like a really easy game to just "button mash" and still do well. Plus, there are (if I remember correctly) only four buttons to worry about.



Ah, I can see where the problem lies. I haven't played too many open world games, but from what I have played, a lot of them seem to have really stupid controls.

You might like Crackdown. It's by the same guy who originally designed GTA (and Lemmings), you're basically a supercop and can go around jumping over buildings, throwing cars at enemies, punching enemies into other enemies, throwing bodies into the ocean, etc.

Not sure if the controls are stupid or if I'm just doing it wrong, but the gun aiming is a little wonky. You have to hold L to target, but I can't figure out an easier way to change your target than to let go of L, turn, and press L again and hope it targets who you want it to. It's also a little weird, because while you're targeting, you can move the right stick to target different bodyparts on your target.

You said you didn't like not being told where to go though, and this game has a lot of that. You basically just explore and wander around until you find a "boss lair", then wipe it out and go looking for a new one.

Agreed.

It is indeed true that alot of them have bloody stupid controls, though to an extent this does depend on the developer. Rockstar is terrible at it, absolutely terrible, and the Saints Row series can be a bit wonky as well. Crackdown can indeed be a little strange about it.

That being said, I'd almost forgotten about that game! I'll second that recommendation, the original Crackdown was excellent.

I'm not altogether new at gaming. I played for years on the playstation 2, but that was a long time ago. I did play many shooting games back in the day, and didn't have the problems I have today. Sonic Lost World was great except for the bosses, which were maddeningly hard, which is ironic, considering they are widely considered much too easy. Super Mario U was so hard as to be unfun, so I dropped that. Cloudberry kingdom is the best and most fun platformer I've ever played, despite it's insane difficulty. I haven't actually played any open word games until quite recently. And my problem with just cause 2 was that there was no instruction or tutorial on how to do anything, what button does what, and the map was so small and dense with icons as to be unreadable. I've gotten a lot better at Assassin's Creed brotherhood, and Batman Arkham Origins is my favorite game to play.

Actually Just Cause 2 should have given you a comprehensive tutorial at the start of the game, with an opening "mission" that you do to be taught the controls and usage of the parachute/hook.... did it not do that? It's sure SUPPOSED to. It did when I played it....

I'm surprised at the Mario bit though.... what controller are you using though? I've played bits of it, and it seemed pretty easy (and what I played were later levels, not early ones), typical for a Mario platformer (the only truly difficult games are the very first, and the actual second game, known as "lost levels" in most places, other than that the entire series is pretty easy).... is there something specific about it that is making it too hard?

Just Cause did have a tutorial, I just couldn't figure out where to go, and the map was useless to me. Mario was on the Wii U gamepad, which I no longer own. I just found platforming too difficult to enjoy. These are the games I have now or have recently tried and liked:

Batman Arkham Origins, Assassin's Creed brotherhood, Cloudberry Kingdom, Sonic lost word, and Pushmo world.

Here are the games I've tried and did not like for my new Xbox 360:

darksiders 2, red dead redemption, bayonetta, call of juarez, Crackdown, castlevania, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, just cause 2, mirror's edge, sniper elite 2, wet, stronghold 2 tomb raider games, saint's row 4, sleeping dogs, and Kingdoms of Amalur. I didn't like them for either not being fun, or mostly for me being unable to work the controls, which sure have gotten harder since the PS2.

I liked Sleeping Dogs a lot, but the shooting controls were awful.Haven't tried watch dogs yet, but I really want to. Which third person open world game has the best shooting mechanics, and what fighting game is the easiest in terms of controls, all for the 360 btw?

Hm, you shouldnt give up so easily on some of these. Many of those games are considered pretty good, but.... yeah, you gotta persist a bit. I guarantee the controls will come to you in time, as will other aspects (things like the minimap of JC2, or whatever). To some degree you sound as impatient as I am, haha. In all seriousness though, yeah, you'll miss out on alot if you give up on each one too early. This is the sort of thing that could take months to REALLY get the hang of.... not days.

And of course, no game will be perfect as far as controls go, though I think it's very hard to properly judge any individual title if you're very new to the whole thing. Alot of games tend to assume a certain amount of proficiency with controllers in general, even from players new to the game/series, so they are set up as such. Nintendo's games honestly really DO have the simplest, easiest controls of all.

For open-world games, you'll find that a bunch of them do controll rather oddly. Now, that being said, to some degree you CANT avoid that. The shooting can be a bit awkward partly because of the analog sticks. Which are, unfortunately, inaccurate in and of themselves. An FPS game, for instance, pretty much ALL of them, have a small amount of "auto aim" built into them; for example, if you are going for a headshot, but actually fire just a bit to the left of your target's head, the auto-aim will compensate a bit and you'll get that headshot. FPS games are nigh-unplayable without that, and these days every single one has it, wether the player is aware of it or not. It's necessary because of the sticks, which are bloody terrible at fine movements. So aiming in those, or in third-person games, can be a little strange. In third-person games, this can also lead to the existence of "targeting" mechanics, some sort of function that allows you to lock onto a target so you dont even have to wave your aim at them constantly.

Now, that being said, the effect of all of that isnt as extreme as it sounds. To some degree, it is going to be the fact of you not being used to it yet. And honestly, that'll probably take awhile. But if I had to pick one that controlled the best, really, it'd be probably JC2, and possibly Crackdown in second. I've played JC2 to death, and have always found it's controls to be effortless. And Crackdown is pretty much the same in that regard. Both of them are VERY high-quality games, and it shows. This goes for both the shooting controls/mechanics, to also the movement, which is just as important since you must constantly combine the two.


Now, as for fighting games.... honestly, I wouldnt, not yet. You're asking for frustration there. If you've been having control issues with any of these, or Nintendo's stuff, or whatever, fighting games are likely to just drive you up the wall. There is no genre that's more difficult to control than those. And out of all of the current ones, the ONLY fighting games I'd honestly call "accessible" in terms of controls and such are actually the Smash Bros games on Nintendo's devices, since they do not require the use of things like Hadoken/Shoryuken style commands (which all 2D fighters have about a billion of), or complicated combos (long and complicated and ACCURATE strings of commands that have to be executed perfectly or they fail), or special commands to activate certain mechanics.

On top of that, basically all fighting games are bloody HORRIBLE on the 360 controller. Analog sticks... are not good for that genre. At all. To be avoided at all costs. If you've ever watched pros play these, you might notice that (again, aside from Smash) they'll always bring arcade sticks to the table, and there's a reason for that. Me, I use just the controllers, but I use the dPads on them.... or, at least, I do on most consoles. The 360 has what I consider one of the worst controllers ever made, which is partly because I play so many games that need the dpad INSTEAD of the sticks, and the dpad on that thing is a bloody nightmare. It's actually possible to hit "down" on it and have it think you just hit "up". I wish I was making that up. As a fan of both fighting games and shmups, I've spent WAY too much time with that horrid thing. Hell, I use controllers for PC games, and using the 360 controller for that is effortless... just plug it in and go.... but instead, I spent like 20 damn hours setting it up to use the PS3 controller instead for those.... that's how bad the 360 one is to me. 20 hours of setup JUST to use absolutely anything that isnt that. And I dont exactly think highly of the rest of that controller, either. The 360 controller takes an already difficult to learn genre and just INTENSIFIES that nasty learning curve due to it's shoddy inaccuracy. Seriously, it's THAT bad, and it gets more and more noticable as your skill level increases.

You can buy a fighting game and go into it and just smash buttons, but you wont actually get anywhere that way. You'd have to drop the CPU's difficulty for single-player, and even then you likely WILL hit a point on any given run where you cannot go any further without it eating your face (particularly when it comes to bosses), and you'd have to avoid multiplayer entirely (requires a certain amount of skill for even really low-level matches). ....not to mention that the AI in such games gets all derpy when it's trying to "hold back", as "hold back" typically means "stand perfectly still and look dumb", which doesnt make for much of an exciting fight, when your opponent stops to do that constantly between attacks.

....also, fighting games typically make use of EVERY button on the controller, all at once, which is another thing to keep in mind. Again, only Smash is the exception to this. And no, I dont actually like Nintendo all that much, before that's mentioned. I'm just familiar with that series as a fan of fighting games, that's all.


If I had to advise on a purchase though, hmm.... well, if you do just want to grab one and are fine with just some button mashing, get a 3D fighter like Soul Calibur, not a 2D one like Street Fighter. 3D fighters typically dont use things like Hadoken/Shoryuken type commands for individual moves. They're still combo-tastic if you want to actually improve and get somewhere, but if just playing on low levels, you can at least get in some fight just by smashing buttons. They'll be more forgiving on the 360's controller due to the lack of the Hadoken stuff as well, at least at low levels anyway.

And that's the problem with them though, I think. With that genre, if you're just smashing buttons, you're missing out on like 95% of the game, and I really think the games get old really, really fast when doing this.

i'm pretty bad at aiming and shooting but i found Far Cry 3 and the Bioshock Series to be quite easy and enjoyable, you could also get the other 2 Batman games in the Arkham series, Lego Batman and Lego Star Wars are simple and fun, Alice Madness Returns is also good

Some games such as the Witcher (first one), Dragon Age and Dungeon Siege can be played only by pointing and clicking the mouse, which makes them super easy to play. There are others I'm sure but I can't recall right now.

OP here, sorry to resurrect this thread, but thing is, I'm still struggling with finding games I can do. Here is a list of games I like and can play: Batman arkham Origins, stranglehold, Sonic games, cloudberry kingdom, pushmo world, and the Bourne conspiracy.

And here's a list of games that I have tried and found them too difficult for me: darksiders 2, red dead redemption, call of juarez, just cause 2, mirror's edge, sniper elite 2, two tomb raider games, saint's row 4, sleeping dogs, Kingdoms of Amalur, crackdown, sniper ghost warrior, all assassin's creed games, L.A. Noir, and Saw 2.

I can't really do quick time events, and long button combos are almost impossible for me to learn. If anyone can recommend really easy 360 games for me, knowing my limitations, I'd really appreciate it.