Really now? Both System Shock and Descent offer an unprecedented degree of freedom (for their time) once you get used to the controls (it ain't that hard really). I would never ever classify them as uncontrollable.
I have never played Incoming, so I got nothing to say on that.

If you really want to see a game ruined by bad controls, you should take a look at the countless games using pre-rendered backgrounds and 3D models with tank controls from the mid to late 90's. Ecstatica will always be a pain for example. Or maybe Fade To Black.
No matter how much you play such games, even if you master the controls, you'll have to do lots of trial & error and have to deal with slow animations and delayed controls etc...

Unintuitive doesn't equal bad/unresponsive/uncontrollable.

Agree on the mouse look in Descent. Would be fantastic if it wasn't so slow. It's okay if you stick to keyboard, but knowing what you could do if you had proper mouse support... yeah.

System Shock, I couldn't get the hang of it, partly to controls. I blame myself for being stupid on that one, though.

F2bnp wrote:

Really now? Both System Shock and Descent offer an unprecedented degree of freedom (for their time) once you get used to the con […]
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Really now? Both System Shock and Descent offer an unprecedented degree of freedom (for their time) once you get used to the controls (it ain't that hard really). I would never ever classify them as uncontrollable.
I have never played Incoming, so I got nothing to say on that.

If you really want to see a game ruined by bad controls, you should take a look at the countless games using pre-rendered backgrounds and 3D models with tank controls from the mid to late 90's. Ecstatica will always be a pain for example. Or maybe Fade To Black.
No matter how much you play such games, even if you master the controls, you'll have to do lots of trial & error and have to deal with slow animations and delayed controls etc...

Unintuitive doesn't equal bad/unresponsive/uncontrollable.

It is precisely the unprecedented degree of freedom that makes System Shock and Descent a pain to control. I've played System Shock quite a bit (about a full playthrough and a half), and even though I've gotten used to the controls, they're still extremely uncomfortable. Compare this to, say, Doom, where a modern keyboard / mouse setup is possible and every bit as responsive as any modern FPS.

Descent would be fine if they would just let you tweak mouse sensitivity a little more... (again, Descent 3 solved this problem completely)

Lander is very uncontrollable with the default controls. Using a PSX dual shock and custom mappings made it better.

Xenon 2 Megablast (1989). A very overrated Amiga shmup that's harder from the very latent controls.

maximus wrote:

How did this game make it past playtesting?

Because it's PRETTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!! Same case for many other games of that year which had a heavy 'does it use glide' bias

Speaking of pretty uncontrollable games......... Treadmarks(2000)

It really hasn't aged well control and camera-wise. Graphics are okay (and still technically stunning for me considering the state of 1999 OpenGL drivers it had to develop it for, and the fact the development team is actually a family, Seumas McNally's graphics genius, R.I.P.)

maximus wrote:

It is precisely the unprecedented degree of freedom that makes System Shock and Descent a pain to control. I've played System Shock quite a bit (about a full playthrough and a half), and even though I've gotten used to the controls, they're still extremely uncomfortable. Compare this to, say, Doom, where a modern keyboard / mouse setup is possible and every bit as responsive as any modern FPS.

Descent would be fine if they would just let you tweak mouse sensitivity a little more... (again, Descent 3 solved this problem completely)

I've never beaten System Shock, but I have played it quite a bit and got hang of the controls rather quickly. I also loved Terra Nova : Strike Force Centauri, which I only played for the first time last summer. Absolutely no problem with the controls. If the source code for these games was available, you would see source ports with proper mouse aiming, much like the Doom games.

Don't play Descent with a mouse. I find it much harder to play like that. First time I tried the game, I played using the keyboard and I have to say it works pretty darn well. If you want a little more control, but are willing to lose some aim, use a joystick.
Or better yet, get a source port (like Doom, which you brought up as an example) and tweak the controls like you want 'em. I usually play with 2 joysticks these days, one on the left hand for acceleration/deceleration and strafing and on the right hand for aiming. It's strenuous and very very immersive 😀.

I hate The two Crusader games (no remorse and no regret). I really never get the hang of the controls...

I think descent plays fine with a CH flightstick pro. As far as games with bad controls, most of the cga / xt era games come to mind. Quite a few were completely unplayable. In the '90s era I can think of two great games marred by bad controls: Alone in the Dark and Bioforge. There were a lot more though.

Pathways Into Darkness is annoying. The control is pretty good, but you also have all these little windows that can be moved around accidentally if you click in the wrong place, and then they cover the screen.

And arrow keys on an old Mac keyboard are all in a row, leftrightupdown.

All the Skunny platformers.

Skunny Kart too, to a lesser extent.

Descent is very playable via keyboard.

I have a hard time with controls in The Need for Speed. The wheel turns way to slow when doing hard turns (Alpine and Coast track). I thought the keyboard was the problem, but it is the same with joystick and wheel.

Test Drive 3 for me. It never feels "right", no matter what machine you play it on. The mouse controls in Expendable.

The wing commander games have horrid controls even with a joystick. It seems dependent on how fast the game is running.

Privateer 2 though, good god... The dedicated roll keys only WORK if you have a joystick, you can't use them if mouse is enabled... WHY!?!?

Legacy of Kain: Defiance. *Censored*.

kixs wrote:

I have a hard time with controls in The Need for Speed. The wheel turns way to slow when doing hard turns (Alpine and Coast track). I thought the keyboard was the problem, but it is the same with joystick and wheel.

Have you tried playing with a modern-ish gamepad? My favorite way to play The Need for Speed is with a USB-modded Xbox Controller S. The XBCD drivers allow you to map the thumsticks and triggers to whatever axes you like, allowing a completely modern control scheme. The steering never felt sluggish to me with that setup. (An Xbox 360 controller for USB would probably be great as well.)

philscomputerlab wrote:

The mouse controls in Expendable.

Agreed. That game is a bit tricky to control no matter which way you go, but keyboard controls are manageable with the right mapping. (I use the home row keys - left hand for directional controls, right hand for firing / strafing).

From what I've read so far in this thread, I think Maximus meant to title it "Most Annoying Game Controls", because "uncontrollable" suggests a game that can't be played properly because of how its controls actually work. System Shock and Decent have fairly elaborate controls, but once you get the hang of them they offer an unprecedented amount of movement freedom.

Here's a modern example of a game with some of the worst-coded controls ever: Jet Gunner. It's available on Steam and I haven't really been able to play it yet due to not just one but TWO major issues related to the controls. The first is that unless I have both my 360 controller on and my Logitech gamepad plugged in (or any DirectInput device really) I only get a framerate of 5. With both going, my framerate is a solid 60. That's strange enough in and of itself (though speaking as a programmer I can hazard a couple guesses as to why it's doing that), but the more insidious issue is that I can only control the menu cursor with the keyboard, I can only make menu selections or bring up the pause screen from my 360 controller, and I can only actually control the game from my Logitech gamepad.

...yes, I'm dead serious. The controls in the game are nothing more complicated than move, shoot and jump, but the I/O is coded in so incredibly badly that it can't just let me use one device, it has the controls split across all registered devices depending on context and changing my control options from the options menu doesn't seem to do much of anything. x_x;

Now true, it's an indie title, but that doesn't excuse a control system with this level of issues when it's being sold for money because as it stands, I can't really play it properly. :P

Another good example would be the DOS version of Mega Man, which I actually went into detail about in my coverage of it on ADG way back in my second episode ever: http://www.pixelships.com/adg/ep0002.html

Basically, Mega Man for DOS shouldn't have anything more than Move, Jump, Shoot, and Menu, all in easy to reach spots, and the Shoot key should double as a key to confirm selections. However, the game instead has the following controls:

Arrow Keys - Move
Spacebar - Shoot (does NOT confirm selections)
Enter - Confirm Selections
J - Jump
Escape - Open Weapon Menu (does NOT close it)
P - Select Plasma Cannon in Weapons Menu and Closes It
V - Selects Voltman's Weapon in Weapons Menu and Closes It
D - Selects Dynaman's Weapon in Weapons Menu and Closes It
S - Selects Sonicman's Weapon in Weapons Menu and Closes It
E - Uses an energy tank in Weapons Menu

Technically another good example is the default controls for FX Fighter. Try pulling off a quarter circle forwards + punch move when A is up, Z is down, X is left, C is right, Q is kick and V is punch. Thankfully though, FX Fighter lets you change the controls, but still, the defaults are just downright embarrassing. :P

Gemini000 wrote:

From what I've read so far in this thread, I think Maximus meant to title it "Most Annoying Game Controls"

There, fixed it 😀

Though I would still argue that Incoming comes close to being literally uncontrollable.

maximus wrote:

There are few things more frustrating than a good game dragged down by a bad control scheme. A few examples:

System Shock (1994): To be fair, the WASD / mouselook paradigm was still in its infancy when this game was released, but System Shock's control scheme is still one of the clunkiest, most unintuitive things I've ever seen. It's a damn shame, because the rest of the game is fantastic.

Believe it or not, I actually like System Shock/Ultima Underworld mouse and keyboard scheme. Sure, it's not as fluid as typical FPS mouselook, but it didn't take long to get used to it.

Gamecollector wrote:

Legacy of Kain: Defiance. *Censored*.

This is getting ridiculous 🤣 . I can understand having issues with the camera in this game, but the controls? What the hell?