However, my best friends and fellow machinimakers were anxious to migrate to the new technology, so I got an Xbox 360 when they came out and jumped late onto the Halo 2 wagon. The games were different enough that by the time I had the hang of the new Battle Rifle and SMG(s), I already had a firm grasp on the joystick controls. Through the ins, outs, ons, and offs, I stuck by the Halo series and still occasionally play to this day.

I’ve played almost every popular shooter with an incarnation on all platforms (Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield), and the verdict is different for each game. Halo was always a console shooter, and while I feel that Halo PC was probably the best in the series, I’ve got to say that it handles better with the joysticks. I have a long and rough history with CoD as well, and the fact that they’re so heavily consolized now means that, while I prefer playing them on PC, they “feel” better on a controller. Battlefield is a PC game. Bad Company 1 and 2 were pretty good on console, but they feel a million times better on PC (though if you don’t have a joystick, flying the helicopters with the consoles was a lot easier than flying with a damn mouse.)

The difference between mouse and controller shootering/gaming is just the practice. It takes a while to switch over, even if you’re well versed in both. I played the mousiest, PC-iest shooter of all time (Counter Strike) for about a year, and when I went back to Halo, everything was different. In all actuality, if you give me a month to adjust to either control scheme, I’ll probably play better with an Xbox 360 controller than a mouse and keyboard.

On a completely unrelated note, though I’m fairly sure I know who wrote this, I can’t seem to see the author listed anywhere on this page. We might wanna fix that.