Well made game, shame about the controls...

[stubar]

This so should be twin-stick shooter. The controls are unintuitive and make the game unenjoyable. No fun dog-fights, just crashing and smashing into scenery/enemies/randomness.

[Nax_o]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Actioncat:

These are standard Asteroids-style controls. Many top down space games use them, like Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages (awesome game) and Starship Rubicon, to name a couple in my own library.
I think they give you a better sense of being in space and piloting the ship, and once you're used to them its really fun to take advatage of the zero grav enviroment in ways twin stick controls dont allow. If you're interested in this genre of game its worth getting used to these controls, I'm sure you'll see them again.

Just by reading that i am already missing Ring Runner controls. It's D-pad bound abilities, not to mention Sage abilities. well moving on...

As for the topic itself: The controls are a bit mean. Strafing is not intuitive. Takes time to learn. The rest is fine. Better even if you have played Ring Runner to hell and back.

[clarkeveritas]

The controls are not bad.... it's just zero-grav fighting.... i'm 3 hours in and i'm starting to really get the hang of it. It's just a different skill set. As for being unintuitive- that depends on your intuition in the first place. Once you get the whole "object in motion continues in motion unless acted upon by another force" deal it's not so bad. After you grasp the concept it's just muscle memory. I think it's a blast and I'd be rather upset if they overhauled the controls, personally.

[Ratt King Cole]

I'm pretty sure that the people complaining about the controls aren't talking about the zero-gravity "icy" feeling as much as they are the single button for side thrusting. Sometimes I want to use a side thruster to halt or reverse my strafing motion, but in this game, it's just not possible. The only side that I can thrust towards is the one that I'm already moving in. There's no amount of "getting used to the unique controls" that will allow a player to pull off what ought to be a perfectly viable maneuver.

[Nuclear Kangaroo]

i honestly like the controls for the most part, but i wish there was an easier way to strafe left and right

[Blade]

My big problem with the controls is that they're this weird hybrid of twin-stick and Asteroids-style controls. Twin-stick movement is absolute. Push up, the ship moves up. Push down and to the right, the ship moves down and to the right. Asteroids-style controls are relative - pushing to the left or right turns the nose of your ship in that direciton, and thrust makes you move forward. In GALAK-Z, the left stick points your ship in whatever direction you push, like a twin-stick shooter, but you only move forward (or back) when you use the thrust button, like Asteroids. So I intuitively try to play it like Asteroids, pushing the stick left and right to rotate the ship and thrust to move forward, and send the ship off in the wrong direction. Every. Time. It's really disorienting, and I wish they'd just include an option for traditional Asteroids-style and twin-stick control schemes.

[Ratt King Cole]

Come to think of it, an asteroids style control method but with a camera that rotates with your ship so that you're always shooting towards the top of the screen might be even better than twin stick.

[stubar]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Blade:

My big problem with the controls is that they're this weird hybrid of twin-stick and Asteroids-style controls. Twin-stick movement is absolute. Push up, the ship moves up. Push down and to the right, the ship moves down and to the right. Asteroids-style controls are relative - pushing to the left or right turns the nose of your ship in that direciton, and thrust makes you move forward. In GALAK-Z, the left stick points your ship in whatever direction you push, like a twin-stick shooter, but you only move forward (or back) when you use the thrust button, like Asteroids. So I intuitively try to play it like Asteroids, pushing the stick left and right to rotate the ship and thrust to move forward, and send the ship off in the wrong direction. Every. Time. It's really disorienting, and I wish they'd just include an option for traditional Asteroids-style and twin-stick control schemes.

+1

[martydotzone]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Blade:

So I intuitively try to play it like Asteroids, pushing the stick left and right to rotate the ship and thrust to move forward, and send the ship off in the wrong direction. Every. Time. It's really disorienting, and I wish they'd just include an option for traditional Asteroids-style and twin-stick control schemes.

Yes! I just tried the game for the first time and I kept having this problem. My brain is wired to push left or right to rotate my ship.

My brain is also wired to assume that if I'm moving in one direction, then rotate the ship by 90 degrees and hit the thruster, my ship will insantly loose all previous momentum and I'll move exclusively in the new direction.

With these two issues combined the game is really hard for me to control. Every time I want to move my ship I get disoriented. I can't even imagine weaving between enemy shots or strafing in a circle.

[Nax_o]

Having played this game some more now i must say it's not controls that kill the game. Bigger problem is somewhat lengthy missions and sudden events where it is possible to sustain very quickly heavy damage.

[Doc_Simulac]

I think we are getting carried away with the complaints.
Part of classic styled games is getting used to their control and mechanics.
Could somethings have been done different? sure, but they can't be considered gamebreaking unless they are bugs or glitches.

Same goes for difficulty and length.
What is too long for someone may be just right for others.
What may seem unfair to some may simply be challenging to others.

Example:
Replaing volitions "Ghostbusters" last night. The mission that has you fighting waves of marshmallow minions in the office building. I was simply incapeable of passing it last night!
It was unfair and overwhelming!

Yet I completed it somehow in the past on the same difficulty because...
I was replaying a previous mission...lol

[Nax_o]

I'll add that this game was by no means a failure. My own game time clock stopped at pretty big hours.

Was it a SPAZ / Drox replacement? : No.

Was it a decent action game with story?: Yes.

Didn't bother to finish it. Not really my type of game in the end.

[dnaod]

I'm 8 hours into this game and I still die more often because I press a wrong button, the strafe goes the wrong way, or I end up thrusting the wrong direction than from the actual difficulty of the bad guys. I really want to love this game but I think I've given up on it because of the controls.

I'd be much happier if I was just outclassed by the bad guys.

I play most games on the hardest level because I love the challenge but I just can't get past 2-5. And I only play Normal Arcade because I have a life and there's not enough hours in the world to redo a season every time you die.

[El Giavutti]

One thing to keep in mind is that in the hard difficulty sometimes it's better to not engage the enemy at all. And when you do, make sure the first strike is really big. Use your enviroment, shoot around corners, throw barrels, throw missiles, etc
It's really easy to get overrun if you attack a bunch of enemies head on.

[AuroraBorealisNo]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Blade:

My big problem with the controls is that they're this weird hybrid of twin-stick and Asteroids-style controls. Twin-stick movement is absolute. Push up, the ship moves up. Push down and to the right, the ship moves down and to the right. Asteroids-style controls are relative - pushing to the left or right turns the nose of your ship in that direciton, and thrust makes you move forward. In GALAK-Z, the left stick points your ship in whatever direction you push, like a twin-stick shooter, but you only move forward (or back) when you use the thrust button, like Asteroids. So I intuitively try to play it like Asteroids, pushing the stick left and right to rotate the ship and thrust to move forward, and send the ship off in the wrong direction. Every. Time. It's really disorienting, and I wish they'd just include an option for traditional Asteroids-style and twin-stick control schemes.

I don't have this issue at all, but I welcome other kinds of control schemes just to make sure other people can enjoy it too.

For me, the only problem is the slide/strafe button. You can't strafe the other way from where you are going. You have to poin the ship to that way first, boost, and from there you can strafe again.