DOOM is the last big budget shooter I played that felt like it rewarded that added precision to any notable degree. It's still far clunkier than M+K for aiming (and the lack of precision definitely annoys me for my first hour or two), but they tend not to punish that (or really to reward the additional precision of a M+K)Īnything where precision aiming is required I stick to M+K for, but honestly there aren't many games like that nowadays. In those cases, I find most games are lenient enough with their aim assist, bullet curving, hitbox sizes, and so forth that I rarely have too much trouble with a controller.
I still play a lot of shooters with M+K because it's so far superior for precision aiming, but more casual shooters that are more focused on ability use and such than precision (think Gears of War 4, Quantum Break, Farcry 4, etc) I'll play with a controller just because I find their systems are designed around its limits.
Games like DOOM, Wolfenstein and Battlegrounds i don't use pad. These days i can afford to keep my PC up to spec and it's my preferred platform, i try to play most things with mouse and keyboard but there are a lot of games where i think it makes sense to use a pad, i played Gears 4 with a pad as i feel like pressing space bar or something to take cover feels strange, a Devil May Cry game and by extension Bayonetta is pad only as far as i'm concerned, i played The Witcher 1 and 2 on mouse/keyboard but 3 on pad as i feel like they tailored the mechanics more towards a pad. Perfect Dark Zero was tricky but that's mainly due to it's weird sticky sluggish aiming, once Call of Duty 3 and 4 came along and refined the experience with precise movement and high frame rate it was totally natural to me.
My first shooters were on PC so that's where i started with competitive CS1.5, just before the 360 came out i was trying to get my first job, so without money to get new PC hardware and seeing a vision of the future where first person shooters would thrive on consoles, i decided to learn to use a pad on PS2 with games like Black and Urban Chaos: Riot Response, so i feel like when the 360 came along i was pretty good at shooters on pad. I used to find M+K so uncomfortable and still kinda do, but I don't miss a controller anywhere near as much as I miss good precision.
I still prefer to play games with a controller when I can, but when it comes to shooters I'm leaning more and more into mouse and keyboard as the years go by. I saw some posters in a previous thread complaining about ammo problems in Wolfenstein and I have to wonder if they were playing with a controller, too. Many console shooters have struck a fine balance between assisting your aim and letting you feel like you're the precise one - Halo, Doom, and Call of Duty come to mind. After some research, it seems like the game turns off aim assist, or at least lowers it, on higher difficulties, which is fucking terrible for a shooter with a controller. So I switched to mouse and keyboard and the game felt like a cakewalk in comparison. I swear, I finished that game with no problems with a controller the first few times, but this time I felt like I couldn't hit anything. I tried to play Wolfenstein: The New Order with a controller recently. Less satisfying, but I don't have to fight the analog stick. When I play GTA V with a controller, I usually use the game's lock on system.