Comment by macintux
2 days ago
I’m reminded of the time, probably 20 years ago, when some viral game was making the rounds. It was designed such that the controls, even the goals, weren’t obvious, but as it turned out, it didn’t respond to my Mac’s trackpad because I used tap to click and the game didn’t recognize my taps.
So, as far as I could tell, the game was utterly pointless. The developer replied to me apologetically on Twitter but I never went back to give it another shot.
Chiming in with another "bad input ruins a game" story: Alpha Protocol (2010), PC port.
There was a "hacking" minigame, and it was mandatory to solve it as part of the introductory tutorial levels. I think the original console version used left+right thumbsticks, and on PC that meant a half-keyboard half-mouse setup. There were some serious sensitivity/dead-zone issues, but that wasn't the main blocker.
IIRC the problem was that if you had remapped any keys in the options (as I had before starting) the new choices didn't apply during the minigame... except they still influenced the on-screen instructions! So I was stuck constantly failing this minigame because it was waiting for me to press some arbitrary (stock) key to progress, while telling me I needed to press a different (remapped) key that kept having no effect.
Anywho, I think I realized it some other week/month after wiping/reinstalling in frustration. Thereafter I prioritized tools/upgrades that let me skip the badly ported minigame.