It's a hit or miss if the controls will be responsive. It's frustrating to hit "space" next to an enemy and nothing happens half of the time. It's frustrating mashing my mouse button expecting gunfire to occur, but nothing happens. The controls just suck.

I have literally not had any problems with the responsiveness of the controls, and I'm using KB/M.

I honestly had the exact same impression, in fact I made several posts that were basically "what the shit, why do people like this game?" But it's truly similar to Dark Souls; the controls work, but you have to learn how to use them effectively. I've not had that problem after the first hour or so, I learned when/where you can hit space to kill a downed enemy.

I've never had problem with using Space to execute.. I've had the most problems with facing the wrong way when trying to kill two enemies right next to eachother

Yup, I've had zero problems. First two or three chapters took some getting used to, but once you master it it's pretty intuitive.

Maybe you're just bugged, I've had literally no issues with responsiveness.

I'm loving the game, but there's definitely control issues with the Keyboard + Mouse setup I'm using. I've had a few excruciatingly frustrating moments where I've been on the verge of clearing a really difficult floor, had the drop on the last enemy, and then the attack button fails to trigger when pressed and I get killed because of it. I've had to restart good runs because halfway through the stage the movement keys have stopped responding, and I'm suddenly stuck twisting in place. I've also had the mouse cursor disappear completely from the screen and fail to return. All of these issues have occurred multiple times, and I've only been playing the game for a day.

None of that would stop me from recommending it. The game is buggy as hell right now, and it needs some serious fixes, but somehow it manages to shine despite all that. The gameplay is so manic and addictive that I haven't been able to put it down since I bought it. A game hasn't felt so simply and intuitively "right" to me since Super Meat Boy. I was ready to give up after buying it yesterday and getting constant errors before I could even get sound or a title screen; I'm glad I didn't. This one's worth a little bit of extra patience.

I'll join the chorus of people who had no problems playing this with KB/M. My only gripe was the controls came when trying to pick up items that were close together, however never had a problem with the responsiveness of a command.

Sometimes when standing right next to someone, you can't shoot them because the barrel of the gun is past their body, but other than that I've had no issues at all. In fact I've found the controls pretty damn snappy!

I've played this for another few hours and the problems still persist. It's frustrating!

@jakob187 said:

I have literally not had any problems with the responsiveness of the controls, and I'm using KB/M.

This has been my experience. I've seen a lot of complaints, but I have not had a single problem. In fact, I really like the control scheme.

Chalk me up as another person who has had no problem with the controls (although my aim sucks). There are moments when you can't perform an execution because you are still completing the animation for another action, eg. punching, but that is clearly a design decision, not a responsiveness issue. It prevents spamming mouse and spacebar to kill everything when you're in a crowd. Likewise some melee weapons just have a slow swing, so hitting attack before one swing animation is complete will do nothing.

As for no gunfire - every gun empties in a couple of seconds, sure it's not just lack of ammo?

I didn't have a problem with the m+k controls, but I prefer using the 360 controller.

I have a bit of trouble with executions as well sometimes.....it seems like if I'm already right on top of the guy when I knock him over, I need to back up a bit before it allows me to execute him

I just beat the game. Got most of the masks. Now what? Do I play through it again to unlock everything, or apart from items, have I seen everything there is to see?

@Tebbit said:

Sometimes when standing right next to someone, you can't shoot them because the barrel of the gun is past their body, but other than that I've had no issues at all. In fact I've found the controls pretty damn snappy!

Had this a couple time but then I used it to beat the final boss, so... yup!

@GiveUpNed said:

I just beat the game. Got most of the masks. Now what?

You complain more.

Bought it yesterday, played for hours until reaching chapter 12. The controls were frustrating for the first few chapters. But once I got used to it felt completely natural. By chapter 6, I was a total ninja.

Even so, it did cause me some repetitive stress injury. I seldom play keyboard-intensive action games so I've never had much problem before...but my PC station is definitely not ergonomic. Playing Hotline Miami for hours yesterday, with my hand perpetually strained in a claw shape rapidly hitting W,A,S,D,R and Shift, it gave me carpal tunnel-like nerve strain. Temporarily, at least. Arm felt so weird that it took me hours to get to sleep.

Keyboard and mouse controls do have drawbacks. But there's really no other control scheme that would suit this game, so there's no perfect solution. The controls would definitely lose something if it was made into a gamepad supported dual stick shooter.

I think it plays sooo much better with a game pad. I was have zero funs with KB/M; game pad gave me all the funs. I am just stuck because the game keeps crashing when I go to the second floor on chapter 10. So now I am waiting for another patch because this game is straight up busted for me :(

I can't use my xbox controller. The game keeps telling me to update my drivers to the latest version, which I do, from scratch. It's a bit uneasy with KB/M do entirely doable. Once I get these issues fixed I'll be able to approach the game better.

@Rhombus_Of_Terror said:

I can't use my xbox controller. The game keeps telling me to update my drivers to the latest version, which I do, from scratch. It's a bit uneasy with KB/M do entirely doable. Once I get these issues fixed I'll be able to approach the game better.

Try manually uninstalling your controller drivers then updating them. That might fix it.

@Ravenlight said:

@Rhombus_Of_Terror said:

I can't use my xbox controller. The game keeps telling me to update my drivers to the latest version, which I do, from scratch. It's a bit uneasy with KB/M do entirely doable. Once I get these issues fixed I'll be able to approach the game better.

Try manually uninstalling your controller drivers then updating them. That might fix it.

The game re-updated again to allow users to turn on the controller as it had prevent them from doing so, well at least me anyhow.

The game seems to have really specific zones of detection. Many times I pressed space or right click to pick something up and nothing happened, but I was a pixel or two off from where I needed to be. I found the first hour pretty janky, but at hour 7 on run 1.5 I'm basically one with the machine. So, yeah, they work. Just take some getting used to.

The bigger problem is not always being able to tell when a guy is dead or just knocked down if there's already blood in the area.

Edit: Forgot: the actually bigger problem is that hit detection is really messed up if enemies are too close. You'll both just swing/shoot awhile until someone dies.

@GERALTITUDE: Like when an enemy is occupying the same space as you? God that's frustrating, they usually manage to react as soon as they get back into a space they can hit me way faster too.

@Wampa1 Yup. Depending on where you are in a room/if you are near a door/if enemies are piling in through the door, it can turn into a real mess. And yeah as soon as the enemy is free they magnetically wipe you out in that way they do.

So I tried the Xbox gamepad controls and they're not too bad actually. You lose some of the advantages of the keyboard and mouse. Manual (from the hip) targeting isn't as exacting. You end up being less precise in managing multiple enemies with melee (IMO). Also you can more accurately pick up the thing you want to pick up. With gamepad, instead of a ninja, you become more like a flailing maniac, which is also kind of appropriate.

But either method works out in the end. The advantage to the gamepad is that guns are more useful since lock-on targeting is a lot snappier with the thumbstick than a mouse wheel (which doesn't seem to properly target half the time). Since clicking the thumbstick will center automatically on the nearest foe, this makes guns a lot easier to pick up and use in hectic situations. Also with the analog controls, I find it easier to avoid and outrun enemies (it also allows me to spin and move to the music, for funsies).

So not sure which I prefer yet. I like the cool precision of the mouse, but I also like how loose and crazy it gets with the gamepad.

So there's no way to change the controls? The spacebar seems pretty far when I could just be using my mouse's thumb button.

The controls of this game are more difficult than the levels themselves, I nearly flipped my desk over this a minute ago. I guess I'll just stop playing it.

I thought it controlled great... I always felt in control and all the deaths were my own fault. If that wouldn't be the case I definitely wouldn't have played it through. Weird.

Yeah, great game but the controls need some polishing, amongst other things. There were instances were I would kill myself on purpose only because the enemy or something bugged out and I felt like I cheated it.

Gotta say I'm with the OP. I know, I know... Get better at gamez noob, lol. I have no problem with hard games, Dark Souls was my GOTY last year, but I'm only in the prelude and getting nowhere with these dreadful controls. Comparing these poor controls to the intricate precision of Dark Souls' layout is a joke. Fuck this turd. Glad I only wasted $5 on this...