The importance of Control

A long time ago…

I used to binge-watch AVGN a lot.
He was one of the very first YouTube channels that made rant videos about roasting old games with bad gameplay design.

However, there was one game among them which James Rolfe, aka “nerd”, could not speak so comedically.
That game was Castlevania, one of his favorite video game franchises.
And surprise surprise, it was a 2D Hack & Slash game.
On October 2010, He started making a different kind of video that was not your average rant video.
No, this was a retrospective series he made specifically for his favorite hack-and-slash game.

In one of his retrospective videos, he talked about one of his favorite Castlevania games – Castlevania IV.
There was one moment that caught my ears.

Notice how James does not even attempt to role-play as the angry nerd and instead gives his full honest opinion about the game.
It was a rare moment in the AVGN trilogy for James, and this quote is the one I carry with me to this very day.

So today

Whenever I research a game I really want to buy, I always check the quality of the controls the game gives me.

How does the basic movement of your character feel?
Can I execute a set of commands easily, or is it restricted?
If it is restricted, was there a good reason for it?
Does the character feel stiff or junky when playing?
How did the developers map the moveset of the character into the control?

There are so many things to cover in this post, so I’ll probably re-post or update the original if I feel like I missed something.
But I’ll try to do my best to explain every aspect I can about the sense of control.

Update

So, as I was starting to write one of my points, I realized just how long this post would be if I didn’t cut it into separated sub-posts.
Hence, why I’ll occasionally update the main post with new sub-posts.

Sub-posts

Advanced Movement and Maneuver

“Basic and Advanced Movement and/or Maneuver” is a subject that might seem simple at first, but depending on how developers implement it, it can drastically change the engagement of the game.

Last updated at

04/07/2025

One response to “The importance of Control”

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[…] Yes, in fact, but it’s very rare.I personally know a specific game that I mentioned in my earlier post about movement,which is a sub-post to my grandious mini project about “The importance of control“ […]