I find that I prefer playing games on my PS5 so that I’m not battling Windows updates, spending a bunch of time tweaking settings, etc. But the shooter genre is something I’m finding very difficult on a controller. I grew up playing Unreal Tournament, Quake, etc., and I find it extremely easy to jump into games like Titanfall 2, Doom Eternal, Arc Raiders, and more on PC. But when I go to play them on console, it’s very very challenging. Returnal is something that I would breeze through like it was nothing on PC. But I like the plug and play nature of console, plus being able to play on my couch easily. The controller effects are fun too. But every time I miss a dumb shot on a suicide bomber enemy, it makes me frustrated. Same thing with Control, Horizon Zero Dawn, and any other game that makes you aim.
Is there a trick to it that I am missing?
I suggest you play Portal. It’s an older game, and you might have better luck getting it on PC. On PS3 (and 360) it was part of a package called The Orange Box; you might check the PS Store for deals on that, if it’s available on PS5 (I’m not sure, my last PlayStation was/is a PS3). If you play it on PC, use a controller.
I’m kind of in the same boat as you. I played shooters on PC with the luxury of a keyboard and mouse. I remember my brother getting GoldenEye and challenging him to matches. I told him the only reason he won was because of the controller; with a keyboard and mouse, I’d win every time. Of course, the N64 also reversed its axes, so it was hard for me to control even in a “slower” game like Zelda 64 (Ocarina of Time). Later, he got Halo on the OG Xbox, and I thought it was an awesome game, but for the gamepad requirement. This time I got to prove myself — when Halo CE came to Windows, I beat it fairly easily with a keyboard and mouse.
After I got married, I wanted to get a PS3 (and eventually did get one), but my wife wanted an Xbox 360 so she could play online with her brother and some friends who had the same console. So there were some games I did okay on, but I could not get the hang of most shooters. I did okay in Fallout 3 and Oblivion though, but those moved more slowly than Halo.
I picked up The Orange Box on sale for $20 (it was never very expensive, IIRC, despite having four or five games on the disc) and I struggled to play Half-Life 2, which is what I bought it for. (My CPU+Motherboard came with a digital code for HL2 on Steam, but the computer was not powerful enough to run the game, so I bought it on Xbox.) I couldn’t do the controls. I left it alone for a bit, but then I tried Portal. It was a simpler game that didn’t push you to make moves right away (until much later, anyway).
If you’re not familiar with Portal, it’s actually a very simple concept. The Portal Gun shoots two portals, one orange, one blue. One’s fired from the left trigger; the other, from the right (and I forget which is which, it doesn’t matter, but you do need to know it, but fortunately there are visual cues in the game). Anything that enters one will emerge from the other in the same orientation with the same velocity. “In other words,” the narrator says, “Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.” At first you’re just doing dumb shit with the Portal Gun like bypassing walls and moving blocks around to place on oversized buttons.
The puzzle that taught me how to dance with a controller brings you to an acid pit, with several pillars rising up, to a goal even higher up. Behind the pit back the way you came is a pit that leads to nothing but floor. The first pillar in the acid pit is at your level, so what you’re meant to do is place a portal on it, then jump down the “safe” pit, and, as you rocket toward the floor, place the other portal on the ground. Thus, you come flying up out of the one on the pillar in the acid pit, and you have to orient yourself toward the next pillar up, and place the same portal you placed in the “safe” pit on this pillar, so that when you fall through the first one, you fly up out of the second one. You have to repeat this dance five or six times, alternating portals.
After that, I was pretty good at aiming with a controller. I still prefer kb/m for FPS games, but I’m totally comfortable with a controller. (Now, going from Xbox to Switch and vice-versa is tricky, because the Switch reverses the buttons. Switch says press A, it means the button on the right (e.g. Circle on a PS5 controller). Xbox says press A, it means the one on the bottom (X on PS5). X and Y are also reversed: Y is Triangle on Xbox, and Square on Switch, and X is Square on Xbox, and Triangle on Switch. I know this, but the muscle memory doesn’t work. But I can easily go between either and PlayStation because I know where those four symbols are. (Fun fact: my keyboard has the PlayStation buttons above the NumPad: Circle, Triangle, Square, and X. They’re programmable, but I’ve never set it up.)