I was at Wal Mart and saw that they had a few of these for about $25. They look like X-Box controllers and I was thinking of buying one because I hate playing games on a key board.

Anyway, does anyone know if a controller would be good for these types of games:

Battlefield 1942 (and all the expansions plus Vietnam)
Call of Duty
Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Are their any drawbacks, or setbacks that make either a keyboard better or worse than a controller?

I was looking at these controllers here:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...3A95337%3A4441

As you can see, I mainly play shooters on PC so I can go online. I actually havent played these games in awhile though and I want to ask as a follow up, when reinstalling these games, do I have to download each and every patch as it was released, or would the latest one suffice?

Thanks to all that help out, I really appreciate it!

I only use a controller on PC for a few games like flight sims, racing sims and console ports. For shooters I prefer mouse and keyboard, and a lot of people will tell you that nothing on the PC will beat a good mouse and keyboard when it comes to first person shooters.

Usually when you install a game you only need to download the latest patch, but always read the readme file to be sure.

I just bought a converter for my gamecube controller on ebay for $5. Converts it to USB and you can use it on the PC. I only use it for emulator/ROMs games though.

You can pretty much get any kind you want from SNES to N64 to Xbox, Genesis, etc.

Generally, no. I have a joystick for flight sims, and a gamepad I hardly ever use.

KB and mouse for most everything. Add joystick for Mechwarrior and Flight Simulator. Considering buying a wheel and some driving games.

IMHO controllers are for consoles, or emulations thereof.

I use this:
http://www.radioshack.com/product.as...ct%5Fid=26-304

I haven't had any problems yet, although the major downside is that you can't map buttons to keyboard keys. But almost all emulators now have gamepad support.

This is what I did also. Got a $5.00 converter from ebay, but some specialty game stores sell them also. Mine works for PS2 and N64 controllers (weird combination). It makes the computer recognize it as a 16 button joystick, and keeps analog support for the sticks.

Playing shooters with a gamepad, while it can be done, is a terrible idea. There is far less precision and most of the time, not enough buttons for all the commands you need to use.

I have a gamepad for my PC, but i only use it for sports, racing, and emulators.

The Logitech Dual Action gamepad is a great controller for the PC. It looks exactly like a PS2 controller, same layout and everything.

I'd recommend it if you want a cheap, reliable controller.

I use a FireStorm Dual Power 3 gamepad. With their software, it supports full keyboard and mouse emulation so it can be configured to work with a FPS game. I use it with stealth and action games on my PC and it works great. It's not as precise and keyboard and mouse but that's all a matter of personal preference.