Be Excellent To Each Other

Red Faction: Guerilla has what I call 'auto-turny-track': if you face an enemy and strafe, you will 'tend to' face the enemy.

This is ghastly.

Furthermore, it's not made clear how long this effect lasts: what are the extremes where the enemy must be before the tracking is cancelled, or is it a time based effect?

I can't anticipate how the game will react to my input, making the game unplayable. (Remember the 360 demo for Area 51: Blacksite? You couldn't detach yourself from an alien once you engaged it. This was as frustrating as it sounds.)

They could easily fix this by MAKING IT OPTIONAL.

Mercenaries 2 did this as well, and I wish they would just knock it off.

I don't really like 'auto-aim' (where the shot will hit an enemy that isn't in the direct centre of the screen, because the game likes you) or crap inaccurate guns (where the shot will bog off wherever it likes, just as long as it isn't where you're pointing the crosshair at). Crap inaccurate guns make sense if you're going to sit there holding down the fire button, but your FIRST SHOT SHOULD HIT THE MARK.

As Resident Evil 4 & 5 and Dead Space rely on the player being able to make precision shots, so most of the time you're firing ATOM-WIDE NEEDLES that go EXACTLY WHERE YOU AIM THE LASER SIGHT. I approve.

I don't know if these games do the tracking thing, but I can't remember them doing it. (It's hard enough to the get the characters to turn as it is, without the game stepping in to assist.)

This thread came to me while I was playing Kane and Lynch, where your shots go all over the place with any gun except the M16. It kind of makes sense that you're inaccurate as you're either playing as a very tired one-eyed near death bastard who hasn't used a firearm in ages or a drugged up lunatic, BUT STILL.

I like Grand Theft Auto 4 because it has the shoulder aiming thing in it (making combat possible! A first for 3D GTA!), and your first shot will hit. Anybody who doesn't have 100% of kills in free aim mode on the stats page is a loser.

Your first shot hits in Max Payne 1 & 2 as well, which is nice. You can use the sniper rifle as an assault weapon like this.

Movement and aiming controls shouldn't be screwed around with, and your shots should go where you fire them.

I've always maintained that if the developers feel the need to have a non-optional abipity to track enemies to make things easier, they should probably have put in a control for locking onto them.

I think I've noticed this a couple of times in Red Faction but I wouldn't say it has rendered the game unplayable, far from it in fact, I'm still enjoying it more all the time after about 12 hours of play. Nearly all console FPSs do a bit of a fudge with the aiming don't they? Perhaps if I was looking for it then it might bother me.