I’ve lost far too many hours recent playing Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup, which Meri kindly bought me for Christmas.

I’m playing the PC version - I don’t own a TV of my own, let alone a console - but fortunately my brother bought a Sidewinder Gamepad ages ago (possibly for playing Magic Carpet so… ‘95?) which I have since aquired because he didn’t use it.

Why fortunately? Because this game, like many others out there, was designed, first and foremost, for use on a console. It requires you to have 8+ directions, and 8+ special buttons at you fingertips and the ability to use, sometimes complicated, combinations of these - fine, if you have 3 hands, but a bit tricky otherwise.

One amazon review says

“I became frustrated and annoyed whilst trying to control the characters movements with several different keys scattered across the keyboard as well as using the mouse at the same time”

I can relate to this - I’ve never managed to get the hang of using keyboard and mouse at the same time (I think I’m the only person I know who can die on the training mission in Half-Life) I just don’t have the coordination - and I doubt I’m alone in this.

So my advice for today:

If you want to play a game for console - play it on something that acts like one.