Bioshock 2 – xPadder profile – for xbox 360 controller

Edit: Most people won’t need this anymore, as Bioshock 2 now finally includes native controller support! Steam versions of the game should already be updated. Existing versions also include Minerva’s Den free!

 

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xPadder allows you to use controllers with games that only support keyboard and mouse. You can share profiles for games and controller.

Here’s the best one I’ve found for Bioshock 2, with some minor improvements:

Bioshock2.xpadderprofile

(NOTE: This is just a .xpadderprofile with a dummy extension to get around some silly upload restrictions. Remove the .docx extension from this file and open it in xpadder to use it.)

This will work with Bioshock 2’s default key bindings, so no fiddling needed.

It improves on one I found online, it’s about as good, and intuitive, as possible.

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I need to use a proper game controller for PC games, because I get RSI from using a mouse and keyboard.

Unfortunately, a lot of PC games don’t support controllers very well. Some have no support, others have very limited or broken support (for example, one of the analog sticks won’t be recognised). This happens even in games where controllers are a better choice (Beyond Good and Evil and Fahrenheit have broken support) and/or the game is a console port (or also available on consoles, e.g. Bioshock 2 has no controller support(!)).

For these games, I use special keyboard/mouse emulation software – programs that accept input from a controller and translate it into mouse movements and key presses.

I’ve used a free one called ControlMK for years, but it has it’s limits:

  • It doesn’t work with every game (not sure why)
  • It’s a bit tricky to configure – hard to figure out which button maps to which button number.

The end result is the eternal problem of PC gaming: the time wasted configuring the game before you can play it properly. Tweaking graphic card settings and fiddling with control mappings was actually somewhat fun  when I was a kid (and beneficial; it taught me a lot about computers). Now I have very little time to game, and I’d really like to spend some of it actually gaming.

So, of course, I asked a question about it on the Gaming StackExchange.

As one answer recommended, I ended up buying one called Xpadder.

It’s interface allows you to use an image of the controller (make your own or use one of the many images on the Xpadder site), with each button in the correct place, which really saves a lot of time – like this. So far, it also works in games which only partially worked with ControlMK. It seems to have an active community and lots of extra features too.

There is a functional (but older) free version if you want to try it or can’t afford the $10 (or so, depends on country/currency, I think) to buy it.

Saved me a lot of time, I recommend it.