Ohh, I know the kind of thing you mean. I much prefer the precision of a plus shape, but each to their own.

Eight way, rather than the simple four way.

But aren't all d-pads 8-way through the combinations of two switches? I'm pretty sure the '8-way' ones don't have 8 switches.

Well, let me put it better. Instead of simply being the four way cross, its the 8 way circle, but I don't have a good example on hand.

I think I know what you mean, I just meant they can all do 8 directions.

Honestly, despite what others are saying, you won't be wasting the 30 dollar investment in a XBox 360 "Windows" wired controller. If you end up finding an incompatible, old title you can always work through that then, but odds are, unless you usually play old titles, you're going to be far better served with the 360 game pad than anything else, it's sturdy as fuck, there's tons of videos about how to take apart, clean, and mod it online (only need a cheap Torx-8 driver to do it, actually the Windows one supposedly only uses Phillips screws).

Avoiding issues with games a la Darksiders is probably going to be the better part of valor when measured against a supposed "old game" incompatibility that you may never end up encountering.

Do the Logitech controllers have issues with Darksiders? I ask, because they have an xinput mode which should appear to games as a 360 controller.

People have reported that, for whatever reason, Darksiders does not play well with other pads, even ones that use software to convert to whatever it supposedly wants as input. YMMV, I've never heard of anyone who's ever gotten it to work satisfactorily.

No, I have a Logitech f310 and I have spent almost 200 hours on the 2 games playing with x-imput mode with no trouble at all :)
However, their older controllers have issues like orcishgamer said.

I totally agree, this is what I've got.

There are a few downfalls but this is the best gamepad for now.

Some issues are that Logitech has made the two trigger buttons analogue which doesn't work well with some X-Input games that require a button that can be rapidly pumped - In such instances you either have to swap over to D-Input and map or edit the cfg file for the game and swap the functions of the shoulder buttons.

The other issue (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that you don't have the full movement with the analogues that the PS2 controller did so using the gamepad for most shooters is a lot more sloppy and you'll find yourself scrambling for the mouse for more precision control over aiming. There may be a way to fine tune the analogue sticks but I have yet to do so with the profiling software.

Aside from these two complaints, the gamepad has been total tits and the best one invented to date.
Also, the 'analogue' issue is intentional so that the pad can also manage flight game sims - hence the analogue triggers.

Yes, I have a wired "for Windows" 360 controller and it has standard Phillips screws (at least on the outside; I've never opened it).

Some developers have apparently implemented XInput in such a way that it looks for a particular hardware ID rather than just any XInput-capable controller. There have even been a couple of games that have weird problems with Microsoft's own wireless controller but not the wired one.

Workarounds like using x360ce or changing the controller's name in the registry apparently don't work for every game, so for now Microsoft's controllers are the safest choice.

That's easy to check as I have Darksiders. So what issues should I face with a non-MS controller that don't exist with the MS gamepad?

As said, Logitech F310 have both the XInput and DirectInput mode. It is not switched in software, but there is a knob in the gamepad itself to change the mode, without installing any additional software or drivers in Windows. Maybe you were referring to some older gamepads which supported _only_ DirectInput?

As whether issues with playing with older games with the XInput-only controller like the XBox one are relevant or not... we are in GOG after all, and many XBox gamepad owners have complained about e.g. some of the Rayman games in this forum.

The 360 controller is a DirectInput controller. The problem is that it reports the triggers as axes, so any games that don't support using an axis as a button would fail to recognise them for binding those functions. This can also double as a benefit, of course; DirectInput-only games that support a throttle axis will be able to see the triggers as analog inputs.

Logitech's controller presumably turns the trigger axes into digital buttons when running in DirectInput mode, thus avoiding this issue.

I just tried Logitech Gamepad F310 (in XInput mode, with the mechanical switch on the bottom of the gamepad) with Darksiders (v1.1), and I didn't see any issues. Seemed to work quite fine as far as I can tell, no problems with automatic detection, controls etc. And the F310 buttons are colored and named the same as in the XBox 360 gamepad, so when the game tells you to press Green A, Red B or left shoulder button, there is no guesswork involved either.

To me saying that one should definitely buy a MS XBox360 gamepad for his PC games is a bit like claiming that from now on PC gamers should only buy AMD CPUs and GPUs and steer clear of Intel CPUs and NVidia Geforce hardware because next gen consoles have only AMD hardware. Just to be on the safe side, you know?

I have many issue with GOG games using 360 controller. Mainly related to the trigger and analogue stick. Basically without mapping program like Xpadder, it's unusable for most of the time.