A while ago I went out with some friends and we got to talking about video game controllers. And there I dropped a bit of a bombshell: I really hate Sony’s Dualshock controller for the Playstation anything. Like, I could write an essay about how much I dislike it.

Now full disclosure, I grew up playing Nintendo and Xbox consoles, having only just now adopted a PS4 as my first Playstation console. So I suppose I’m biased towards controllers that I’ve actually had a reasonable amount of time getting used to. But that doesn’t make for a fun opinion piece.

First off let’s talk about the incorrect position of the left thumbstick. Grab your Dualshock of choice in a nice relaxed grip and notice where your thumbs naturally lie. It’s over the D-Pad. If it’s not over the D-Pad, then go stand under a cold shower to cleanse yourself of your Playstation tendencies and allow your thumb to relax back into its natural position. The positioning makes sense as the original Playstation came out during the N64 era where no one was really sure this thumbstick thing was going to take off. The D-Pad was still the preferred method of control and the thumbstick was an experiment. Of course, the thumbstick became the preferred method of control in the 3D game era, but before Playstation could correct their erroneous assumption, the Xbox swooped in and claimed that thumbstick parking spot so the Playstation had to stick to its guns.

Now reach your thumb over to the left thumbstick. It’s quite the pilgrimage but you can do it. Is that comfortable? No, it’s not comfortable, especially after you just felt the sweet release of holding your thumb over its proper relaxing real estate.

Perhaps this difficulty is because I’m holding the controller wrong. I was told that the best way to hold the PS4 controller is to let it gently rest on my hands.

I’ve still yet to figure out how this works.

Based on this image I can say that the apparently correct method of holding the controller is to daintily hold it away from your hands like it’s made of an infectious slime.

Now let’s journey east and talk about the buttons. Unlike literally every other controller on the market, the Dualshock forgoes letters for shapes, a design decision that I recall from an interview being so that the controller is recognizable by all cultures. Which sounds great except for the part where all Playstation games that are released in Japan and the west have to reverse their main “accept” button. See in Japan, the red circle is known as “correct, accept, yes.” Whereas here in the States, a circle is a harmless enough shape, but the color red has very implicit connotations to “no, wrong, cancel.” So the Dualshock buttons are already failing at the one thing they set out to do.

Then you have the problem with using shapes instead of letters. Ignoring any further possible cultural collisions (I really can’t claim that green triangle doesn’t have meaning elsewhere in the world) shapes have no relation to one another. Take a look at the Xbox 360 controller.

The A button is located at 6 o’clock, with the B button at a 45 degree angle from it. Now we have a firm relationship between two letters. The X and Y buttons have this same relation, just a bar higher. It even helps that the X button is on the x-axis and the Y button is on the y-axis. Now we have real world knowledge to help ground our memory.

So what’s the spatial relationship between X and square? Where’s an obvious place to put circle? I was eventually able to justify the triangle to my muscle memory by thinking it was the top of the pyramid, but from start to finish of playing quicktime event collection Until Dawn, I was constantly mixing up Square and Circle. Square on the left, circle on the right… Square on the left, circle on the right. …Or was it circle on the left? Oh shoot, Emily died because I hit the wrong button. Certainly doesn’t help that pink and red are very similar colors. In fact, in some cultures, they’re considered the same color (add another tally to accidental cultural confusion.)

If there’s one design decision I like about the Dualshock, it’s that the one for the PS4 has that neat Cylon color bar in the back. Apparently its used for motion control if you’re actually using motion control for a game, but really the best part about it is that you can call it a Cylon color bar.