Esteemed internet semi-stranger [Nephologist],
I usually agree with much of your opinion on other topics and even within this thread, but these two paragraphs had me cringe with horror:
Call me jaded, but in a game designed for consoles and ported to PC as a afterthought, I don't expect the level of attention to a PC only control scheme like M&K. Maybe in a perfect world with unlimited budgets it should be, but alas.
The one ray of sunshine I see is that more and more games and being developed with both console AND PC in mind. In those cases, both control schemes are taken into consideration during development. I think Skyrim could be taken as a decent example of this.
While I agree that a game of almost any quality designed for consoles is very likely to play best on consoles by sheer design, that also means that it may play severely less good on different platform with its own combination of input/output devices, habitual playing arrangements, interface conventions and, not least, player culture/epectations. Even a console game that is quite good may actually play abysmally on PC to the point of its retained strengths simply not overcoming its adopted weaknesses.
Imagine Rock Band on PC, if you will. Of course, opposed to the other way around, it is possible to turn your PC platform into a good approximation of a console experience, if that is what you wish for, and then the problem becomes moot. But you have to accept that some gamers are simply not interested in doing that for good reasons, one of them being that it then quickly becomes cheaper to directly buy into the cross-subsidized console arrangement, another that the console experience just doesn't appeal to them.
The same goes for porting the other way, of course: there was never going to be a truly enjoyable Ultima 7 for consoles as it was totally designed around a mouse and a desktop arrangement for an audience used to drag-and-drop. And indeed, when it was converted, it had to be severely redesigned for playing with a controller, and it still remained clearly inferior to the original.
Frankly I've not come across a PC-to-console port that more or less assumed you were playing the game using a mouse and a keyboard (but a few did support that!), even though sony boxes have offered that option for the last 15 years and peripherals have been available readily and cheaply.
Games expecting PC gamers to use controllers with have become a thing because enough PC gamers have accepted and bought such games (and thus, purchased and installed a peripheral that is at most adequately suited to playing in a chair at a desk in front of a PC screen).
I believe saying that converting a game to PC "as an afterthought" is unfortunate is actually being very nice about it. More likely, it's a quick cash-in attempt.
I don't think we should be happy or even content "to be getting the game at all". If a company wants to sell their game to a different audience, we (the consumers) shouldn't give them a free pass for being generous but expect them to make a serious effort and judge the product as a whole accordingly.
Your ray of sunshine, alas, is my anathema. Multi-platform by its very definition caters to the weaknesses of all platforms and to the strengths of none. Thoughtful design around this fundamental problem may - at the cost of certain restrictions - significantly alleviate this, yet all versions are going to suffer from the decision (unless one is the "leading platform", turning all others essentially into ports).
Skyrim, as good many of its components are, and even if I found my - heavily modded - gameplay on PC highly satisfactory, still suffered greatly from its console-based restrictions, and I don't doubt the same to be the case looking at it from the other side.
That being said, there are of course the simple (or not so simple) economics of game development that simply make it highly unlikely to sustainably fund a game of Skyrim's scope on a single platform, especially the PC. I also agree that crossovers between platforms do enrich both cultures (as long as one doesn't end up supplanting the other).
But charmingly-monikered HNR;B1 just didn't make the required effort in my book, and they deserve to be called out for it. Plus, of course, to add insult to injury, there is to my knowledge not even a doe-eyed sinister PCMR supervillain-girl to optionally upstage the four console trollops!
