I don’t feel comfortable using a mouse and I have no interest in working on my mouse skills. I play all of my games with either a controller or a keyboard, and I’m looking for 3rd-person shooters I can play with a controller.
I’m mainly interested in action games. I’m OK with a world with gated areas a la metroidvanias/soulslikes, but I’m not interested in full-on open world or narrative-driven games.
Examples of 3rd-person shooters I enjoyed playing with a controller: Gungrave, Vanquish, and Evil West.
Examples of 3rd-person shooters I don’t enjoy and have no interest in: Uncharted, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, Dead Space, Control/Alan Wake, or GTA.
I mainly play on PC, Steam in particular, but I’ll boot up emulators if the game is worth it.
I was gonna reccomend splatoon 3 but its a switch game that’s primarily online multiplayer matches, and while you can absolutely play it with sticks only it REALLY shines brightest with motion controls (yes, really. Motion control for fps aiming is amazing), but lots of people do play with purely analog sticks for aim.
Probably not quite what you’re looking for, but it does have a single player story and a really cool looking rougelite/roguelike mode, though I haven’t played the latter. And then it also has an online cooperative mode.
Splatoon is a really unique movement shooter where shooting or attacking leaves colorful ink on the ground, which you can then swim in for mobility, health regen, and refilling your ink tank (your ammo). The enemy (in single or multiplayer) leaves their own ink color that slows you down, stops you from swimming, and slowly damages you when you’re standing in it.
The result is a really interesting, fast paced fps about controlling space effectively and out maneuvering your opponent with a wide variety of weapons all with their own playstyles- the unique weapons are a huge highlight of the game