Hey guys, I've noticed there are several options for the premium games in iOS (premium would be all the complex "console alike" games, not casual) and some of them may work and other just ruin the game. I'd like to know what control type do you like for this kind of games. Since the AppStore it's becoming bigger bringing AAA games and better quality mobile exclusive games, the controls need to improve as well. Personally, games like Infinity Blade, Dead Space, Max Payne, Epoch and XCOM have made great controls and it's great to play on them. I haven't play Spiral: Episode 1 yet , but I've seen how the control game works and seems very good use of a touch screen device for gaming. There are several options like gestures and taps like Infinity Blade. This game has very good controls, but just for battles; the movement it's on-rails but the gameplay controls certainly works. For movement I think Dead Space makes a great job. I'm not fan of d-pad control, because it may work, but it needs pretty much improve. Unlike Gameloft's controls, which have poor configuration options and some of them are just simulating console controls. Dead Space use d-pad for movement on gestures based. I think it depends too much of the genre of the game. XCOM works very well on mobile platform, but a FPS should be very hard of controlling on a touchscreen device. What do you think guys? What type of controls do you like on premium games?
Totally depends on the game genre. For one, the gesture controls were made for strategy games. Warhammer Quest, FFT, XCom, Playdek games, Battleheart, Anomaly titles, Neuroshima Hex, Plants Vs Zombies, or even Pixel People, and all games similar to them are REALLY good with the gesture controls. Gesture controls also work flawlessly with adventure games in general. Telltale Games are a prime example, and so are titles like Yesterday, Jacob Jones, Phoenix Wright Trilogy, Sword & Sworcery, and even gamebooks. I seriously cant imagine virtual dpads for most of these. These gesture controls also work well in games similar to Infinity Blade. Thing is, they were made to be like that, semi-on-rails, and haters cant do anything about that. There have been attempts to make similar concepts into a free-roam variant, but none of them are even close to being fantastic. So far, I think the only one that is pretty decent in this conversion is Horn. Mech Pilot had potential, but the dev is too stubborn to try out different control methods and even witched (with a capital B) about it in the game's thread. One game that's REMOTELY similar to IB's semi-on-rails control system that works so perfectly is EPOCH. It is a totally different system, but i cant shake the fact that it MAY have been inspired by IB's behind the back combat system, controlled with getures, and the adventuring is somewhat on-rails. Rhythm games also are perfect with touch and gesture controls. Cytus, Demons Score and other similar rhythm games would almost always fail with fixed buttons, although i can think of some titles that may be able to do it correctly, like Audio Ninja (on soft-release). As far as Behind-the-Back Runners go, the gesture controls also work perfectly. With or without tilt, buttons usually fail on this one, but there are a few exceptions that got buttons integrated into the game perfectly. Temple Run titles for one have one of the best controls in a runner game. If it wasnt that good, it wouldnt even daddy-up this genre. TheEndApp, Pitfall and Indiana Stone are great examples. The no-tilt variants are also pretty fantastic, headed by Subway Surfers, Minion Rush, Agent Dash and One Epic Knight. One good variant to point out that also works well, is Iron Man 3's control scheme. Only that IM3's controls can be described to be much closer to SHMUPs rather than runner control schemes. As far as buttons go for BTB-Runner games that got it spot-on, are Into the Dead, Redline Rush and Blood Roofs. I cant really think of anything else that got it right like those 3. As for Virtual Sticks are concerned, floating vsticks have spoiled me too much, that i now find Fixed Vsticks almost unbearable. Floating Vsticks and it variants have been implemented perfectly by games like Dead Space, Bounty Hunter Black Dawn, Chaos Rings titles, NOVA titles, MC titles, Ravensword 2, and Heroes & Castles. This floating vstick has it's limitations though. And it usually has something to do with a limited 8-way-run movement. One example where floating vsticks could be better, is Chrono Trigger... and a few other Square-Enix ports. Buttons work perfectly if there isnt more than a few buttons in them. A good example for buttons are left+right+jump+action button platformers like LOE titles, Orange Pixel titles. Also, 2-button games like side-scrolling runners, headed by Polara and Punch Quest, and other 2-button games like CSR Racing and Quantum Legacy. In this regard, even if they somehow work, too many buttons still make a not-so-desirable control scheme, as in the case of most fighter games like SFVolt. With these mentioned, in general, i prefer gesture controls over buttons on the touchscreen. But there are great games that use button controls and turn out near-flawless.
Because of Dead Space, i hate Gangstar Vegas's fixed vstick. I can play it fine, but i definitely would take a floating vstick (or invisible floating vstick in the case of Dead Space and other FPS/3PS games)
Very good and complete reply Exact, I agree with you, it totally depends of the genre. Bladeslinger in my opinion was a great game, but the controls are very bad desing. If they have made a invisible d-pad like Dead Space or Chaos Rings it could work. I think for virtual buttons it's needed very much work and creativity. Gameloft's controls never worked well for me, specially adventure games like Wild Blood. iOS has great potential and it's awful to see people despising the platform because of the touchscreen controls.
