As most people can probably guess I’m a huge fan of cyberpunk. There’s something really cool about the idea of merging man and machine to create something that far exceeds the capabilities of any natural person. The Deus Ex series is the epitome of cyberpunk in the video game world so I was pretty excited when Square Enix announced a new new entry in the long running series. However, I was hesitant because it was announced for iOS and to this day I haven’t played a first person game on a touch device that had even remotely decent controls.
Much to my joy I think Deus Ex is the first game to finally get the control problem solved. Although Square Enix didn’t do anything revolutionary the little shortcuts make a world of difference. Moving around in the game is done with the traditional on screen “move” zone and “look” zone. Moving your finger in the “move” zone moves your character around and moving your finger in the “look” zone moves the camera relative to your character. Where Deus Ex improves things is that you can move to a location by double-tapping it. Although it sounds like a very minor addition it saves you a lot of finger waving. You can also target an enemy, which locks your camera on it for firing purposes, by tapping them.
I haven’t made it far enough into the game to make any kind of formal judgement by the controls have impressed me. With any luck we’re entering the stage of touch screen gaming where first person shooters become enjoyable.