Simplicity in use
The touch screen itself if a joy to use and responds to the strength of touch as well as touch itself, but the stylus is essential. Unlike with my PDA where I can use my finger most of the time, the DS touch screen needs something hard pressed on it to respond. The stylus that slots in the back of the unit does the job well, but is just that little bit too short for adult hands, another indication that this is aimed at younger gamers.
This view is further enhanced by the lanyard that comes with the DS. Looking like your standard wrist strap thing that no-one ever uses, the lanyard has an extra bit of plastic on the end. The idea is you position the plastic over the pad of your thumb or finger, tighten up the loop to hold it in place and then use near-direct finger contact to do whatever you need to do on the screen. This is a superb idea which is put to brilliant use in Metroid, except that for large hands, the lanyard just isn’t long enough to reach comfortably to the screen. Ideally, you’d like to loop the lanyard under the console as you use it, but it’s too short for that. Come over the side and it gets in the way of your fingers and come over the top and it gets in the way of the screen. The solution is to unhook it from the DS and then use it… but that’s damn fiddly and I’ve misplaced it twice that way already.
That touch screen really comes into its own when your gaming, provided the developers have thought about how best to utilise the screen’s abilities. Each DS sold in the UK comes with a demo version of Metroid Prime Hunters, which is part of the successful series from the GC. I tell you now. Nintendo have unwittingly shown the future for controlling first person shooters on console platforms and it’s so simple, you’ll wonder why no-one has done it before.
In Metroid, all the action takes place the top screen with the d-pad controlling your movement and the shoulder buttons serving for fire. Now here’s the clever bit. With the plastic pad on your thumb, you use the touch screen to control your view in the top screen. Genius, sheer bloody genius! Within seconds of firing up the game for the first time you’ll be circle-strafing like a pro, whipping through 180degree spins and pulling off sniper-like shots with no trouble at all. Without doubt, Metroid has shown what that touch screen can and should be used for.
So, all we need now is for someone to take the touchpad technology we already have in millions of laptops all over the world, mount that on a gamepad and make it compatible with the leading consoles and we’ll be able to play FPS games on consoles without feeling stupidly clumsy and without the developers having to either dumb the game down or help the player with auto targeting and the like. Hear that, Mr Hardware manufacturer? Go on, toddle off and fit a touchpad to a gamepad and send me a modest 20% in royalties, thanks.
After having gotten so excited by the touch screen, the rest of the DS’s buttons are just standard really. The D-pad feels ‘clicky’ and responsive though obviously lacking any sort of analogue input, the action buttons feel soft but responsive and the shoulder buttons feel, well, soggy. They all do the job without any problems, but compared to the PSP, the buttons just don’t have the same positive feel.
