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Opinion: It's time to give up on first and third person shooters for mobile

It's time for a ceasefire

Opinion: It's time to give up on first and third person shooters for mobile

Last year, I had the honour of picking out some genre-topping games to recommend to new iPhone and iPad owners.

The first slot on the list was "action" and I had little hesitation in selecting the excellent first person shooter Neon Shadow because it takes great pains to make the genre work as smoothly as possible on a touchscreen.

There's an eager auto-aiming function to help you line up targets while your fingers scrabble to hold on to a flat device. And because it's easy to shoot by mistake, ammo automatically replenishes rather than coming in the traditional limited supply.

These innovations make it a fast and fun game to play on mobile. But if you step back a moment, you'll see there's a problem. They also go against the grain of what makes first- and third-person shooters so compelling.

Deus Ex The Fall

The glory of this genre is rolling in quicksilver action, twitching to make those micro target alignments that make the difference between a slick shot and a waste of ammo.

All the most spectacular moments I remember from Doom were successful panic reactions, often in desperate straits due to a lack of ammunition. That formula is still what drives the format today, and Neon Shadow takes away much of what makes it special.

Remember: this is the best of the bunch. We don't even want to start talking about most of the rest. Pick over our reviews of shooters on iOS and you'll find the same refrain, repeated over and over again.

Modern Combat 5
has "touchscreen controls that are slippy and convoluted". We described the controls in Deux Ex: The Fall as "not perfect" and "not intuitive".

Max Payne Mobile requires an "awkward fumble of thumbs". Tomb Raider has an "airplane cockpit of controls ... clumsy to the point of useless". Jet Set Radio is "hampered by control issues".

Tomb Raider

Seeing a pattern here?

You can overcome this, of course, by using a controller. That is, assuming you can afford the appreciable price tag on a mobile controller after splashing out on your iOS device in the first place. Not to mention the fiddle factor of trying to prop up the phone while you use your hands to grip the joysticks.

Performance issues

Even if none of that is an issue for you, there are still elephants in the room. It's impossible to escape the fact that mobile devices, powerful as they've become, just don't have the processor grunt of other platforms.

Again, this is a question of the important points of the genre being a bad fit for the platform.

Shooters have always been graphical showcases, demanding the latest hardware to deliver visual thrills. And in a three dimensional environment the quality of AI is also important. That also takes an awful lot of processor cycles to get right.

The poster child for all of these failures has to be Bioshock. Acclaimed as one of the finest shooters ever to grace PC and console, its mobile implementation got a paltry six out of ten. "Dogged by performance issues" is how we described it, with controls that are "unbelievably ungainly and awkward".

The unifying factors with all these games is a first/third person standpoint. It's the same old story, time and time again. This is a genre that requires too much precision and detail for a touchscreen controller.

Stop it

Regular readers who know I mainly play strategy games may be wondering if this screed is down to a case of genre-envy. Nothing could be further from the truth. I play lots of shooters and my favourite game of all time is an FPS: Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30. Which I played on a keyboard and mouse as the designers intended.

And I'm very sad to see the depths the franchise has sunk to on mobile.

Besides, there are plenty of great action games that have made the transition unscathed. Platformers are brilliant on a touchscreen, as are bullet hell shmups and rail shooters

Neon Shadow

So I just don't understand this hunger to play a genre on a platform that's inherently unsuited to host it. The fans must be there, otherwise studios wouldn't just keep on churning out badly designed rubbish and foisting it on to the App Store.

It would be better for everyone just to stop. Developers could work on better games, and gamers wouldn't have to surf through endless low-grade tripe to pick out the gems.

So do us all a favour. Give up on the twin-stick controls and pick up something awesome by Cave instead.

Matt Thrower
Matt Thrower
Matt is a freelance arranger of words concerning boardgames and video games. He's appeared on IGN, PC Gamer, Gamezebo, and others.