The iPhone FPS: thumbsticks down?

We don’t like no touchscreens round these parts.

Gameloft’s on a bit of a roll in the iPhone shooter department. The suspiciously familiar Modern Combat: Sandstorm hit the App Store late last month, with reviews ranging from the positive to the ecstatic - No D-pad hails it as the “First Great iPhone FPS” – and yesterday the company wheeled out Nova, a space marine blaster which isn’t lightyears from certain Bungie projects. 

Trailer and musings after the jump.

All we need now is something set in a dystopian future with lots of simulated physics, and the iPhone will have attained FPS parity with the PC. Or maybe not.

Both Gameloft shooters make use of the somewhat sticky “virtual thumbstick”, fast becoming a standard feature of App Store action releases. Coincidentally, CNET’s just run up a short, succinct whinge about the absence of real, honest-to-goodness buttons on the iPhone and iPod Touch. While it’s great to see big-boned PC and console IPs on Apple’s wafers, the site writes:

…the way it currently stands, controlling such games on the iPhone or the iPod Touch is a frustrating mess. Players must navigate using a virtual D-pad, which isn’t able to provide the accuracy or physical feeling an actual control pad offers on the PSP and the DS. We’re delighted to see franchises like Madden and Assassin’s Creed head to the platform, we just wish there was a better way to control these titles. Until that day comes, iPod Touch and iPhone games will be stuck under a glass ceiling of shake, tilt, and tapping.

Truer words were never typed. Somehow we can’t see Jobs and co rupturing their multi-billion-selling brainchild’s clean, uncluttered lines for the sake of some picky Counterstrike vets, but a man can dream.

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