What makes mobile controls actually good

After enough reviews you start to notice the same control mistakes over and over. A game can be brilliant and still be a chore to play because someone put the jump button where your thumb never rests.

The best layouts assume one hand where possible and let you reposition buttons where they don't. Dead zones matter too — a virtual stick with no dead zone feels twitchy and drifty. The games that let you tune this quietly earn a lot of goodwill.

Tilt controls are divisive for a reason. They can feel great in a racer and awful in a platformer, and they eat battery through constant sensor polling. I almost always test both tilt and buttons before judging a game.

My advice as a player: dig into the control settings before you decide a game feels bad. Half the time the default layout is the problem, not the game.