Truly a fantastic read..the magic of the rear touch
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-02/17/playstation-vita-rear-touch-screen
Reading the coverage for the device, I've noticed how much focus there is on the ramped up graphics and sound rather than the new ways you can interact with the device. Watching the kids try out the Vita I've been interested to see how they hardly noticed the visuals but found the touch screen and analogue sticks much more enticing.
To be more precise it was the surprise of the rear touchpad that they really liked. They had soon figured out a way to play Little Deviants that involved all three of them. One of them took charge of the front touchscreen, another adopted the face buttons and camera, leaving the oldest to look after the rear touchpad.
Before seeing my children huddled round the game I had thought that the rear touch screen sounded like something of a gimmick, Sony overstretching to find a point of difference in the crowded touch screen market.
Having tried it out, I'm a convert. In fact I wish it was more integral to the Vita. I could avoid leaving so many fingerprints on the screen if I was able to launch games and navigate systems menus via the rear screen. I also think it should mirror the front screen by default as well so that, if not being used for specific rear touch integration, you can access menus and functions in game.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss makes good use of rear touch to manipulate objects that need to be cleaned up by touching the front screen. My kids love this. I've taken to playing the main game while they are doing something else (a family benefit of having adult games on a handheld is being able to play them in the daytime) then hand them the puzzles to solve each time I encounter them.
I'd have liked to be able to throw grenades with the rear touchpad as the front screen method means I'm obscuring the very targets I want to aim at. The climbing and rowing with the rear touch is quite a nice, erm, touch, and of course you have the option to use the front screen if you wish.
Although I've not tried it yet, I like the sound of Virtua Tennis 4's support for rear touch on the Vita. It has a neat local multiplayer mode where two players control their shots with the touch inputs that I know my kids will love. It also enables you to navigate with front or back touch sensors. Sega is usually good at supporting new control systems (most often with Monkey Ball on the various Nintendo systems), but here it has rightly picked up on a much overlooked aspect of the Vita.
Not convinced? Nor was I until I tried it. Having done so I have to admit, much to my offspring's joy, that the Vita's rear touch panel is much more interesting than I first thought.
