Touch, tilt or gamepad: picking the right controls

The first thing I do in any new game is open the settings and look at the control options. Developers pick a default that shows well in a trailer, not necessarily the one that plays best in your hands.

For racers, tilt steering usually beats on-screen buttons once you trust it, because your thumbs stay off the track. For platformers and action games, the opposite is often true; a fixed virtual stick gives you consistency that tilt can't.

If a game supports a Bluetooth controller and you own one, it's almost always worth trying. Precision jumps and shooting improve enormously, and your fingers stop covering the screen.

The bigger point is to experiment. Play the first level three times with different schemes before you decide a game controls badly. Half the time the game was fine and the default just didn't suit you.