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Ghost of Yotei Made Me Love the DualSense Again
What if we just applied haptics to everything?
In just seven hours of playing Sony’s hot new PS5 game Ghost of Yotei, I’ve experienced more fun haptic controller feedback than I have in the last several years.
When the PlayStation 5 first launched in 2020, I thought the DualSense was its secret coolest contribution to the advancement of gaming hardware. Sure, it had an SSD and a faster CPU, but I was personally excited that its haptic-infused controller and variable-tension triggers would help standardize the fun vibration stuff that Nintendo earlier launched into the world with the Switch’s “3D Rumble.”
Unfortunately, just as with Nintendo’s system, good DualSense support has been a bit light on the ground. Sony came out of the gate strong with Astro’s Playroom, showing off all the things the controller could do. And the recent full Astro Bot game kind of did those same things again. Few other games have really gone hard on the controller features. Third party support is often just a slightly more enhanced-feeling version of the standard rumble effects felt in games for decades now, or at best a mimic of known-quantity ideas like rain drops plinking across the controller. Even Sony first party support isn’t as pronounced as I thought it would be.
