Ever since the PlayStation 4's announcement, the touchpad on the DualShock 4 has seemed like a bit of a gimmick. It's been employed, mostly, as a replacement for the select button since launch, but The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has a few more uses for the responsive rectangle that you may not be aware of.
Tapping it will, obviously, bring up the title's menu screen, allowing you to peruse the bestiary, track quests, and even view various gameplay stats. However, if you hold it down for a second or two, you'll be transported directly to your inventory page, allowing you to equip different bits of gear and see what you've got to trade.
Here's a top tip for you, though: slide your finger up while pushing the touchpad down and you'll be transported directly to the world map, cutting a couple of button presses out, and saving you precious time while you trace Yennefer's steps. Alright, it's hardly a game changer – but it's still a nifty little trick.
Update (17:30PM BST): As has been pointed out by many, you don't actually need to push the touchpad down while swiping up to access the map. A simple tickle will do the trick.
Comments 14
Hope to see more of this kind of integration, the world map swipe in particular
That last one is actually pretty helpful. It was starting to become a pain to keep going through the menus to get to the map.
More devs should use the touchpad on PS4. DS4 is the best controller this-gen. So, why not?
The same thing was employed on Dying Light, but with left, right, up, and down used to flick to different pages of the menu.
They should set Touch pad's "long press" action to quick save function!
@jocinetu an excellent idea. Loving this game btw
Awesome news!!!
Anyone else think the touchpad is rubbish? Good use of it here, but in my opinion they should ditch the share button and change it to an oldskool start button and have the touchpad as a qwerty keyboard. The touchpad on the back of the vita is useless as well.
@themcnoisy It's a bit meh, worse perhaps are the options/share buttons as a result of the touch pad being there. They arn't so bad but the start/select buttons were better than options/share.
After playing FFXIV: ARR on the PS3 and PS4, the touchpad is a necessity. I wouldn't be able to go back to the PS3 after learning how to use the touchpad to navigate menus and displays.
Warframe uses the touchpad for the skills, and I thought that was nifty. Generally multiplat games wouldn't be expected to make the most out of it. But I'd like to see most or all first party and second party devs take advantage of it.
@themcnoisy I also dislike the Touch Pad. So far I have not seen it used in any way that makes me think perhaps there's a future for this. It's just junk. I also dislike that horribly tinny speaker. More immersive sound they said? Immersive? There are musical greeting cards that have better sound quality. Then there's the useless light on the front that only serves to tell the person sat across from you your state of health etc. What I would really like is my PS3 controller's battery life, instead of wasting my power on these pointless gimmicks.
Enjoying this game - Thank you for the controller tips, which I wasn't aware of
I like to think of the DS4 in Wild Hunt as Geralts guild (wolf) medallion
Well didn't know that! Nice one!
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