Hori Turbo Controller for PS3 Sucks
After looking around this seemed to be the only Turbo controller that I could find for the PS3.
Why would you want this? What’s wrong with the 6 Axis?
Two reasons.
- Six Axis controllers are $50, they seem to last about 3-4 months if you use them hard as I do. The analog sticks go to hell, become less responsive and it becomes almost impossible to use the L3-R3 buttons underneath them.
- Some games really benefit from turbo, think Call of Duty, where your single shot weapons are now full auto’s.
The instructions for this thing were weak as most cheap over seas electronics are. But it is straight forward enough. The feel of the control is somewhat crappy. It’s a low end unit. The turbo functions work as advertised, but the analog sticks are crap. It often gets confused if you’re trying to move and run (using the left analog stick but also pushing it down to activate the L3 button, while looking around (using the right analog stick). You might do a 180, you might end up looking at the sky. Results are unpredictable.
It feels like the analog sticks are accelerated and non-linear. This blows when you need to make small critical adjustments (like sniping).
It has a switch with 3 settings for the analog stick movement, but none are good, medium is jacked up, fast is too fast, and slow is too slow. Even working with in game adjustments I couldn’t find a setting that was even close the the accuracy and quality of the Six-Axis.
Game controls are certainly subjective. The ergos are OK, it’s the mechanics of this thing that are jacked up.
It also burns a USB port because you have to use their dongle. Since the PS3 has built in bluetooth why hasn’t anyone reverse engineered how to make replacement controller that just uses that? Why do I need another dongle?
It also eats batteries. It burned through fully charged AA’s in 9 hours not the 400 hours indicated in the manual.
So if you are looking at this, you might want to pass.
Written by datapoohbah on April 4th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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