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Mad Catz Xbox 360 ARCADE GameSTICK |
Review By James Robbins
March, 2007
THE GOOD
This stick comes with three “free” games. Of course, I wouldn’t
consider them free, as the stick itself didn’t seem worth the original
price. In any case, here is a rundown of the games…
I think this is a new title for XBLA that takes the principals of classic gaming and adds some newer graphics and it has a pretty good feel to it. You move your paddle around the bottom of the screen and collect blocks from the top and push them back up to make groups of four. When you get a group of four, the blocks disappear and can cause a cascading block removal affect if done properly. There are lots of special blocks that remove rows or columns, etc. This title was a good choice to include with the stick as it makes good use of the “Spinner”. It was more difficult to play with the D-Pad or the analog thumb stick on the usual 360 controller. Over all, I’d say the title is pretty fun, and I’ll be going back to it. I think this game might work better with a more accurate control unit like a mouse or real arcade spinner or paddle. You can get a PC version (http://www.popcap.com/launchpage.php?theGame=astropop) as well as download the trial from XBLA.
Time Pilot
Ok, I didn’t play the original version of this game back in the
day, but I really enjoy the XBLA version. There are some updated graphics
and it had some good game play. You use the joystick to point your ship
where you want to go and it feels like it has an analog directional component
to it, even though it is 8-way control. Of course, you shoot the stuff
coming at you, and progress though time to fight better and faster enemies.
Again, this title was well selected for this stick, as the loose feeling
analog joystick component allowed you to swirl around and shoot where
you wanted to go most of the time. However, I preferred the analog thumb
stick on the original 360 controller for this game as it was easier to
control, and I got higher scores and farther in the game.
Frogger
Ok, everyone should know what this game is. The XBLA version has some
updated graphics and some interesting achievements to accomplish. Once
again, Mad Catz chose well as this game works decent with the
D-Pad. But not decent enough to be any better than the original controller.
It was pretty much the same experience with the stick and the original
controller.
“Spinner”
I keep putting that word in quotes because it isn’t really a spinner…
It’s more like a paddle, but not even that. When plugged it into
the PC, I could see exactly what it was doing. If you rotate it slowly,
it is hitting the D-Pad sensor slowly to the left or right. If you rotate
it more quickly, it is hitting the sensor quickly. That is why it worked
well for a game like AstroPop. I think this “Spinner” was
about as good as could be done considering there isn’t another way
to have fast analog control for a device like this on the 360. This is
the main reason I re-purchased the stick. I figured the $20 for the games
was good, but this “Spinner” was worth the other $6 of the
$25.99 I paid. Since the stick is square, it can be rotated and held in
different orientations in your hand. This worked well for the “spinner”
except for the fact the cord is in the way when rotated. This “spinner”
might be useful if the rumored Tempest and Warlords
are released for XBLA anytime in the near future. Of course, this depends
on how MS implements the control.
THE BAD
The joystick itself is loose and sloppy. They just added a plastic tube
to a regular analog thumb stick. You have to move the joystick too far
in any direction to make it worthwhile. It’s like they wanted to
give you the feel of an old Atari joystick, but tried to mix
it with analog control. It just doesn’t work well. The button on
top of the joystick is practically worthless, as well. It didn’t
feel like any top-fire button I have ever used on anything. It had too
much resistance and I couldn’t fire very fast with it. Oh, and since
it is just an elongated thumb stick, you could actually click the whole
thing down with a large amount of force, as if you would be using this
thing for any normal 360 game.
Now, we come to the shoulder buttons… Once again, there is no need to put a shoulder button on this thing. You can’t even reach the left shoulder buttons if you are using the joystick or D-Pad as your finger won’t reach. Ah, the D-pad, and you thought the original 360 controller had a bad D-pad. This one kind-of works, but not well. It is nice that it is slightly larger than the original 360 version, but that’s where the good stops, and the bad kicks in. If you only use it as a touch pad for up-down-left-right, then it functions properly. However, if you try to hit diagonals, or use it in other 4-way games where you are sliding your thumb around, then you find that the control sticks. For example, you are playing Ms. Pac-Man, and you are going left, then swoop your thumb down for the next corner, the D-Pad doesn’t release the diagonal direction. I verified this on the PC control panel, as well. If you swoop from one direction to another, it holds the diagonal even though you are clearly pushing up-down-left-right at the end of the swoop. I think it is a really, really bad pad. Heck, I did try two of these things, and both did the same thing. The second unit seemed a little better, but it still made some games unplayable.
Did I mention this thing has a cable on it? I am really used to using the wireless controller, and the cable is very annoying. I don’t think Mad Catz had an option to go wireless however, as MS isn’t allowing third parties full access to some design features yet. Lastly, the bottom of the controller is terrible! My hands were cramping up a lot while using it because of how non-ergonomic the unit is. The plastic is also very slick so you can’t get a good hold on it while using it. Yeah, I know, I had blisters back in the day with my 2600 joystick, but at least you could hold it without it slipping out of your hands. And last, and most certainly least, are the turbo functions. They weren’t intuitive to use at all, and I actually had to refer to the manual to use them. In any case, after reading the directions, I didn’t bother to try. I guess I just like the honest way of gaming. My fingers are fast enough for now. *grin*
SUMMARY
I really can’t recommend anyone buying this stick unless you get
it at half off like I did. And then, it’s only worth it because
of the games that came with it. There might be some merit to having
the “spinner”, but only if you must have a better control
for AstroPop. I don’t think this arcade stick is anything
like a real arcade stick, and it’s worse than the original 360
controller in all cases, except for AstroPop, thus far. I also
tried it in Dig Dug, Ms. Pac-Man, Gauntlet,
Robotron, and on Geometery Wars for the heck of it.
It failed to be worthwhile in all cases. Of course, it’ll never
get used for any Full 360 game, either.
When summer comes, I am going to tear this thing apart and build a proper arcade controller out of it. I think I may be able to salvage the “spinner” and make it a paddle on a nice large arcade box with real arcade sticks and buttons, etc…
Yeah, I may have been a little harsh. At least when you read the “good” reviews on some other non-arcade web site, you won’t be fooled into wasting your money without knowing what you are getting into. This isn’t an arcade stick. This isn’t an Atari stick. It isn’t a real spinner. It isn’t a good D-Pad. It IS just a few good games with a crappy plastic stick good for making a REAL joystick someday.
http://www.madcatz.com/Default.asp?Page=319&CategoryImg=Xbox_360_Controllers
James Robbins
http://www.jdrobbins.com
Gamertag: Bexox
http://www.bexox.com
