Re: Xbox360 - mouse+keyboard?
- From: James Luff <lufferov@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:36:16 +0000
Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:
I suck suck suck suck suck at FPS games with a joypad. I've tried for
a week and it's still just a complete pain.
Has anyone tried the http://www.xcm.cc/XFPS_3.0_Sniper.htm or any
other method of using mouse+keyb with a 360?
Yes, I have. I posted my impressions on this group about a month ago. I searched for it and have included it below:
Following on from the recent question about keyboard / mouse support for the 360, I discovered the XFPS 360 Pro which allows a regular keyboard and mouse to be used on the 360 to replace the standard controller. In fact it also has a port that enables you to use a PS2 dual shock controller as well.
I decided to buy one because I have never been able to adapt to the dual stick control method for FPSs. It arrived yesterday and I've spent a few hours giving it a good test, mainly on Halo 3. Here are my impressions:
Firstly it's quite expensive, at nearly £60 including P&P it's not cheap if it doesn't do the job. You also need a regular wired 360 controller to enable this to work, so if you have a nice wireless controller set-up you need to factor this into your costs as well. Though any cheap 3rd party controller will suffice since you won't actually be using it. The controller simply plugs into the device to fool the 360 into believing a regular controller is attached.
The whole thing works fairly seamlessly, plug everything in to the ports, both USB and PS/2 sockets are supplied depending on your keyboard and mouse connectors and the 360 controller. Turn on the console and it should all just work! There are only 2 USB ports on the device so if your keyboard and mouse are both USB you will need to hot swap the controller once you have the console switched on.
In use the mouse becomes the right analogue stick and WSAD take the place of the left one. Left click is RT and right click is LT, this is all very natural to a PC user, although things can get a little confusing when dual wielding because the triggers are back to front.
Other controls map to various keys such as A - space, B - Ctrl etc.. I won't bother to list them all, suffice to say all of the controls have a keyboard mapping. What's even better is you aren't stuck with the defaults, you can flick a switch to put it in program mode and then reconfigure and re-map whatever controls you want to your own preference. From this point of view things couldn't be better, it works straight out the box, has full customisation and is very easy to use.
Actually playing the game was a breath of fresh air for me, suddenly I could look where I wanted to and aim at what I wanted to aim at! Gone was the frustration of fumbling with the analogue stick to get the sights to line up with the target, or looking at the floor when getting shot at and trying to turn around, before dying hopelessly.
The look speed was a bit of an issue at first, it was very slow to turn.. much like the controller, except with a controller you just push in a direction and keep turning. With the mouse you have to keep lifting it back to centre again. This was obviously no good since now I didn't have time to turn before being shot! Fortunately, once again the designers have thought of this and have included two dials on the side of the device for mouse sensitivity in both X & Y directions. There are 16 settings in total and it helped considerably to speed up my turning. This was also used in conjunction with the games settings to turn the look speed up to maximum and things started to feel a lot more natural. Still not as perfect as on a PC, but hundreds of times better for me that a controller.
After getting used to it in campaign mode for a while, I decided to test my skills on-line thinking I was bound to have a distinct advantage. I jumped into my first match with much enthusiasm, only to be given a quick lesson in how bad I really am! I lost or came second to last in every match I played still, I was slightly disappointed that I hadn't done any better. But it did lift my kill scores, before with a controller I would get 1 kill if I was lucky. Now I was able to get on average 10, so a huge improvement for me. However, rather than giving me the distinct advantage I was expecting, I feel it just levelled the playing field.
To summarise, if you are like me and have a love for WSAD and can't abide dual stick controls, this simply has to be a compulsory purchase for you. It does everything you could want and works well too, it doesn't do such a good job with other game genres though. It was designed with the FPS in mind hence the name, but it will still work. With a PS2 pad connected everything just maps to the obvious equivalents and does a good job, so if that is your controller of choice it's highly recommended for you too.
Just about the only thing that doesn't seem to work is voice comms, even with the 360 controller left plugged in I couldn't get voice to work through this. That may just be me though! If any of you have any questions about it fire away, I'll do my best to answer them!
--
regards, James Luff
Gamertag: Lufferov
"There are 10 types of people in the world:
Those that understand binary, and those that don't."
.
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