Nacon Revolution
Shooty Shoot
The first “Pro” controller for the PS4 has arrived (23/12/16) and this one, the Nacon Revolution, comes with a hefty £89.99 price tag, but comparing this to the Razer Raiju due at the end of January costing a whopping £149.99, it ALMOST seems like a steal! So after much deliberation I bought one and these are my thoughts.
There are 2 main things we notice about the Revolution upon seeing it for the first time. Firstly, the sticks are in the Xbox style configuration, now personally I have little preference, I like the Playstation layout, I like the Xbox layout, and I can alternate between the two without issue so for me this was not a selling point but I know a lot of people prefer this. Secondly the pad is wired, now the reasoning for this is supposedly input lag reduction etc, but honestly I am not bothered, I have to play with the wire most of the time anyway as my kids never put the pads on charge so they are always dead or close to it every time I come to play anyway.
Touch My Nubbins
Upon closer inspection you will notice that the 4 main buttons, are larger and slightly closer together than the original layout which I was initially worried about due to my huge thumbs but this has not been a problem at all. There are also 4 buttons on the rear of the pad which can either be mapped to any other button or you can assign a macro to each of these, more of that below. There is a ring of light around the right stick which I absolutely love just because it’s shiny and the one thing I am a little worried about is that there is no light bar, which may be an issue with some VR games that use it but I am yet to test that far.
Now for the bits you can’t see. Pretty much the only thing I don’t like about the controller is the vibration. It’s there and it works but it feels a bit off? It is hard to describe but it’s almost too high pitched, doesn’t feel bass like enough for my liking but its not something that bothers me tremendously. Quite a nifty option here is a removable chamber on both sides of the controller that lets you add weights to the controller to suit you, 6 weights are included, 2x 10g, 2x 14g, and 2x 17g.
The chamber can take 2 weights in each so you can change it about to your liking. I like a fairly weighty pad so this was great for me and went for the 10g and 17g in each side so that it was heavy but with the option to increase a little more should I want to. Now be warned, you need to use a little plastic “key” thing to turn each one to pull it out and the chambers on mine were really stiff and I basically mangled the cheap plastic key and had to use a screwdriver but that left a small mark on my shiny new pad.
Programmed For Success
In addition to the programmable buttons on the rear, you can also change the sensitivity of the right analogue stick, ideal if you are looking for extra precision on your FPS games but not something that I can say I need. There are also up to 4 “profiles” that you can set up, meaning you can set one up for some of your favourite games or genres.
I have yet to make the most of this but have so far set up one profile for EVE: Valkyrie so that I don’t have to let go of my left stick to press up on the D-pad to drop a drone, I can press one of the rear buttons instead, and a Street Fighter profile for Cammy so I can Cannon Spike and Spiral Arrow from either side at the touch of a button which is pretty cool and may experiment further with combo’s. When setting up the macros you have to select the delay between each press so there is plenty to play with.
To do all of this you need to plug the pad into a PC and download the companion program. Although this looks pretty shiny it is pretty fiddly and takes some getting used to, and if you don’t switch you pad into “Advanced” mode before connecting then you will wondering why you can’t change anything (like I was!) for a while but you get there in the end.
Electric Company
I have tried this with a few games now and have varied experiences. In Dark Souls 3 I noticed little difference and the only difference with Street Fighter was the benefit of the macros but then I tried it on EVE: Valkyrie and I could really notice the benefit of the 46 degree movement of the analogue sticks, I found it much easier to perform small corrections and it was an absolute joy to control. The sticks don’t feel quite as stiff as the original Dual Shock 4 and this means it is easier to do smaller movements.
The reason I went for this instead of waiting for the Raiju are multiple. Firstly, £149.99 is just a little too extreme. It wasn’t long ago that the console itself was selling for that price. Secondly, the shape and the shoulder buttons are more like that of an Xbox one controller and although I do not mind the shape I really hate the shoulder buttons on those. Finally, 2 of the shortcut buttons are placed just past the R2 buttons towards the centre and these just seem really badly placed to me.
Overall I am happy with this. I don’t think it’s going to make me a better gamer, and I don’t think this is a “must buy” by any stretch but if you are thinking about getting a new controller and fancy spending a little more for something that’s a little different with some nice features, then I would recommend this.
If I had to score this controller I would give it a 8/10.
