Annual Review: Six Gamepads

So What Do I Use It For?

To test these console-like pads, we first used programs we felt were designed for pads. The famous soccer game FIFA 2003 is tailored for gamepads. For more general use with action games, we chose Rally Sport Challenge, a racing game similar enough to an arcade one to be played with mini-joysticks and which exists on Xbox. I can tell you for starters that it's better to have a wheel. We also ran the latest Tomb Raider adapted for a pad like this.

Now back to Dual Action. For real pad games like sport, the buttons are perfectly accessible, but the D-pad is not so good. It is short on markings so it is hard to identify the eight positions exactly without having to think about it, and that means you lose speed in a game like basketball, though it didn't bother us in FIFA. The sticks are precise and their rubber grip makes them nice to hold. I must say that this pad is very precise for an analog device, so if you are looking for a console-like pad for PC and don't need any extras, you could do a lot worse than this honorable Dual Action sweetly priced at $23 (20 euros).