Ideal for the lazy and mono-armed
Sandio have announced the 3DGame O’ mouse, which they claim will give you an unfair advantage in FPS games, RTS games and also be a boon for 3D graphics designers.
We’ve had a play with the oddly named 3DGame O’ and, without wanting to put a downer on it, it’s a mouse with three ‘hat’ switches, just like you’d find on the top of most joysticks.
Click for larger imageWhat you do is map these extra switches to functions within the game or app, allowing you to free up your keyboard hand. According to the press stuff here, gamers found they saved time, had more control and access to other non-movement functions (such as weapon switching) whilst still having full control over their in-game character.
In practise, though we only had a short play with the 3DGame O’, we did find that WSAD was far more comfortable. The thing is, the 3DGame O’ is one of those things that could pay off if you persevere with it. As it was, we found that using the top hat switch in replacement of WSAD resulted in a confusing predicament for your hand… to circle strafe you essential want to go in two different directions and doing that on one mouse is a bit like trying to pat your head, rub your stomach and circling your left leg anti-closkwise…
Click for larger imageRTS games are different, you can use the hats to move your view without having to scroll to the edge of the screen and pan and tilt the view without having to hit the CTRL or ALT keys, which was very handy. Similarly, in 3D design apps the 3DGame O’ was quite intuitive to use with the hats controlling the view and the mouse itself doing its usual stuff.
Still, given that we only had a brief go, we’ll withhold judgement on the 3DGame O’ until we’ve had a sample in for review.
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