Background and Curriculum Vitae

My son and I decided to go wireless in our next buying round of X Box controllers. He and his friends have managed to go through a plethora of X Box brand and third party wired controllers, so we wanted a good practical and wireless controller for the X Box. We are both avid video game fans, and I have owned everything from Atari to X-Box. My son is 11 and has X-Box, Playstation 2 and GameCube, PSP, and Nintendo DS. He has put in enough hours for a masters in video games. Our X Boxes are system linked with wireless transmitters for really fun Halo and Halo 2 tournaments. (and yeah, he beats me, when the heck did the tables turn?) Wireless seemed the way to go!

First Experience with the Mad Catz! (and the price at Wal-Mart)

Our first choice was the small compact and twenty dollar Mad Catz MicroCon Wireless Controller. It comes in a clam package of heavy plastic that my son nearly cut his hand on trying to open.

After opening it up, we discovered that it needed 2 AAA batteries to work. (not the more popular AA, but the pain in the neck to find triple A batteries). Of course these were NOT included. I had a pair fortunately, and we loaded the controller up.

Basic Stuff about the Controller

The Wireless set up is pretty basic, you plug in one short end which has the wireless receiver into the X Box, and you hold the controller in your hand. It transmits across the room. The unit is the same layout as the basic X box controller, and fits comfortably in your hand. It does not have a vibration function like the standard X box controller. It is smaller than the standard X box controler, which I actually liked, it made it easier to hold. The Mad Catz we purchased was in Special Halo Edition X box green, so it matched our X box very nicely. It is also great to be free of wires, and to sit as far from the screen as you want without fear of the controller becoming unplugged.

But, does it Work?

My son was quite delighted to try the controller out as we had just purchased the latest NEED FOR SPEED - Most Wanted , the Black Edition at that! So into the X box it went. We fired up the DLP projector to play the game on our 105" Dalite Cinema vision movie screen, popped in the video game , set the X box for 480p and turned up the surround sound for a great driving experience!

At first, all was well, the buttons worked fine to start the game, and go through the menus to get into the setup he wanted. Soon my son was racing his Volkswagen Golf down city and country roads at 100 mph plus speeds. I laughed as my son crashed his car consistently to the left. He yelled, and said that our new controller was a piece of c**p and that he didn't crash his car, it was the controller. I tried it with the same experience. Perhaps it was the video game, it was after all preowned, so we tried Call of Duty - Finest Hour and found again that the controls don't respond well. Our soldier was quickly killed several times over. In went Champions of Norrath - Return to Arms, a game we had spent hours and hours (okay, days and weeks ) playing. We both knew the controls as well as our characters Trogar and Kayla, a fine level 38 Barbarian and Level 42 Wood Elf Archer Alas, the Mad Catz controller failed to provide the lightning fast reflexes that a barbarian or a wood elf requires in the world of Norrath. Neither does it respond with the reflexes necessary to survive on the beaches of Normandy in WWII nor the mean streets of Need for Speed.

NO, it doesn't

We won't be making the Mad Catz Wireless controllers part of our gaming system. We drove back to Wal-Mart and got our money back and purchased a Logitech Wireless Controller instead. One star.

Recommended: No