Ludicrous Filler Post! or: Deathadder Review (of sorts)

Acutely aware of the recent post drought, I am going to attempt a review feature of my current mouse, Razer's lovely Deathadder. Stand back, citizens, this may be horribly unprofessionally written.

I mentioned in a previous post (not that anyone read that or will, indeed, read this) that I own and use for my daily browsing and nightly pwnage a Razer Deathadder mouse. If you remember, I claimed it was like a Space Marine's trusty chainsword. Although this may have seemed merely an idle bit of Games Workshop geek's classic excessive devotion (a right, nay, duty held by all those who have played any Warhammer tabletop game), there is a grain of truth in it. Like that chainsword, it is my ever-present companion. Like that chainsword, it has joined me for countless battles. Like that chainsword, it serves to defeat my foes, whatever form they come in, be it alien, terrorist, zombie, gangster, or, indeed, large russian man with minigun. The comparison was not as minor as it initially appeared (not least to myself).

So, Razer. Razer have been making gaming mice for uberpros (like myself) since the Boomslang, way back in 1998. This was the first ever 1000dpi gaming mouse and was, in many ways, responsible for the emergence of professional gaming as a phenomenon. Chaps like f4tal1ty basically became what they became thanks to the sponsorship of Razer and the pwnage channeled through their mice. Since then, Razer have been making sweet looking, high performance mice for gaming. One of the more recent examples is the Deathadder.

I bought my Deathadder shortly after getting a new computer and thinking to myself, "Novelty car shaped USB mice are entertaining enough, but something more effective would perhaps be appropriate." So, to Microplay, my local LAN centre and purveyor of tools of pwnage, where I picked up both the mouse and a corresponding Goliathus mat. To be honest, I am very pleased indeed with both. Admittedly, I have never owned a gaming mouse before, but as far as I can tell, the Deathadder is a goodun. The mouse will run out of the box, but it is rather sensible to install the supplied driver software. This installation was painless, and vastly empowering- it allows for customisation of the buttons, including the two side buttons. On mine, one is set to doubleclicking (purely due to laziness on my part) and the other is set to adjust one of this mouse's most intriguing features- on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment.

I say this is interesting, because it is something that had never occurred to me as necessary, but having it, seems a very good idea. On-the-fly sensitivity allows you, with the press of a side button and a scroll of the wheel, to change the sensitivity of the mouse. Upon doing so, a small, unobtrusive bar appears at the side of the screen, showing the current sensitivity setting, and allowing you to change it whichever way you fancy. This can be done at any time- on the desktop, in the midst of a firefight or even while writing a blog, with such great ease that it seems foolish not to adjust it. Switching between high-sensitivity for gaming and lower sensitivity for normal use is staggeringly simple. This is not the limit of the use, however- if, playing Scout in my beloved Team Fortress 2, I decide to switch class to Sniper, I can crank the sensitivity right down from the maximum (as needed for the rapid Scout's Scattergun) to a medium sensitivity (allowing me to miss headshots with huge precision). This is what makes this feature so useful to a gamer (obviously it does not only apply to TF2). My one gripe is that not all games will display the sidebar correctly- some show it with considerable flicker, for example. This does not render the feature unusable- it merely hinders the use.

Yeah, we got pictures now. This one shows how little effect adjusting your sensitivity has on batting people to death.

Onwards, brothers, to aesthetics. Allow me to assure you, reader (yes, I mean there is but one of you), that I would be prepared to stand up before a jury of my peers and assert that this mouse looks freakin' sweet. The rubberised palmrest arches gracefully up into two oversized buttons around the blue glow of the scroll wheel. Also glowing away is the three-headed snake of the Razer logo, bang in the centre of the palmrest. The steady pulse of this suggests to me a relaxed but great power, like the engine flares of an interstellar battleship at high orbit. This is never anything other than cool as hell, though, unless you have had a nasty accident, it is not visible while the mouse is in use.

Glowing merrily away.

The scroll wheel offers good grip for all your weapon switching needs, but is a click action type rather than a smooth one, betraying this mouse as a tool for gamers. Some may prefer a smooth scroll, but they aren't writing this, are they? Another matter of preference comes in the very shape of the mouse- it's for right hands only. This does not strike me, a left hander, as an issue- neither I nor any of the multitudinous lefties I know use their mouse in their left hand, but I felt I owe my readers the truth in these matters. The rubberised palmrest gives good grip, too, although the side buttons are glossy plastic and do not share this quality. This transition from gloss to matte does, however, add to the striking nature of the mouse's appearance.

Finally, performance. This is pretty impressive. The mouse is equipped with an 1800dpi 3G infrared sensor. Coupled with the high quality mat, this offers unparalled precision. Well, that's what a professional reviewer would say. I am not one, so I don't see enough mice to draw parallels. I can say, however, that since buying this mouse, I have not once felt that it has let me down. From a gamer, that is, someone prepared to blame failure upon mice, keyboards, routers, hacks or even the dreaded lag, that is endorsement.

En conclusion, if you are in the market for a tool of pwnage so comfortable, so precise, so downright potent that lesser beings will quake at your approach, you could do a whole lot worse than a Deathadder.

Aw hell, it's been a MONTH!?

That's right, sports fans, it's been more than a month since last I blessed you with my writings. Miss me? Yup, that's a trick question, you're not reading this! Don't worry, noone else is. I can't justify the drought, but by way of reparation, accept this!

Been playing a bit of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade lately. I posted previously about Dawn of War 2, which is still wonderful, but thanks to some madman in Relics patching department, I am denied playing it by what seems to be an overheating issue. So, I turn to its younger brother, Dark Crusade.

There were many who complained about Dawn Of War 2's radical change in gameplay from its predecessor. The combat focus, with the complete elimination of basebuilding and the reduced scale of the strategy threw some DOW fans, as well as many RTS veterans. However, playing the first game, I can't help but wonder if this was the approach Relic wanted all along. Comparing Dawn of War to other RTS games before it, we see... well, reduction in scale and simplification of basebuilding. Although Dawn of War retains the same basic system of workers, structures and technology research as its forebears, there are certainly signs of the combat focus creeping in. Though the traditional elements are all there, they serve no higher purpose than cogs in the machine of killing the other blokes troops. There are worker units, sure, but there is none of this girly resource harvesting we get from Age of Empires and the like- no, these guys build places for soldiers to come out of. Or turrets to shoot other soldiers. Or places to research bigger guns for your soldiers. Looking at it this way, it seems hopelessly convoluted when compared to Dawn of War 2, which removes all the frippery and leaves the pure combat. Playing Dark Crusade, I feel that it craves this purity.

On a further note of 40K, I have begun reading the Black Library's Horus Heresy series of novels. These are, by my reckoning, bloody good. I suspect and fear that a fanboy like myself simply CANNOT report objectively in these matters, but the quality of the literature itself seems to be at the very least sturdy. The Horus Heresy, for the uninitiated, is the broad term for the events surrounding the cataclysmic civil war that nearly destroyed humanity. The books tell the considerable saga of how the the Emperor (of Mankind)'s favourite son and commander of the Great Crusade into the galaxy, Horus, falls to the dark powers of Chaos, and turns against his father. It would be madness for anyone into 40K not to give these a look, but I would reccomend them to anyone interested in sci-fi.

What else? Ah yes, a little more before they haul me back to the padded cell. Upon finding my rather dusty Game Boy Advance SP and discovering it had a miraculously high level of battery charge, I began playing Pokémon Ruby. It amazes me how good the Pokémon series remains. It is still hugely entertaining to capture, train and battle the creatures, even in a world of PSP-3000s, DSis and, though it pains me to say it, iPod/Phones. My faithful Combusken is now level 27, and kicks quite a lot of ass. I have a half-formed plan to buy a DS Lite or, possibly, DSi once my exams are dispensed with and get stuck in to the upcoming Platinum Version. Whatever happens, I will no doubt write of it, but know this- Pokémon rules now and always.