DualShock 3 controller initial impressions
Yesterday news broke that the Sony DualShock 3 controller for the PS3 had been spotted at big box retailers stateside. After reading the news, I proceeded to check the store stock for local Best Buy and Future Shop stores to see if they were in Canada too. Future Shop didn’t have them, but the Best Buy near my house did. I then remembered I had a growing stack of games at home that I had either finished or otherwise wasn’t likely to play again, so I called the EBGames near home to see if they had them, which they did.
So a quick stop at home to collect my unused games and I was off to EBGames to pick up a couple of DualShock 3’s. After coming home from my little shopping excursion, and struggling with the hulk-proof plastic packaging, I was finally able to plug the two new controllers in to charge them. This is the bittersweet thing about most geek kit. The euphoria experienced by getting a new toy home and unboxed is invariably doused by the unfortunate necessity to charge it’s batteries for 8 hours. Not wanting to use the controller while it’s charging for fear of upsetting the battery Gods (hey, the first charge is the most important one in a young battery’s life!), at least I could hold and visually inspect it.
My first impressions:
- It’s a tad heavier, but not in a bad way, more in a good way.
- It feels much more solid. My old Sixaxis controllers seemed to creak and flex a bit if I applied twisting pressure with both my hands. When I do the same on the DualShock 3, it doesn’t budge. It’s solid as a rock.
- It’s plastic shell is completely opaque, unlike the Sixaxis which was slightly transluscent.
- Besides the above and the DualShock 3 badge on the front, it looks and feels identical to my old Sixaxis controller, which is good because the Sixaxis is the most comfortable controller I have ever used for long periods of time.
So overall, I’d say the DualShock 3 is a nice improvement over the Sixaxis, and there’s absolutely nothing to complain about as far as I’m concerned. Sure, it still doesn’t come with a USB cable, but I think in this day and age of conservation, we have to support such decisions, even if their reasons for doing so were purely economic. Given that the controller is essentially disposable, at least we won’t start building up a collection of redundant USB cables. It’s bad enough we’re throwing out the entire controller when the battery dies. OK, so maybe there’s one thing to complain about: a removable battery would have been nicer to the environment, although most likely at the cost of aesthetics and rigidity.
Before I got to bed, and after the dual DualShock 3’s had had a good 7-1/2 hours of charging, I decided I didn’t want to wait until the next day to feel the force feedback love. So I fired up Super Stardust HD for a quick asteroid smashing session and was pleasantly greeted by the soothing pulses of Immersion’s patented force feedback technology. While SSHD might not be the best game to showcase the new controller’s capabilities, it was enough just to get a feel for it and also to confirm that you can easily turn force feedback on/off via the menu that appears when the PS button is pushed. It felt good to have force feedback back, as though for a brief moment all was right with the world. Now if Infinity Ward just adds force feedback support to Call of Duty 4 for PS3, all would be right with the world.
1 comment April 8th, 2008