Every so often I suffer from serious mouse-hunger, and I am far too prone to indulging it. As a weedy man who sits in front of his PC all day, I fairly inevitably suffer from varying degrees of tendonitis. Rather than doing anything about it, like exercising regularly or learning to sit up straight, I manage to use this as an excuse to buy expensive mice – ergonomics, or something. I dunno. Really, I just like luxury mice, which all their flicky buttons and blinking lights and ridiculous adjustable weights. Specifically, I’ve been hooked to the Logitech gaming range, which I used to swear blind genuinely made me better at FPSes – until I got roundly thrashed at Quake III by a guy using a beige PS/2 ball-mouse.
Nonetheless, my hand has become accustomed to their shape, and I feel oddly uncomfortable when using a rival rodent. Unfortunately, I’m in a bit of a bind – the wireless G7 I’ve been happily using for a couple of years now seems to have fatally chewed through its rechargeable batteries. My every day is characterised by my cursor grinding to halt at precisely the wrong time, leaving me frantically scrabbling to swap the dead battery with the barely-alive second one the mouse was usefully supplied with. Two hours later, repeat. I’ve weathered this absurd inconvenience for months now, but I’m increasingly worried the next time my mouse cuts out during a Left 4 Dead session I’m going to lose my mind. Hell, I definitely can’t have it happen during the great Planetside war.
So I’m in the market for a new one, and my attention was naturally drawn to Logitech’s latest lump of oval-shaped excess. When showing shots of the clutch of ominous spiky black plastic that constitutes the new G series of peripherals (see the shot at the top of this post) to a colleague, he described it as looking like a Terminator’s wet dream, which, the logistical questions of such a concept aside, sounds about right. I’ve little interest in that uber-geeky-lookin’ keyboard for precisely that reason, but even the new mouse the G9x (a minor revision of the G9, which I’ve yet to try) looks a bit too cyber-fetishistic for my liking. Of course I desperately want it because all those features I’ll never use sound strange and clever, but the painful pricetag drags me back from my madness. Do I really, really need another high-end mouse? Or should I just solve my battery problem by buying some cheap, comfortable wired model?
It’s the paradox at the heart of all gaming peripherals – Logitech, Microsoft et al are forever trying to improve upon something really very simple, and sometimes it seems amazing that there’s been quite as much revision of mouse’n'keyboard tech as there has over the years. The G9x is capable of 5000dpi – is that really going to make me a better gamer than the G9’s 3200dpi, or my tired G7’s 2000? Is an expensive mouse an augmentation for one’s gaming ability – or a substitute for it? Am I just the middle-aged guy buying a Ferrari to try and compensate for my bloated belly and balding crown?
Which is not to demean gaming mice, keyboards et al – most of ‘em are truly well-crafted pieces of kit and, again, I’m hooked on those fancy-doodle mice for some reason. I just wonder, a little, how much they matter to gamers at large, because it’s not the kind of thing you often catch folk talking about. When you could spend £30 on a game, or £30 on a mouse, which are you going to go for? Who here places much stock in what mouse they use? What about your keyboard? My keyboard has two giant knobs on it, which makes me happy, but I can’t ever imagine using all those programmable macro keys and whatnot that turn up on the really crazy ones. So I’m curious as to who the audience for this kind of high-end stuff is, in an age where everyone seems to be moaning about game prices. Is it Johnny Average PC gamer, is it hopeless materialists like me, or is it some silent, affluent gaming elite?
I’m totally going to buy that mouse before too long, of course. I just can’t help myself.
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Can’t believe nobody used “of mice and men” in all those comments.
Mice? Gaming keyboards? IMHO, they are the equivalent of stickers on a car. Flashy, yes. Make car faster, no.
On my gaming rig, I use a tired ol’ Compaq presario keyboard, circa 1996, with the windows keys dug out since Doom II. As far as mice go, I game with a CruiseCat touchpad. And we all know cats eats mice.
i have an mx518 and while i like it, like most computing peripherals i wish it were larger. another two inches wide and maybe another 1.5″ long would make it dope as hell.
I use an MX Revolution – expensive but worth it just for the fun free-scrolling wheel. It’s useless in FPSs though, but as I only play RPGs and MMORPGs I don’t need the latest high dpi mouse.
For more than ten years I have been using Logitech mice. G5 at present. I like how its structured surface feels, it is heavy and beautiful. Tough too, it fell down several times and still works fine. The higher price is absolutely justified. Logitech mice are of a quality that is anachronistic for our time.
In order to give a full profile of my nerdiness: I own a Saitech x52 and the saitek gamer keyboard, the latter will soon be replaced by the G11 keyboard. I need the programmable keys for X3 Terran Conflict.
I do not play at a desk, my place looks more like the cockpit of an old and very filthy space freighter.
All this “gameing” stuff irks me, probably because I’m no fun at all, and I agree with someone way above who things it “brings out the worst” in otherwise tolerable people. Firstly, certain thick people can’t spell something chronic, so giving them a difficult word like “gaming”, with its root of “game”, leads to all kinds of nasty mutations. Secondly, “gaming”, at least where I’m from, involves old people feeding their pension money to the pokies, because they’ve got nothing better to do in a society that devalues them. “Gaming” therefore has seedy and sad connotations, and makes me feel dirty and sweaty when I sit down at my computer.
Another thing occurs to me when I read about the “WOLFKING TROOPER” and “RAZER ANKLEBITER” and other absurdly named gewgaws marketed to “serious” FPS appreciators: people who were/are actually serious about – and good at – FPS games existed back before 2000, when the air and the water was clean and tasty, and played Quake with a trackball or a wooden tiller.
A parallel to this silly mouse biznezz is how distressingly ordinary computer steering wheels were until quite recently. The idea of playing a racing game with a wheel and pedals has been around for a while, first embarrassing players in arcades before embarrassing them in their own homes. Even though real cars had had clutch pedals since the mid 80s, until the G25 wheel appeared, this was not considered important, even for serious racing sims.
To sum up: No, it doesn’t make the slightest difference and yes, it is all rather tacky and embarrassing. What I would like to see, just for fun, is a writeup of actual direct competition between players using old and new gewgaws, playing a game like Quake 3, or one of those strange RTS things. This would at least, hopefully, put to rest the claims about certain bits of plastic being “better for games” in any quantifiable way.
And what of those of us who report pain or discomfort that’s lessened or stopped by certain bits of plastic? Is that not ‘better for games’ sir?
I have a Razer diamondback which has been running for years i just love the feel of the mouse this runs over a roccat sense mousepad and im typing on a razer lycosa mirror keyboard.
I dont see anything wrong on spending a bit more money on nice equipment for your pc as its the item i use the most.
Or maybe its just the soothing blue lights (God im sad)
Cant you just buy some new rechargeable batteries for the mouse you already have? :-)
I have a Logitech G9 and like it a lot. The only downside being that I can’t really stand to use anything else because it’s invariably inferior, and so I end up bringing it places with me.
I used to doubt the usefulness of gaming mice as well. I was using a random wireless MS mouse for FPSs and in my own opinion was doing just fine. A mate recommended MX510 and I decided to try it out. It totally transformed my aim and movement. I went through 3 MX510s and one MX518 in a couple of years. After that I decided to try something other than a Logitech mouse because the buttons were breaking left and right. Bought a Razer Copperhead, a decision I still regret. It cost quite a lot at the time and despite trying, I never really got used to it. After I quit competitive gaming, I decided to stick with what I had and actually replaced the separated wire of the Copperhead with a spare from one of the broken MX510s. Recently though, I got a new keyboard and decided to get the G5 as well. So far the best mouse I’ve tried, the only problem is that the side scrolling makes the third button quite clumsy to use.
I have a Razer Diamondback and an old, generic, Dell keyboard. I got the Diamondback soon after it was first released on some dodgey website for £21 delivered which was a safe deal because everyother site had it at £35-40.
I use all the buttons I can actually reach (the 2 on the right side of the mouse are pointless) for the use of grenades/melee in games or push-to-talk in VOIP. I would definatly like a keyboard with volume control and some other media keys but I cant warrent spending the money on it anymore.
Having used my Diamondback with increasing frequency since I got it, I have never had any trouble with RSI. At work I currently use my mouse all day, it is a Dell basic mouse and as I have been using it I have noticed more and more pain in my right arm that I assume to be RSI. I am getting quite worried to be honest but dont know what I can do.
My Logitech G15 keyboard doesn’t make me a better gamer, but it does glow in the dark, which makes it a whole lot easier to find keys with the lights off.
As for mice, I’ve always used Microsoft mice – the Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 being my favourite, several of which I’ve used to destruction. Currently my mouse of choice is the Comfort Optical Mouse 3000 – not a hi-tech, hi-res thing by any means, but a good all rounder, for everything from office work to FPS games and everything inbetween. It’s also a (mostly) ambidextrous design (bar the thumb button) which is great, given that I’m left-handed and swap the mouse between hands pretty much at will.
I love my G9 mouse. Far more than my gaming keyboard, a Wolfpaw something or other.
Outside of gaming, being able to unlock the mouse wheel and “spin free” is surprisingly useful for scrolling large amounts of data.
G9 mouse for christmas has done wonders for me in Red Orchestra, where putting pixels (center of scope) on pixels (mans top of head) is important.
Sometimes I feel it must be a little unfair that with the flick of a button press, I can now maneuver my pointer much much slower than would be useful in any other situation. But it helps the killcount.
Recommended for RO. But neigh noticable in TF2, L4D, CoH etc.
As a left-hander I use an ambidextrous Razer Diamondback as the best option at the moment. When hardware manufacturers learn that flipping over the mould means you can give ergonimic design to the left handers as well (shock! horror!), I might consider buying Logitech.
I picked up a new mousemat and headphones recently made by CyberSnipa. Other than the name having a repulsive l33t sound to it, the anodised aluminium pad is spacious, grippy on the bottom and low-profile; and the heaphone/mic combo give pretty decent performance and comfort (the mic ’stem’ can contort into any position desired).
Overall I’m very happy with my peripherals setup, and it’s well worth the almost £100 I spent on it in the last 2-3 years.
“To sum up: No, it doesn’t make the slightest difference and yes, it is all rather tacky and embarrassing. What I would like to see, just for fun, is a writeup of actual direct competition between players using old and new gewgaws, playing a game like Quake 3, or one of those strange RTS things.”
Well, I did try to play Quake Live at the office, with the standard issue optical mouse and the wireless keyboard that we use here.
I stopped trying after being constantly fragged for a couple minutes. The input (delays on keys, no smooth mouse movements, occasional mouse hiccups) is just too erratic for somebody used to high-end built-for-games equipment like me.
People (me included) were able to play back then, but the sole reason why we didn’t care that our mice occasionally hiccuped was because there were no mice that didn’t. Nowadays, there are, so everything except using them is silly.
(The first paragraph of that last comment of mine was quoting Dennis, added for clarity.)
In short: It does make a difference, and how.
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