Game Hardware Review: Nostromo SpeedPad n52
In the search for the perfect World of Warcraft experience, I’m trying out the Nostromo SpeedPad n52, an alternative PC game controller by Belkin. I’ve used a Microsoft Strategic Commander before, but have not been using it with WoW, for reasons I will describe shortly; the Nostromo n52, on the other hand, seems perfect for WoW and other PC RPGs.
The problem with the Strategic Commander and WoW is that there are a lot of buttons to press during normal play. In addition to the usual shortcuts for opening various windows and maps, movement keys, and targeting, character action is controlled by the top row of the keyboard. Even that is not always enough, and many players modify the WoW user interface to add additional button bars due to the number of different skills possessed by high-level character. (I use UI mods that add 35 on-screen buttons, for example, and I still have to flip between pages occasionally.) Other RPGs use a similar interface, including City of Heroes and Neverwinter Nights, both of which I have played heavily in the past.
The Strategic Commander falls short for games such as this due mostly to a lack of buttons: it has six programmable keys plus up and down arrows. It does have four shift states, but for active gameplay I want as many unshifted keys as possible — at least one full bar of buttons, with one or two left over that I can use to swap pages. Six buttons (or 24 with shifts) may be enough for the real-time strategy (RTS) games the Strategic Commander was designed for but it is not enough for the RPGs I play. Another way in which the Strategic Commander doesn’t quite fit RPG gameplay is its movement controls: it allows you to slide and twist the entire controller head, which is clever and quite intuitive for rotating and zooming a map display, but awkward for continuous character movement.
The Nostromo n52 has a total of sixteen buttons, a clickable scroll wheel, and a directional pad. Fourteen of the buttons and the wheel are positioned for finger access, while the d-pad and two more buttons are on the side of the device for use by the thumb. The feel of the Nostromo is comfortable; its body is shaped to comfortably support your hand in a relaxed, flat position for long hours of gaming.
Since PC games do not come preconfigured for add-on controllers, it is up to the driver software that comes with the device to map its controls to whatever input the game understands. The Nostromo can simulate actions from almost any kind of input device, including the keyboard, the mouse, and game controllers. Every button is programmable to send a single event or run a macro that contains a series of events and delays. It has four shift states, and you can program them to be cycled, toggled, or locked by any button. (The shifts are indicated by bright, color-coded LEDs, easily visible out of the corner of your eye without looking away from the screen.)
The SpeedPad comes with a profile manager that allows editing and saving of control sets, and a “loadout manager” that sits in the system tray and changes the controls according to what game you are playing. Profiles for many games can be downloaded from Belkin’s website. They didn’t have a profile for World of Warcraft, however, so I had to create it myself. This, I think, is the main drawback of this device and others like it for most gamers: to use it most effectively, you will have to customize the programming even if a downloadable profile is available. Doing that well requires planning and consideration so that the controls feel natural in the context of the game, and may also involve customizing the game’s key bindings and macros as well.
Mac OS X drivers for the n52 are provided on the included CD. I haven’t tried them extensively yet (I don’t use my Mac for gaming) but they appear to support most of the features of the Windows software.
On the whole, I quite like the Nostromo and I am already using it more than I ever used the Strategic Commander (at least I only paid ten bucks for that, from the clearance bin at GameStop). I recommend it for anyone who plays PC games heavily and wants faster input with less hand movement; casual gamers, however, will probably find the configuration too complex.
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