Red's Ramblings v.2

Its a hard life swapping between a Playstation 3 and an Xbox 360. Its not that there’s anything wrong with the console, its just that the respective pads are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

The 360′s pad is without doubt the best and most comfortable pad I have ever used. Why Sony insists on sticking with a design that should have died of with the original Playstation is anyone’s guess but not to be defeated I set about making the best of it.

The first addition was the official keyboard attachment. It was initially intended to be a straight input device rather than mess around with the on screen text entry or a USB keyboard. What I found is that it helped with the first of my problems, namely that with a relaxed grip on the pad, especially when using the shoulder buttons, the pad would slip from my grasp. With the keyboard attached I now have a ledge that rests on my index fingers and supports the weight of the pad leaving my other fingers to press away at the ‘triggers’.

Hmm, ‘triggers’. You can’t really call an extended button a trigger. This is the next problem I needed to sort and one of the most frustrating differences between the PS3 and the 360. If they are to be classed as triggers then why do all the games I’ve tried insist on using the R1 shoulder button? Anyway a trigger it must be on my pad (and hopefully all the games I play will allow me to reconfigure the button layout) so I popped into game and bought a set of £2.99 clip on trigger extensions. Fantastically simple, fantastically effective.

I now have a pad which is ‘acceptable’ now if I didn’t have to keep inverting Y.