Not one of you hasn’t watched the Iron Man 2 trailer twice by now, because gamers love high-tech hardware (and that suitcase is the most impossibly cool thing since TRON’s lightcyle).  The entirety of PC gaming operates on a sliding slope of super-accelerated graphics cards (with Crysis climbing the peak, Valve serving the whole slope, Counter-Strike 1.6 having fun in a flooded low-resolution valley two miles below the foothills), and the mouse isn’t a pointing device - it’s a lifeline.  But more isn’t always better, seen here with four failures which would embarrass Buck Rogers.

Twiki - making C3PO look useful since 2491/1979

1.  Battlelight

Razer are the only gaming hardware firm to hire a masterful modern artist - you or I couldn’t communicate “absolute contempt for customers” in three-dimensional sculpture.  They manage it with only a few hundred grams of plastic crap.  And a twenty dollar price tag.

“The Essential Battle Accessory” is an electronic existential crisis: it’s designed for custom gaming keyboards, but intended for people who still need light to search-and-peck for letters like some simple Disney chicken which got an office job (through wacky hijinks/to save Old Farmer John’s mortgage).  Oh, did we say custom gaming keyboards?  It only works with the Razer Tarantula keyboard (which has a custom dock for it), making this less “custom addition” and more “a piece they ripped off their own hundred-dollar product and to sell separately.”  I’m not saying there’s a blackboard in Razer HQ marked “Idiots!” which gets ticked every time someone orders a Battlelight, but I’m fairly sure one just sold because I can hear the high-fives and hysterical laughter from here.

2.  Cyborg R.A.T.

Gamers are incredibly vulnerable to the “Cyberman Pimp” effect: if something’s electronic, shiny and expensive it doesn’t matter if it’s also stupid, overpriced, and - because Cyberman crotches are made of non-stick teflon plating - utterly pointless.  That’s the case with the MadCatz R.A.T. series.  Mice so pointlessly upgraded we should count ourselves lucky they don’t inflate hot air balloons or detect pregnancy.

Either that’s really the best mascot they could come up, or they didn’t want the mouse to be the stupidest looking thing in the ad.

The R.A.T. series is a line of four mice, numbered 3 - 5 - 7 - 9 because even numbers just aren’t XTREME enough.  And if anyone encountered a Cyborg R.A.T. 1 they would have taken the chance to destroy this series before it could spawn.

The only discernible difference is that the price jumps $30 each time, and the makers glued different pieces of plastic between the literally cutting-edge buttons and the extraordinarily shaky-looking palmrest.  The Cyborgs’ big deal is the customisable length and weight, which we’re sure is useful if you’re the Incredible Hulk or Martin Brundle, but for those of us whose extremities don’t change wildly on a daily basis it’s like buying a jockstrap which changes color when you thrust - technically impressive, really stupid, and it’ll be staggeringly difficult to find anyone else who wants to see it.

PS: Nothing, nothing that advertises “interchangeable pinkie grips” is one-quarter as tough as it thinks it is.  That sounds like something offered by the Osteoperosis Flower Arranging Club

3.  Gaming Vest

The 3rd Space Gaming Vest is a labor-saving miracle of modern technology, as any user has paid to beat themselves up.  Saving passers-by the bother of doing it for them.

When your “Gaming Vest” advertises “Game Compatibility” you might not be aiming for high IQs.

The gaming vest is for players who’ve so internalised the feeling of being beaten from all sides they want it in their spare time.  They’d probably need it to maintain an erection but life has mercifully spared them any risk of finding out.  Being thumped in the chest by a subwoofer was only ever fun when punk rocked, and even that was “fun” as defined by people who think spiky hair and spitting counts as a lifestyle.

Hitting you in the chest has always been the saddest attempt at virtual reality, even before the whole concept  mercifully euthanized by Michael Douglas in Disclosure.  He had virtual reality and a simulated Demi Moore, back when both were hot, and used them to do some filing.  And that’s still a better use than the Beat Yourself Vest.

4. Destructor Gaming Surface

Say what you like about Razer, which I did in part 1, but they’ve got the biggest gonads in history or had their shame surgically removed to sell plastic harder - either way I don’t want to mess with them anymore.  The “DESTRUCTOR GAMING SURFACE” should be where The Chosen One plays Laser-Ball against Dark Lord Sha’Tar for the future of everything, and anyone slapping the title on one square foot rubberized “gunmetal Razer Fractal (TM) coated” fiber deserves some sort of overstatement award.  And bonus points for sneaking that “Fractal (TM)” bullshit right into the middle of being mocked.

Particularly powerful is the claim of official support from the Fnatic, Team World Elite and Team EG clans.  As if there was any chance of gamers saying “No, actually, we don’t want to finally make money from gaming and rub our relative’s faces in it because this mouse mat doesn’t meet our stringent standards.“

This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 9:01 am and is filed under Counter-Strike: Source News, Crysis News, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.