Power A Pro Elite Wireless Controller - review

I own all the current-gen consoles and play platform-exclusive items on each of them. When it comes to multi-platform titles though, I invariably buy the 360 version, unless it is noticeably broken compared to its stablemates (Alone on the Dark, I'm looking at you).

I think one of the primary reasons for this is the comparative strengths of the controllers. I love the 360 controller and think it is the best that I have ever used. It's not perfect - the d-pad is poor - but it is streets ahead of PS3's Dual Shock 3, with its horribly spongy analogue sticks and its lack of proper triggers.

Fortunately for me Power A has brought out a PS3 controller that benefits from the same button/stick layout as the 360 pad - the Power A Pro Elite Wireless Controller. I don't normally like third-party console peripherals, as I find their build quality is not up to the standard of their first-party competition. I only tend to buy them if they have features that the official pad lacks - the last third-party pad I bought was a Logic 3 wireless pad on the original Xbox (at the time I was sharing my house with a baby that liked to chew everything).

Clearly this pad does offer something different. The first thing that you notice when placing it and the official pad side by side are the asymmetrical sticks. The Dual Shock's sticks are, essentially, in the same position as when first introduced onto Sony's system, with the short-lived but excellent Dual Analogue Controller  for the original PlayStation in 1997, which was presumably influenced by the layout of the original, stick-free PlayStation pad.

As anyone that has spent a lot of time playing with a 360 pad knows, having the left stick in the upper left quadrant of the pad is a natural fit with how your hand rests when gripping the controller.  On an official PS3 pad, this space is taken up with the little-used these days D-pad.  The sticks themselves offer slightly more resistance than the official PS3 pad and are therefore less spongy but are still not as 'stiff' as with the 360 pad.  The tips of the sticks are concave (as with the Dual Analogue of long-ago), rather than the convex of the Dual Shock, which I find more comfortable.  All in all, I much prefer how the Pro Elite's sticks feel while gaming, when compared to the official PS3 pad.

Cosmetically, the Pro Elite is all black but the fascia buttons are lit by a red light when turned on.  I think having coloured on buttons is preferable but it makes little difference in play. The pad is wireless, 'connecting' to a receiver plugged into one of the PS3's USB ports (much like the Wavebird does with a Gamecube).  I have found no problems of responsiveness when using the pad, nor have I any complaints regarding the build quality - it seems sturdy enough, if not quite as heavy as the Dual Shock 3.

The handgrips of the Pro Elite are textured to maintain grip.  I'm not a fan of this approach - I'm using it to play games while sat on my sofa, not jumping around the room, as with the Wii - and much prefer the smooth look/feel of both the 360 and PS3 pads.  It isn't uncomfortable, just unnecessary.

Look at that hand - never done a proper day's work in its life

One area that Power A hasn't followed the 360 design on (fortunately), is with the Pro Elite's d-pad. Rather than the 360 pad's ill-defined 'wheel' deign, Power A has gone with an old-school, SNES-style cross, which is as good as the PS3's and far better than the 360's.

Another major failing with the official Dual Shock 3, is  with its L2 and R2 shoulder buttons, which are regularly called upon in games to act as triggers, a task they are singularly unsuited for, particularly when compared to the actual triggers on the 360 pad. The problem is that the buttons are convex, making it easy for trigger fingers to slip off in play (or at rest). Game  (and other retailers) sell small plastic veneers to place over the L2 and R2 buttons to make them feel more like triggers and these work well.  The Pro Elite's L2 and R2 buttons have a concave design, making it easier to rest fingers on them in play, a big improvement on the official pad.

I always get concave and convex mixed up.  These are concave, hopefully

I think what my appreciation of the Pro Elite shows is that Sony has missed a trick with redesigning the outward look of its pads in the move to this generation, as Microsoft did with the move to 360 and Nintendo always does when upgrading its hardware. While the tech on the inside the official PS3 pad has changed a lot since 1997, the outward design and fascia placement is essentially the same, which is disappointing and shows a lack of ambition.

I paid £30 for the Pro Elite , which I think is reasonable value.  I did see it £10 cheaper in the  Amazon January sale but procrastinated and by the time I'd made the decision to buy it had returned to its original price.  If you're unsure about making a purchase, it might be worthwhile to await the next batch of sales and then go bargain hunting - £20 for this pad is exceptional value.

HMV Group to close 60 stores

Earlier this week I spent part of my lunchbreak in the flagship HMV store on London's Oxford St.  Walking down aisle after aisle filled with products that I could buy more cheaply online - even in the post-Christmas sale -  either as a download or as a physical product, I wondered how its business model could be successful in today's marketplace.  When I got back to my office, I read that the HMV Group was to close 60 stores (40 HMV, 20 Waterstone's) and I was hardly surprised.  Other than a few deeply discounted lines that it couldn't have made much (if any) profit on (DJ Hero, with decks, for £30 for example), I didn't see why anyone with access to the internet would need to purchase from there.  This was particularly true in the videogame section, where some games were more than double the price asked by online competitors.

Last year Game, when announcing its poor half-yearly results, stated that it was going to close 85 of its stores (across the Game and Gamestation brands) by Christmas 2013, a move that will leave it with 550 stores.  Game is a little different from HMV, in that it is a specialist retailer and also that it has a fair amount of overlap in its branches, as a result of the earlier acquisitions of the Electronics Boutique* and Gamestation brands.  In my town (population 84,000 - thanks Wikipedia), there are two Game stores and a Gamestation in the town centre, a pattern that is repeated in many locations in the UK. In the same precinct, there is also a HMV, a Cex and a Tesco that sells videogames - this amount of competition in a falling marketplace is sure to result in closures.

Two years ago, zavvi went into administration and subsequently closed down.  Shortly before, Woolworths, which sold videogames, DVDs and CDs as part of its lines, also went into administration (this was a contributing factor in zavvi's failure, as a Woolworths subsidiary supplied it with much of its stock).  HMV has its differences to zavvi - its larger,  its brand is better established, it sells preowned games, it also owns Waterstone's (itself under pressure from Amazon and the like) - but the core business is essentially the same.   I don't think that HMV is on the brink - and it is clearly acting now to avert problems in the future - but fault lines can be seen in its business model.

The ultimate question in considering the entertainment media retail market is 'can it survive?'.  I'm not sure, in the long-term that it can, other than in flagship locations such as central London,  which can cater to the day-shopper market.  I often pop into Game and HMV in my lunchbreak, or at weekends but a lot of the time I only browse and don't buy anything.  This behaviour essentially turns the bricks and mortar retailers into showrooms for the online customer - not the basis for a successful business.  I think that this is a shame (not least for the thousands of staff that work in these businesses) but, ultimately, this is part of the evolutionary effect of the internet and of digital distribution, which have been very beneficial in many other ways.

Many people in the UK were sorry when Woolworths failed but how much of that was down to nostalgia from shopping or working  there in the past? How many of those decrying its closure had shopped in one its stores recently? As Woolworths' core market had been eroded by the large supermarkets selling similar lines more cheaply, online retailers have done the same to HMV and Game, a trend that seems irreversible.  Will HMV and Game be here in 5 years' time?  Probably.  Will they be here in 30 years' time?  I doubt it.



* it was actually Electronics Boutique that bought Game and then rebranded all the UK-based EBs as 'Game', presumably as 'Electronics Boutique' is such an awful name for a videogame retailer

Game of the Year 2010

I feel a bit of a fraud detailing my games of the year.  I'm not a games journalist, I can't spend all my life playing games and, most relevantly, I probably haven't played all of what others consider to be the best games of 2010.  There are several games released this year that I intend to get when I have time - Enslaved, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Mafia II - that might muscle into this list and there are a few other games, much-liked by others and included in their end of year lists, that don't float my gaming boat - Mass Effect 2 being chief among those.  I make no apologies for the latter - if I had played them, it is unlikely they'd have worried number 5 on the list but this is simply a  personal view - my favourites of the games that I have played (and have been released) in 2010.


5. Limbo (XBLA)


The first game on my list is also the shortest - you can finish it on a first play through in 5-6 hours and quicker thereafter - but it is a touchingly unique 5-6 hours.  I'll not go into further details here, as it is  reviewed elsewhere on the blog, only to say if you are after something different, sadly beautiful, strangely alienating but at the same time oddly touching, then this is a must-play game.


4. Fable III


I'm a big fan of the Fable series and, for a time prior to release, this blog turned into something of a Fable III fan blog.  Once the game finally arrived, I could see that it had its flaws - there were a few too many bugs  than you would expect for a triple-A game and the last section of the game (no spoilers) was a great idea that didn't quite work in practice.  Notwithstanding those issues, it was still an excellent game, with a great story, excellent (and genuinely funny) voice acting and Albion looking more beautiful than ever before and just as cohesive as in the past (you can easily believe from the natural and built environments that all areas are part of the same world).  If Fable II hadn't been so good, I might have rated this higher but it didn't quite reach the heights of the previous game in the series (though still better than all but three of the other games released this year).


3. Super Mario Galaxy 2


It's-a him, Mario.  An old school videogame, in that no attempts were made (nor should have been made) to inject realism into the Mushroom Kingdom, there were enough tweaks from the first game to make this a genuinely original addition to the Mario canon. I was continually surprised to find new worlds utilising new gameplay mechanisms (that were then discarded and not present on subsequent  planets), which other, lesser, games would have eked out across several levels.   If you are interested in videogames that make no apologies for being just that - games - then Mario's second visit to his galaxy (and best reason for having a Wii this year) is for you.


2. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood


A late entry, my having only received the game on the 25th December (although I'm 20+ hours into at the time of writing)  but one that very nearly  grabbed the top spot.  A follow-up of sorts to my game of the year 2009, Assassin's Creed II, Ubisoft has once again created a living, breathing (well, until Ezio gets to work), Renaissaince Italy.  The story is the same schlocky Da Vinci Code-lite and there are still the annoying modern day interludes but Ubisoft continue to learn from the errors in the first game in the series and the present day sections are kept to a  minimum.


I'm barely a third of the way through the main story but there are so many other, interesting and compelling things to do, that I don't even feel that there is a 'main story' and 'side missions' - there is just the world and how I choose to make my way in it.


1. Red Dead Redemption


I loved western films as a child growing up in the 1970s (a time when the TV schedules were full of them and of Sunday teatime western TV serials).  That fed into my play - like many boys, I had a cowboy outfit and  a holster and six-guns.  Red Dead Redemption allowed me to play as a cowboy again but without the embarrassment of being a 39-year old man dressed in chaps and having to explain that I wasn't in a Village People tribute band.


The graphics, varied gameplay, longevity, story, score (that I still listen to now) and voice acting (as good as in the voice acting benchmark of Uncharted 2) were all of the highest level.  I genuinely cared about John Marston by the end of the game and the world in which he lived (and there aren't that many games that you can say that about).


Honorable mentions must be given to Heavy Rain (pushed out of the top 5 by Assassin's Creed Brotherhood), ModNation Racers, Alan Wake, Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgement and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. All great games that I considered for inclusion in my final five.


2010 was a pretty good year for gaming, if a little less stellar than the superlative 2009.  There are some great games scheduled for release next year (I'm particularly looking forward to LA Noire) and I look forward to trying to compile another top 5 in 12 months' time.

Christmas 2010

Ho ho ho - Merry Christmas.  Not that merry for me this year, unfortunately, as I've had tonsillitis since Christmas Eve (I did, with the help of lots of painkillers, manage to eat my own weight in Christmas dinner though).

Game-wise, this year I received the excellent Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (nothing says 'Christmas' more to me than assassination*) on 360 from my wife and a book,  1001 Videogames you must play before you die from my daughter (a handy reminder of my own mortality from my first-born).

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood uses the same characters and setting (albeit mainly set in Rome this time) as Assassin's Creed II - sort of an Assassin's Creed 2.5.  There is enough new content and new activities  (mainly related to killing people, admittedly) in the new game to make it an essential purchase for fans of the previous game (my Game of the Year in 2009).

1001 videogames... is a slab-like (960 pages) trawl through seminal (and some less so) videogames from the 1970s up to Heavy Rain in early 2010.  With any book like this (whether it be videogames, films, footballers etc), I usually try to catch it out with games that I think *should* have been included (the answer to which would be, of course, 'write your own bloody book then') but so far I've only thought of 3D Ant Attack on Spectrum (first isometric-perspective adventure game) and Vandal Hearts on PS1 (niche strategy RPG from Konami), both of which are quite obscure.  It is a great read and I highly recommend it to everyone with an interest in the history and progression of videogames.



* this is literally, if oddly,  true - I received  both Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II as Christmas presents over the last few years.

Saboteur (ZX Spectrum) iPhone review

8-bit gaming house Elite Systems was a big hitter back in the mid-late eighties, bringing out a number of great titles. I particularly remember its arcade conversion of Capcom classic, Commando and its flick-screen licensed 'Airwolf' game, both of which were favourites of mine. Surprisingly, given most of those old companies having gone bust or been acquired by other, bigger, companies over the years (Infogrames - now Atari - taking over Gremlin Graphics and Ocean in the nineties, for example) the company is still around and has brought a number of classic (and, to be fair, some filler) ZX Spectrum titles to iPhone.






Initially, ZX Spectrum Elite Collection Volume 1 brought 6 titles to the Apple platform but there has since been an update (the originally-titled Volume 2) doubling the total. In the last couple of weeks, there's been a further release (as in-App 59p purchases) of four new volumes, two of Gremlin Graphics games (including the Monty Mole games) and one each for Software Projects (including Manic Miner) and Vortex (including one of my top 5 favourite Spectrum games, Highway Encounter).

Just like a shelf in WH Smiths in 1985

Despite the name, not all the games in the two initial volumes were originally Elite titles - a few, including the one I'm going to concentrate on, Saboteur, were originally published by Durell. Durell is still in business too but it pulled out of the games market in the late eighties, to concentrate on writing software for insurance companies, presumably on the basis that loss adjustment spreadsheet titles aren't going to be copied on C90 tapes and passed around school playgrounds. Elite bought the rights to its back catalogue at that time, a purchase that continues to bear dividends now that technology and nostalgia have combined in the form of emulators.

You'd think they'd station a guard on this jetty

Saboteur is a flick-screen proto-stealth game, with the protagonist an early version of a Sam Fisher type agentWithin a time limit, you have to infiltrate a base, collect a floppy disk (well, it was programmed in the eighties) - at which point the timer thankfully stops - and then escape in a handily-placed helicopter (optionally, you can also blow up the base if you find a carelessly-placed bomb). The base is populated with guards, guard dogs and automatic gun emplacements, of varying degrees of intelligence. There are 9 difficulty levels, adding some longevity to a game that can be completed reasonably quickly (on the lower difficulty levels anyway). And that's pretty much it.






Unlike many 8-bit games, the basic theme of Saboteur is similar to that of modern games - it could be Solid Snake infiltrating this base (though, thankfully, Saboteur doesn't feature a 15-minute cut scene after you successfully do so). The game was considered a technical achievement at the time, with intelligent use of the Spectrum's limited palette and featuring a large, detailed (for the time) central character. When it came out, it was the first game that I had played where the main character had a regenerating health bar, that allowed you to cower in a corner after being savaged by a particularly persistent dog (as the time limit ticked mercilessly down).

The strange 'Man at C&A' stance, is the default standing posture

The muted use of colour (well, it is night-time) is another reason why Saboteur doesn't seem hopelessly ancient today. Some of the games in the collections - Kokotoni Wilf, say - look like garish explosions in a paint factory (albeit a factory that only makes 8 different colours of paint). Saboteur's extensive use of black, together with only two or three colours at a time, means the on-screen action is subdued and consequently less jarring to eyes spoilt by thirty years of progression in graphical techniques.

The game can either be played in portrait mode, with the action shown in the top half and control 'keys' on the bottom, or landscape, with the whole screen used for play and controls superimposed over that. I played the game on iPad, as I do most iPhone games and went with the divided screen option, which worked fine. The conversion is a faithful and well-realised one and either control method works well (or as well as the original at any rate).





With any emulated game, I think it is difficult to divorce the playing experience from the nostalgia buzz and Saboteur is no different. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it again but would that have been the case if I'd been twenty (thirty!) years younger and playing it for the first time? Would some of the gameplay now be too grating (only being able to carry one item at a time for example) if I'd been brought up on Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell? Probably I think it would but if you have fond memories of Saboteur and the other games available, the best of them - a category within which I would include Saboteur - can certainly still provide enjoyment.

Legend of Zelda inspired make-up!

My wife writes a beauty blog, www.londonmakeupgirl.com and it is very seldom that there's any overlap between the content of our respective blogs. Not since the dismal failure of the Donkey Kong Hair Removal range, anyway.

The 'Legends' make-up collection from Etsy seller Shiro Cosmetics remedies that, however. This collection consists of loose pigments for use as eyeshadows (or so I'm told) and the names of all the individual shades are Zelda-themed -'Link', 'Zora', 'Hearts', 'Ganondorf', 'Kokiri Forest' 'Majora's Mask' and more.

I'm not going to review them here - that would be way beyond my descriptive powers. I'm not even sure videogames and make-up share a vocabulary. Iridescent, maybe. London make-up girl makes a far better go of it, reviewing those shown here (from top left Ganondorf, Temple of Time, Deku, Bottom: Epona, Master Sword).




If you're not a fan of Zelda, there's also a Pokemon-inspired range ('Super Effective'). Squirtle eyeshadow, anyone?

Knitted Sackboy!

As many of these posts attest to, I like cool videogame ephemera and the latest addition, thanks to my wife, is this knitted Sackboy, bought from an Etsy seller.  It's nicely done, with articulated arms and legs (far better quality than those available commercially).

Currently on a shelf in my study, checking that I don't spend time checking Twitter when I'm supposed to be working (as if).