I Type As Well

Last Friday I finally got the Nyko iType2 controller I'd mentioned ordering a while ago. What can I say? It does what a controller is supposed to do - and it has a keyboard.

Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the controller. Typing is only slightly awkward, and after a while I was completely used to it. Plus, for the most part, if feels just like a normal PS2 controller. The face buttons are a little stiff, causing me to think that some games which really use the analog buttons may suffer from the all-or-nothing feel, but otherwise they're fine. The keyboard works really well, but there are two problems. First, let me explain how it works. It's a "qwerty" style keyboard, but with no numbers or "?!@*&(*#!@" signs. To access these, you must press the Fn button, which is all well and good. The problem lies in that some keys, such as normal punctuation keys, seem mostly unresponsive while in this mode. You can get them to work, usually by pressing it a few times in rapid succession, but this is a slight pain in the ass.

My other major problem is that while it has four macro keys, for easy access to repetetive sayings, the speed at which it "replays" the macro can be a problem. At least with Monster Hunter, text comes screaming down the USB cable at such a fast rate that the game can't keep up. For example: the phrase "Hello" can often show up as "ello", "Hllo", "elo", and "Hell". I haven't tested this with other games, though, so this could be a Monster Hunter related problem. Even with the above, and the fact that the vibration isn't quite as smooth as a standard PS2 controller, I like this one a lot, and it's probably going to be my primary controller from now on.