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Max Shooter Xbox & Ps2 Keyboard & Mouse Adapter Review
By Jeromy, Sat Dec 10th
The third and latest XBOX/PS2 keyboard & mouse adapter to hitthe market is the Max Shooter. Before this adapter was releasedthere was a good chance that the guy destroying you in Halo 2was using a regular controller and not one of thepreviously released keyboard & mouse adapters. Enter Max Shooterstage right. Now you should be afraid, very afraid, as the MaxShooter basically turns the console FPS into a PC FPS with allthe accuracy that that entails. After spending a good few daysplaying Halo 2, Socom II, and Unreal Championship 2 there islittle doubt that FPS games were mostly made to be played with amouse and keyboard. What’s In The Package The Max Shooter, both the and PS2 versions, come in a smallpackage that holds the actual hardware and an instructionmanual. The adapter only accepts PS/2 compatible keyboards andmice so if you have USB peripherals you’ll need to get anadapter or head over to the old used PC shop and pickup an oldkeyboard and mouse combo.
The actual adapter is small in size and doesn’t hog any seriousamount of extra space. The version features an extra sloton the backside of the adapter for a memory card to plug in. Features The Max Shooter, both for and PS2, is packed with a widearray of functionality which can be accessed by using certainkeyboard key combinations listed in the manual. It is fullyprogrammable and also comes with game presets for many titles.The and PS2 presets are listed below. XBOX Game Presets * Halo * Medal of Honor: Frontline * The Chronicles of Riddick* Counter Strike * James Bond 007: Nightfire * Tom Clancy’sRainbow Six 3 * Return to Castle Wolfenstein * UnrealChampionship PS2 Game Presets * Socom II * Medal of Honor: Frontline * Time Splitters 2 *James Bond 007: Nightfire * Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3 * GhostRecon: Jungle Storm * Return to Castle Wolfenstein * REZ If your favorite shooter isn’t listed above, the Max Shooteralso has three programmable controller setups to fill yourneeds. The variables that can be adjusted include keyassignment, deadzone adjustment, mouse speed, and mouseinversion. Most seasoned gamers know about all these terms butmight not be familiar with the deadzone. The manual describesthe deadzone as the zone within an axis range that isinterpreted as being at rest. Along with the game presets, the factory default presetautomatically assigns keys in the following way. The selection of game presets and programming for custom gamesis all very straightforward, if not time consuming, and is wellexplained within the manual. All these features are great but what really matters is how itholds up in the games. So without further ado let us jump in toour first game. Halo 2 My first experience with the Max Shooter and Halo 2 was lessthan stellar, but that was completely my fault. Like most gamersI know I jumped in head first without reading a single page ofthe instruction manual which was a really bad move. The factorydefault setup is pretty much only suited for menu navigation. So I popped open the manual and found out about the presets,sadly no Halo 2, and decided to try out the Halo 1 preset so Icould get a quick start. Everything worked ok but it wasn’tbetter than the controller I had become so accustomed to.In fact, it was much worse. The mouse sensitivity was horribleand the keys were mapped semi-incorrectly. But again this was myentire fault and I dove back into the manual to see how to fixmy problems. An hour and a half later I had finished tweaking one of the userprogrammable presets included in the Max Shooter and things werestarting to feel much much better. The mouse responded close towhat I would expect from a PC FPS and the keys were all mappedto my liking, but I was still sprawled out on the floor in anawkward position. I wasn’t quite in FPS bliss. Another thirty minutes later I had a table setup
with the TV,mouse, and keyboard in the regular PC positions and things werefeeling even better. The Halo 2 bots didn’t know what hit them,but the mouse movement was still a bit off. Then I noticed inthe manual that this is one of the biggest issues that needs tobe resolved when setting up the Max Shooter and that I shouldmax out the sensitivity settings within the game for optimal “PCLike” results. So I did that and it proved to be the one tweakthat turned Halo 2 into my first PC FPS on a console. Thecontrols are that good. I finally decided my setup was ready for prime time and I headedonline to face the masses. I must note that my ranking in Halo 2was quite low before I got the Max Shooter and that the PC FPSsetup has always been better for me than any console controller.So with that said, I jumped into an online match and low andbehold I got my rear end handed to me like always, but it wasjust the first match so I pushed on. I changed my weapon setup from what I usually used to what Ithought would be great for accuracy based shots and wow did thatmake a difference. Now all I use is the Battle Rifle. Four hourslater I emerged with a better ranking and an awesome kill todeath ratio. My hit rate and shooting speed went way up with mynew found accuracy and the competition was destroyed because ofit. Once the Max Shooter is tweaked to a gamers liking, it is anincredibly deadly controller for Halo 2. But Halo 2 is just oneof the FPS games out there so lets see how it holds up with theothers.Unreal Championship 2 I confess this is my favorite all time game, so I wasextremely excited to see how it would hold up with a mouse andkeyboard. I once again tried out a preset which didn’t hold upso well and then went on to create my own setup. Once the setupwas done I headed online for a FPS shocker. I used the same mentality I had in Halo 2; go for the accuracybased weapons. I loaded up the sniper rifle, headed to a darkcorner, and started sniping. My TV echoed “Headshot” many timesbefore the match was over, but that was mostly because no oneever found me. The next match was much different. The rest of the matches I played online with the Max Shooterwere populated with very good players. They would find mesniping and then destroy me. It seems the problem with UnrealChampionship 2 is that it was designed to only be a console FPS.Much of the gameplay really relies on the button configurationon the controller. Thus I couldn’t bounce around the walls,dodge, and reflect as well as I could with the controller. Thiscould be because I have spent so much time with the controllerthat I couldn’t break my habits, but I believe this is one casewhere the Max Shooter isn’t superior. So one game is completely changed by the adapter and one isbuilt too much around a standard controller to benefit from it.Next up is the PS2 and Socom II; let’s see how the PS2 versionof Max Shooter fairs. Socom II Once again I connected the keyboard and mouse to the adapter,plugged it into the PS2, and immediately got a good connection.I surfed through the menus with ease and entered an online game.This time around there is a preset available for the actual gameI’m playing. I loaded up the preset and was pleasantly surprisedto find the preset layout to be perfect for Socom gameplay. It felt good and worked just as well as it did in Halo 2. Idon’t play a lot of Socom but I found myself playing quite a bitin this setup as I could never get into using the PS2 controllerfor FPS gameplay. With the large amount of customization, the ease of use, and thelow price this adapter is really worth every penny. If youreally want an advantage in games like Halo 2 or just want totry a new controller setup I would definitely recommend pickingthe Max Shooter. Pros * Plug and Play * Customization and presets * Low price Cons * Lack of new title presets Overall Score 9.5
About the author:Jeromy is the webmaster of http://www.gamebrink.com/GameBrink.Com Import Video Game Compare.
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