Could Have Been Great, But Isn't (Microsoft Sidewinder Game Pad Pro)

Member Name: Galloway

Product:	Microsoft Sidewinder Game Pad Pro
Date:	20/06/01 (524 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Build Quality, Good Software, Button Feel

Disadvantages: Poor Analogue Control, Combined Ana-digi Direction Pad, Price

This is one of Microsoft’s later game pads, and comes with USB connection only. It is a two handed design similar to most pads and is silver in colour.

It has one D-pad, a shift button next to the D-pad and six buttons on its upper facing and left and right trigger buttons. The pad is very comfortable to hold and all of the buttons are placed well for the average hand. Each button gives a firm and precise feel when pushed.
The D-pad is a combination of both digital and analogue controller allowing only one mode to be used at once.

Software is supplied on cd-rom and installs easily. Set-up takes no more than a minute or two and offers full configuration adjustment. Controller configurations for individual games can be entered and saved, then recalled from the settings screen when required.
To switch from analogue to digital mode for the D-pad and vice-versa has to be done from the set-up screen in the software. There are no buttons on the pad for this.

The D-pad is the problem, being both analogue and digital; it feels squashy and imprecise in digital mode and in analogue the flat with centre indent D-pad lacks precision. When trying to control a car in a racing game, or an aircraft or space vehicle that benefits from precision control, it is more like using a soggy digital pad than a precision analogue one.

At £30 this is no cheap pad, and despite its quality feel it fails to offer good D-pad control in either mode. As other game pads offer separate digital and analogue D-pads in the same pad, these generally offer the best of both worlds, rather than pads that try to make one D-pad multifunctional.

Summary: