I’ve been eyeballing the $150 beast everytime I walk into an EB/BestBuy/whatever these days, and I can’t pinpoint my attraction considering simulation racers rarely EXCITE! me.
But I love driving, I love my car, I love being a wheelman. It’s wireless, it’s on 360, and it just may make me appreciate games I’d normally never touch(like Forza).
Reviews have been kind, but most seem to imply it’s great for PGR3, but not so much for anything else(RR6, NFS, etc…); wait for Forza 2 et al.
I’m stupid enough to make the plunge and geek out to PGR3 and Burnout with it, but I’d like some opinions before I get laughed at by my peers for blowing mounds of money on something equivalent to Steel Battallion sticks.
Hate it for PGR3- pedal response is immediate, but the response time on turning the wheel was .5->1second off, and made the game entirely unplayable.
The flip side is, it’s awesome for Forza1. Instant response for both the wheel and the pedals.
I haven’t read the reviews, I haven’t rtfm, etc. Maybe there’s a way to make PGR3 work fine… But I honestly don’t care, because it DOES work great with Forza and that was all I really cared about. :)
If you are going to buy Forza 2 (which is the only weapon-less cargame I approve of),
you’ll probably end up playing it a lot. Comfort is good, and wheels are excellent
for that.
It’s nothing like Steel Battalion’s monster control panel, which is basically only
useful for Steel Battalion. However, if you don’t sit upright playing, it’s not for you.
(My position while playing the 360 is currently wrapped in blankets to keep warm,
lying down on a couch, muttering into a headset to pretend I’m situationally aware ;)
On a side note, played the NFS game on my bud’s 360 this weekend. It’s terrible. Other than the really bad control /no damage models, the split screen was sluggish and seemed to drop frames. Also, I could swear the game was smoothing out my car’s trajectory and compensating for me. Ah, whatever happened to the quality that was Porsche Unleashed?
The hardware is pretty nice (and it should be for the price), but the software implementations are uneven at best and a total bust at worst.
Test Drive Unlimited was fun with the wheel once i got the sensitivity settings dialed-in. PGR3 was “meh.” Burnout, Colin McRae Rally, others were essentially broken (no wheel support past the steering and pedals minimally functioning).
I returned the wheel the same day and don’t regret it. Will probably be worth revisiting once Forza 2 comes out and other new games improve their support.
For perspective, I’ve used decent FF wheels on the PC with games like Mobil 1 Rally Championship, the various Papyrus sims, etc.
Along with the Forza 3 announcement, they announced that it would work with a new wheel from Fanatec, who I hadn’t heard of before but is supposed to be fairly high-quality. It’s also notable for being the first wheel I’ve seen that will work with the PC, 360, and PS3. Be prepared for a bit of sticker shock, though…
Yep, Fanatecs are serious hardware and very well reviewed by sim community, and I expect will blow away the 360 wheel. The problem, as described above, is the usefluness of any wheel given the uneveness of the integration into driving games.
I’ve been getting back into Forza 3 and I’m thinking about picking up NFS: Shift. If I don’t have a lot of money to spend on a wheel, is there any reason not to pick up the official MS one?
There’s nothing much better for the price. If you just want ‘not a pad’ then it will be fine. It’s not as nice as the expensive ones but the gap between the MS wheel and a pad is bigger than the gap between the MS wheel and a $250-350 wheel.
