Welcome to the first installment of Revol's Revealing Reviews, where I, Revol, will reveal to you... reviews of.. things.

Eh, a'ight, here we go. Like many of you here, I'm playing Age of Conan. (I'll be reviewing the game very soon, too.) One aspect of the game I'm really loving is the combat. In a genre that is often times very stale, Funcom brought us something new to the table with directional attacks. For the uninitiated, combat in AoC is not automatic. You don't select an object, select an attack, and sit back while your character swings every second. In Conan, you execute every attack yourself, with three directions you can land your attacks at, and... hey, what am I doing? Let's save all this for the AoC review.

Look, what I'm getting at is that combat in Conan is complicated and involved. And while it's completely possible to be able to play with your keyboard, perhaps there is something better out there?

The Belkin Nostromo n52 - The competition

I've used something like the Saitek Command Unit before, the Belkin Nostromo. I believe I was using it while playing Dark Age of Camelot, and I enjoyed it. So, what am I doing, using the Saitek for AoC? Well...

But most importantly, it simply doesn't seem like I'd have enough real estate on the device. I play a Conqueror, so as a melee, I already need 9 keys for movement and directional attacks. On the Nostromo, that leaves me with 5 more keys, and those are all going to be taken by my combos. That leaves me nothing for feats, abilities, stances, and so on. So, I tried the Saitek.

My set-up for Age of Conan

As you can see, the Saitek is pretty much perfect for my needs. My only issue here was that it seemed impossible to attempt to map movement to the joystick on the thumb. (It's the nub that is now used by sprint in the image.) I spent hours trying to get it to work, but it simply wouldn't take, and it left me very frustrated. But as the set-up is now, it looks like it would work very well.

But does it? Well, it takes getting used to. It's easy to begin playing the game for any gaming veteran, using a keyboard, because we've all been there before. And even though the Saitek still has a familiar set-up of keys in the center, it can still take getting used to. What was causing me the most difficulty were the combo keys on the left side. To hit key 12 (my most important combo, my defense debuff), my pinky can't reach up since I can't use the default WASD setting on this device. So, I have to take my hand off 'home' as it were, and move to the 12th key. But now, I'm completely lost. I've found myself stumbling to find the directional keys again, which can kill my combos.

All that could be fixed from fine-tuning my set-up, but there's one last issue that's preventing me from enjoying the Saitek, and that is the responsiveness of the keys.

To get a response out of a key, you need to press a bit too hard than necessary. If I let up on a key just a bit, I run the risk of losing the response. I've had a lot of instances where this happens, which causes weird shit to happen. For example, with movement keys, if I lose response from forward movement for just a moment, it causes the game to think I'm double-taping forward, which activates one of the evade movements. But worst of all is when I go to activate a combo, and it doesn't appear.

Due to this issue, I cannot recommend this device. I bought it from Best Buy, so I'm keeping the receipt, and will give it a few more weeks. Perhaps it just needs to get broken in. If this problem goes away, then I don't see anything else really holding it back. Sure, the profile editor is confusing, but I can work it out. It's a shame I can't get movement working on the stick, but maybe I can figure it out. But as it stands, I won't be recommending the Saitek CYBORG Command Unit.