Cyborg F.L.Y.9 Wireless Flight Stick Xbox 360 Review

Flying games can be pretty serious business, with plenty to choose on the market for PC gamers, be you a fan of full on simulations or arcade frenzies, the gaming world is crammed full of exciting sky bound entertainment, so its only natural that you would want the ultimate control over your aircraft of choice to give you that extra realism or a competitive edge in your favourite game.

The Xbox 360 is no different these days with plenty of flight games on offer from the ever popular Tom Clancy H.A.W.X series, to more arcade titles like Ace Combat, but there are not many flight sticks available for consoles that are worth a look in, fortunately this is where the Cyborg F.L.Y.9 comes in, a premium quality flight stick for console gaming that should offer a lot more to budding virtual pilots over the standard Xbox 360 analogue controller.

Flight sticks need to be accurate, they need to have the right feel to them and cover all the basics for a variety of games, even more so on consoles, Saitek have been making flight sticks for many years now, which they have expanded upon with their “Cyborg” range, developed to appeal more to the electronic sports and gaming markets, this model is built for the Xbox 360, but the stick is available for PC and PS3 also, meaning that across the various platforms it should be capable of handling everything from PC flight simulations to casual gaming, so lets take a closer look at the box and see just what the F.L.Y.9 has to offer.

First up on the front and back of the box we can see that the stick supports IL-2 Stormovik: Birds of Prey, Heroes Over Europe,  H.A.W.X. Ace Combat 6 and Blazing Angels 1 & 2, has 2 flight modes, supports adjustments for custom a fit and has wireless technology, so off to a good starts, with all the major Xbox 360 titles having full support.

Inside the box cover we’re treated to a more detailed run down of its features, Multiple length and angle adjustments that allow you to fully customise the fit of the stick to your personal taste, a unique base sesign that quickly adapts to use on a desk or your thigh, a 9-way hat switch, handle lock with screw collar attachment allows for easy removal of the stick, which is great for storage, included adjustment tool that stores securely in the base of the unit that allows you to adjust the tilt of the head to further optimize button position.

Inside the box we have three main components, the base unit, which on it’s own it’s very sturdy and has some nice grip feet on its base for mounting on your desk or table top.  The flight stick its self, which I must say is fantastically constructed, four leg rest attachments which lock firmly into the base of the unit, allowing you to sit the base firmly on your thigh when you want to move from a table/desk and play from the couch.

The flight stick securely screws into place with ease using the collar screw, making setup and folding away for storage a breeze, it also means there is no chance of it accidentally detaching after a few hours of vigorous flying.  The base is a solid one piece item that shouldn’t have too much trouble surviving a few knocks and bumps if you get a bit heavy handed during game play, its also fairly bulky, leaving you plenty of room for your left hand to rest over the D-pad and throttle without getting your arm in the way of the flight stick.

The head of the flight stick has been given lots of love and attention by the designers, with some very cool looking hard coated wires coming from each of the control buttons that surround the hat switch, as well some great looking finishing touches being applied to the buttons, the body of the stick and a metal hood that sports the Cyborg logo, all of which add to the overall quality of the controller.

Spin the stick around and you see the side LB and RB controls, a very sturdy throttle control, which at first I though was a bit stiff to use, but after using it for a while, I realised its designed to make slow and small adjustments to the power output with a higher degree of accuracy.  Lastly on the base unit you see the D-Pad, a fairly sturdy one too, with it’s directions raised above the body of the base making it easy for your thumb to find without taking your eyes off the screen.

One of the most impressive thing about the F.L.Y.9 flight stick is its customisation options, just about ever major component can be raised, twisted and tweaked to your liking.  After taking the stick out of the box, pretty much nothing about it fitted my hand, I have quite big flat hands and long fingers, so I had to spend a couple of minutes tweaking the setup, the first part of which wasn’t too difficult, just pressing in the locking mechanism on the side of the flight stick allowed me to adjust its length, with very helpful printed measurements on the stick to assist with the calibration.

There is a very handy tool tucked away in the base of the unit too, which is basically just an allen key, but its nice that its included.  This tool allows you to tap into several extra adjustments that let you tweak the angle of the stick and tilt the hat switch / thumb controls.  After a couple of attempts and minor tweaks I had a setup that fitted my hand perfectly, which made the stick easier to use and means there would be less chance of my hand feeling fatigued from using it.  Overall setup and tweaking took me about five minutes before I was ready to play a game, which isn’t too bad as I only needed to set it up once.

I choose my games wisely for the F.L.Y.9, sticking mainly to Tom Clancy’s well proven title, HAWX 2.  Performance was exceptionally accurate throughout my tests, by which I mean I couldn’t flight straight for the first half an hour, reminding me that it had been a couple of years since I last held a flight stick, but I perservered and took things slowly.  Making the transition from a standard Xbox controller to a flight stick takes some getting used to, but once you get used to it, the accuracy you can archive is second to none, giving you absolute control over your jet that you just can’t appreciate with the dual thumb sticks of the standard controller.

The best moment I found was a part of HAWX 2 where you have to refule your jet mid flight, the final approach where balancing your throttle and making minor steering adjustments is vital and using the sticks twist controls was fantastic.  OK I found it extremely difficult, but I still had a lot of fun doing it. With a couple of hours extra practice though I was able to appreciate the subtleties of the stick and eventually my flying skills were much better than I could ever do on a standard controller.

Dog fights were by far improved also, the buttons are placed perfectly on this controller, after you’ve adjusted it of course, meaning that you don’t find your self glancing down at the stick to find buttons when you really need to be keeping your sights locked on your target.  Being able to pull back on the stick and accurately chase another jet in the clouds using this stick was an absolute blast.

I also gave this stick a run through on Ace Combat 6 and H.A.W.X 1 and performance throughout both these titles was just as great there as it was in HAWX 2.

The addition of being able to sit on my couch or at my desk while playing was also a welcome addition here, I sided with the couch for the most part though, but thanks to its handy detachable leg rests it wasn’t any trouble at all switching between the two when I had to.

It’s a tough call on this flight stick, for a casual gamer it seems like too big an investment forking out this much money for a controller, especially when most retailers have this stick clocking in around the £70 mark, there is also a lack of general flight simulations on consoles that you can find in abundance on the PC which doesn’t help with deciding on this product, thank fully thought the stick is available on PC, Xbox and PS3, so which ever format is the home of your beloved fly-em-up you do have some flexibility there, but I guess asking for a multi format edition would be asking too much, most likely for several legal reasons on the hardware.

I don’t take my flying games too seriously on consoles, although I do enjoy the odd bash at them from time to time as they can be a lot of fun, the only thing I can say for certain is that with cost of the FLY9 and the choice of games on the Xbox 360 aside, is that this stick works fantastically, if you happen to be looking for a very well built, full customisable, stylish and accurate flight stick for consoles then this is definitely the way to go, but if I were to purchase this flight stick I would likely have gone for the same stick on the PC, but that’s just my personal preference and in no way the sticks fault that I prefer PC flying games, I would love to put this stick through its paces on Microsoft Flight and a few of the more hardcore simulators, I don’t doubt that its performance would be exceptional on any format.

Given that Cyborg have a solid history of making gaming peripherals, I wouldn’t have expected anything less than solid performance and build quality from this product, this isn’t the first time they have made a flight stick and the rest of the products in their range are firm favourites with a big chunk of both the professional and casual gaming community.

I’m going to award the F.L.Y.9 our gamers choice award, while I do think it is a little expensive it does well to justify its self as well as its price with such a wide range of customisation options, excellent design and its superb accuracy, so if you’re serious about having the edge over your competitors or just enjoy hunting down your enemies in single player then this is the perfect flight stick for the job.