Thrustmaster GPX LightBack Xbox 360 Controller Review

As with most peripheral reviews the most important part is performance, given the somewhat driving themed nature of these controllers, especially the Ferrari themed one, it only seems right to fire them into action on Forza 4, I figured I would jump straight into a few of my favourite cars and tracks for a couple of races and see how things held up.

Now the first thing you notice about these controllers is the lights, while they are somewhat of a gimmick they do have some practical applications, albeit minor ones at that. Dependant on the amount you press the trigger the lights on the pad light up, until you press it in all the way and all three green lights and one red light are then lit up, providing you visual feedback of how much throttle or break you’re applying while racing, with a set of lights on the left and right for the left and right triggers respectively. Ok it’s really not the most useful feature ever, but it does look cool and I’m sure someone out there will have a use for it. The same principle is applied to the lights in the analogue sticks, with them changing colour all the way upto maximum lock, giving you the same visual feedback on your input levels.

The next thing I noticed was the feel of the controller, the ergonomics are really comfortable and the triggers feel much better suited to racing games than the ones fitted to the official Xbox controller, giving a much smoother transition from 0-100% application as well as a slightly curved shape to them that allows a much better finger resting position, its a minor touch, but in long races it makes a big impact on your comfort. The same can be said about the analogue sticks, they provide a good level of resistance and precision, a real surprise for a controller in this price range.

The most impressive thing for me though has to be the D-Pad, I really can’t live with the D-Pad on the official Xbox controller, the playstation 3 has a better D-Pad but again that one isn’t perfect either, so I decided to fire up Soul Calibur 4 to put it through its paces and it certainly performed a lot better than the original one, the full piece + layout gives much greater accuracy when it comes to those complex combos.