Zalman FG1000 FPS Gun

Performance
As this device isn’t a mouse as such it is even harder to test as we are not able to test it during everyday use, as it is certainly not designed for this. As such we will be testing this device within several different gaming environments, focusing on the FPS games that it was born to play.

Primarily we will be concentrating on Call of Duty and GoldenEye 007 (2010 release). We will be focusing on the comfort, features, functionality, control/accuracy and design categories.

Comfort:

The Zalman FPS Gun is certainly not uncomfortable, although it will feel weird for a good few minutes as you get used to it – bearing in mind it is requires a completely different hand position compared to a mouse or even a joystick.

Features:

As this device has been designed specifically for FPS gaming it certainly has the features that are perfect for this, the trigger buttons being the main example. The positioning of the scroll wheel and size of the scroll wheel are also a nice feature and allow for quick selections of weapons or scrolling through menus.

Functionality:

This is certainly quite a functional device, but I’m not entirely convinced by all of the button positions and the point of them. The two trigger buttons are perfect and are located in the right place allowing for quick firing, although they do make quite a bit of noise. The scroll wheel I found was not quite in the best place as if you held the device with a tight grip your thumb will reach over the top of the wheel, meaning it is very hard to scroll forwards and scrolling backwards lacks the control I expected and required. Of course you can hold your thumb over the top of the wheel allowing you to scroll forwards and backwards, but this is an awkward position and will strain your thumb quite quickly!

The DPI switching is good, but the button is also located in the wrong place, it requires your third finger to stretch out at a weird angle – in fact it is easier to reach it with your second finger, but that means taking that off the secondary (right click) trigger button. The extra 2 buttons could be of use but have a very large amount of feedback as though they don’t want to be pressed and I can’t see any real advantage to this in the games I played.

Control and Accuracy:

This is where the FPS Gun shines, for FPS games your kill accuracy will certainly improve. This device both allows you to have a greater turning angle but allows you to be more precise at the same time, this in FPS games is a crucial advantage. It does also feel more life-like as you are twisting the gun towards the area you want – you could, in a very loose and limited sense, aim down the gun towards the screen, but unfortunately my computer doesn’t quite work like the arcade games.

Design:

My first thoughts were how weird this looked. It neither looks like a gun, a mouse or even a joystick. However, a lot has been thought out quite carefully, the main focus being on the trigger buttons and everything seems to have been designed around this central structure. I still expect the rear section to swivel or rotate to some extent due to the bridge part joining the sensor and the hand-held part together. If they had done that then they might as well have designed a joystick. It is certainly an interesting design which incorporates some useful features and mostly fits the bill.