Gadgetory

- Today, we're taking a look at a soon-to-be-released keyboard and mouse option for PlayStation 4 players, the Tactical Assault Commander Pro, version two. Keyboard and mouse support on gaming consoles has been an increasingly popular topic, ever since Microsoft started adding official keyboard support to the Xbox One and while PlayStation has yet to open up that full option to their system, although one specific game does allow them, Fortnite, there are options for still using a keyboard and mouse-style control on your PlayStation. Now, we actually talked before about a HORI gaming controller called the Tactical Assault Commander and that was an older one they released that featured a mouse connected to a half-controller that was okay. It was kind of weird. Honestly, it wasn't the best choice and HORI realized it and afterwards, released the Tactical Assault Commander Pro, which was a half-keyboard mouse combo and now, soon, they'll be releasing the version two of this setup, which offers some pretty cool improvements. So, let's take a look at all the features it has to offer, what's been improved over the previous version, and whether or not it's really even just worth using for your PS4 FPS games. Now, if you're not familiar with how mapping a PlayStation controller to keyboard and mouse works exactly, it's really simple. Most of the major buttons, as well as the left directional stick, are moved to the keys over here, while the right analog stick and the shoulder buttons are mapped to the mouse. Now, it's worth noting, it actually is possible to customize the key bindings for which button is which, but there is a default setup that is marked on all the current keys and it works pretty well for most games. There's a couple parts that I would like to change and customize, which thankfully, you can, but for the most part, it works out pretty fine. There's a couple little nice additions to it that I like as well. For instance, along with the regular keypad, you also have this additional stick on the left side that you can hit with your thumb and an X button placed above it. Now, the stick, by default, works like the D-pad, but it can also be customized to work like the left or right analog stick, depending on your preference, and the reason for the X button on the side is mainly for menu management. Basically, every single major PlayStation game out there uses X for selecting things on the menu, so it's a really easy way just to have a place to remember, hey, if I need to select something, confirm something, whatever, get through menus, just keep tappin' right here. Before moving on, I'd like to take a second to thank Datawallet for sponsoring today's video. 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Not many games really make use of full touchpad capabilities, especially FPS games, which this is primarily designed for, so while this certainly isn't the most comfortable to reach for, it's basically the best you can do with this kinda layout and it's fine. If you haven't used something like this before, it is also important to keep in mind that it doesn't necessarily work exactly the same like using a traditional keyboard on a PC, because again, the whole point of this is that it's emulating a controller input, so there's a couple important things to keep in mind. First off, the mouse does not perfectly feel like a mouse normally would. It is, once again, acting like a right stick, and that does take some adjustment to get used to how to move it just right to match up. Now, you can customize some of the sensitivity options on this, as well as how it reads, and there's a few buttons and options here that open up a little more customization and control when you need certain exact types of movement. In particular, the keyboard offers three different special modes you can activate, which are walk, sniping, and quick-look. The way these modes work is that, while you're holding one of the respective buttons, it modifies the sensitivity of how the left and right sticks are being read. For instance, the walk button. Now, in a lot of games, when you're using the left stick for movement, if you slightly tilt it, you'll walk, if you do a full tilt, you'll run, but when you're using up, down, left, right keys, that doesn't really work that way, so instead, when you're hitting these, it reads like a full tilt, but if you want that slight tilt, just where you're crawling forward a little more carefully, that's when you would hold the walk button. On the other hand, the quick-look and snipe buttons modify the sensitivity of the mouse, giving you a little more different kind of control when you need it. For instance, quick-look will make the sensitivity as high as possible so you can quickly turn around when need be, while snipe will reduce that sensitivity so, whenever you just need to aim down sight and just slightly adjust where you're aiming, that's where that mode comes in handy. Aside from all these fancy features and ways that buttons are read, there's a couple other little features of the Tactical Assault Commander worth mentioning. It does have an adjustable palm rest, which is nice. So, if your hand's a little bit bigger and the standard grip doesn't feel quite right to you, you can extend it out further. It does have mechanical keys, however, they are HORI brand, not any kind of Cherry MX or anything like that, and it is backlit, which always gives that cool look. One other really useful feature of this is the ability to swap between PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and a PC keyboard mode. Now, what's interesting about this is, like I said earlier, one game in particular, Fortnite, supports external keyboard and mouse support, so if you put this in keyboard mode and plug the mouse directly into your PlayStation, it's now going to read like a proper mouse instead of using that right stick emulation, which allows for much smoother control that feels a lot more natural. The only downside of this is that the cable on the mouse is significantly shorter than the one from the keyboard, which makes sense when you're in this setup, but if you're doing it this way, you have to make sure you're a little closer to your PS4. Anyways, that's all the functions and features of it. Let's actually play some games. (techno music) You know, I've used a couple of these different keyboard and mouse setups now that emulate controllers and I gotta say, they are an improvement over using a controller, but there's this opening kind of adaptation period you have to get through first because, yeah, it works like a keyboard and mouse, but at the same time, it doesn't entirely work like a keyboard and mouse, or at least the mouse part, because again, this is emulating a right stick input and so, it doesn't have quite the same feeling and flow as a traditional mouse does. So, if you've played a lot on PC, it might take a little time to adjust to how it feels different, but once you get through that period and you start customizing things and fine-tune it to your play style, this is an awesome choice for any kind of FPS game on console, whether that's Apex Legends, Fortnite, or even just single-player, over-the-shoulder stuff like Resident Evil, and that's especially true with this controller because one of the really big upgrades that the version two has over the original Tactical Assault Commander Pro is that there's actually an app you can get on your phone, which allows you to connect to the controller directly and make customizations on the fly. With this app, you're able to customize up to eight different profiles for each mode on the controller, PS4, PS3, and keyboard, and with each of these, you're able to do things like change which buttons on the keyboard are bound to which buttons, how sensitive the mouse movement is, how sensitive the stick is, whether the stick acts as a D-pad, left or right analog, and even adjust things like how much exactly the walk button or snipe button affects the sensitivity when you're in those modes. With all this customization, you're able to fine-tune this controller to really any game that you're playing. You can use a different profile for each one and if you take the time to really figure out which sensitivities work just right and which buttons are best for that particular game's controls, it just ends up working beautifully.