Gadgetory

one of the things I really like to do when we're coming up with video ideas is to just look for weird or cool or ingenuitive stuff that's on Etsy that people have come up with and admittedly normally we focus on the weird stuff but today is a little bit different today we want to talk about something that I find really interesting we've talked a few times before about how one of the really cool things about the switch is that the joy cons are these nifty little controllers that can attach to a large variety of different kinds of accessories and so far there's been only light experimentation with that like regular controller grips they've announced like a fishing or others there's a few things out there but they can definitely get weirder than what and that's what brings us to old purchased for today's video this doesn't exactly tell you much just by looking at it it's pretty bare-bones and basic I know but really all this is is just a simple piece of plastic that's designed with two rails on it for joy cons to attach to now normally when there's gripped designs of the switch it's putting the joy cons side by side to create kind of a traditional controller in this case though it's designed to put the droid cons back to back allowing you to use them with one hand now if you've been keeping up with this chain you'll know that a couple of weeks ago we tried out a one-handed playstation controller which had kind of mixed results across all the games we used it on but in its defense it was something that was advertised specifically for just RPGs as a simple controller where's this is a very different kind of design with how the buttons are gonna be arranged so I'm really curious to see how it's gonna work out so we're gonna test it on a bunch of major switch titles and just see how viable it is okay so start we're gonna go with Mario Kart because I feel like that's gonna be a really easy one because I really have to worry about accelerating maybe breaking on occasion and turning and like using items one of the weird things right away is I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to hold this controller I'm sure it's gonna vary with each game I think I'm gonna go with my thumb on this controller these two fingers on the shoulders and then ring finger on the stick maybe I don't know let's try that out this is already a mess oh God so applying pressure with one hand or one finger makes the rest of this feel different weird oh and it's reversed because I'm holding this controller front that's bad so the problem we're having right now is this is the joy come first for steering and because I'm holding it backwards with my brain reads as left is actually right and vice versa can I hold it this way okay this doesn't feel as intuitive but it's much better for the game so I flipped it I got my thumb now using for turning and I'm just pressing down accelerate the whole time I can still hit the shoulder buttons for using items holding it this way I'm not entirely sure when I'm applying enough pressure to be hitting the button because this weird claw grip the thing I'm doing so sometimes I'm letting up on accelerate what I don't mean to you just really have to grip it a lot and it's not very comfortable on my hand but it's working I'm in first place right now on the easiest map 100cc I hit someone at the green show okay this could work for racing let's let's try something different though um you'll do dog Kong next for a side-scrolling game reaction you like jump on enemies and not die but to go easy on myself you do funky Kong mode also it's funky Kong so I wouldn't I so starting up one of the biggest things I'm noticing is just like with Mario Kart I have to get used to flipping some things in my head because with Mario Kart when I was holding it this way initially left was right where I was left and it's just definitely better rolled this way but now when I have it this way when a game is like oh press B I'm like yeah that's this one right it's not well actually okay that is B but a and Y are flipped which gets annoying yeah this is actually really this is actually easy to the Mario Kart now that I'm doing it up and to like of course I get to hit when I start saying that yeah this actually this we're gonna pretty well I'm not I'm not you know running through the stage nearly as quickly as I would normally but that's just cuz I'm kind of learning how to use this guy comfortably but it works when you're using detach joy comes make sure using the wrist strap yeah that's not happening chemicals are actually the main thing that I'm worried about so oh that's weird yeah okay so I need to use my ring finger on the stick middle finger on these buttons this for shoulders and then thumb for movement right like I just need to let the automatic following work and then just mess with the camera when I really need to I kept landing directly in front of enemies which seems like a dumb thing that shouldn't be affected by this controller but it happens three times in a row so maybe I'm just bad oh I did it again no camera back down so with donkey hyung you know it was more difficult but I could totally see you know getting through the whole game using it Mario I can already tell just there's a little more nuance with the control and where you want to move and as a result especially with camera controls this could get really annoying it would take a lot more time with this controller and just kind of getting the full hang of it like I'm pretty sure me playing mario 64 back as an actual kid was better than how I'm doing right now all right last but far from least we're gonna do breath of the wild because like Mario we don't only have to worry about camera angles and moving around in a 3d space but there's a lot more button combinations happening where if I want to change weapons or if I want to aim and use a bow hold down this button and then use this stick which that's weird that's really weird about aiming a bow let's try anything a bow nope still no because I think for bowing you did there we go I haven't just played Zelda in a while so I'm also forgetting with the controls are no don't do that okay but no no pick the sword back up okay so I have to now motion controls are terrible for this I need to turn those off this is a disaster anything that requires using both sticks at the same time is really really annoying with this grip because you could maybe get used to controlling both at once but the way you're holding controller makes it pretty awkward to try and hit any other button not just because of you know what fingers you have wear but just the way you're moving your hand doesn't really feel natural and I'll just start cramping up which definitely into game for here my hand is cramping bad from all these games so I'm just gonna go ahead and say right now that for Zelda this is a no-go like if you're one of those people that wants to say like oh yeah I beat this game using this kind of controller great good for you but if you're just wondering if you can use a one head to control like this to play Zelda no not a good idea at least not for me this is not working so yeah this isn't exactly a perfect solution but it does work a lot better than I would have anticipated and it makes me really curious about whether or not Nintendo could pursue something like this in the future because especially with other big companies like Microsoft investing in ideas like the adaptive controller for helping people with disabilities the idea of Kahn's getting a similar accessory tube use them with a single hand seems like a great idea