BIOS: Technology Means Business

A standard PC keyboard and mouse are perfect when playing first person shooter (FPS) games such as Call Of Duty 2, Battlefield 2 and Quake 4, but other games need a more comfortable controller.

Take driving, flight simulators or sports games for example. Trying to be good at either variety on a keyboard and mouse is practically impossible and in some cases can be down right frustrating. Plus, you lose the arcade feel with a keyboard, which is a major factor why videogame consoles such as Sony’s Playstation 2 are so popular.

If driving or sport games are your favourite pastime, you should definitely try out a gamepad. With the Predator GM-1200 you have a full digital USB gamepad that doesn’t cost the earth and will allow you to get a grip with this type of input device. There’s no analogue controls (ideal for racing games), support for downloadable game profiles, or built-in vibration feedback to add even more realism to your immersive gaming experience, but you can’t really complain considering the gamepad costs just £12.07.

Trust’s Predator GM-1200 (160x140x60mm) is low-cost yet perfectly functional digital USB gamepad. While its asking price is lower than most competing products (similar to all Trust’s products), the gamepad is well built and relatively comfortable, and comes with a really neat rubber top layer (think Lenovo’s ThinkPads). The device has a 2.5-metre cable too, which should be long enough for most computing environments.

The black gamepad sports six teardrop red buttons and an 8-way direction pad, as well as two trigger buttons at the rear of the gampad, turbo function and a cruise control button. Uniquely, you also get an acceleration wheel, so that you can decide how fast to move. By using the cruise control button, the wheel setting and game speed remain constant without having to operate the wheel. By pressing the button again, the acceleration wheel is returned to the neutral position.

The benefit of the Turbo button is that you can produce a salvo of shots, instead of having to keep pressing the button quickly. The turbo function can be turned on and off during the game and can be assigned to each individual button. The button can be easily disabled during a game using the separate Clear button.

The Trust Gamepad GM1200 is fully Plug & Play compatible and comes supplied with a multi-language instruction manual. Minimum system requirements include a Pentium-class PC running a 166MHz or higher processor, Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, or XP x64, as well as one free USB port. There is no need to install any driver software, so the gamepad is ready to use as soon as it’s plugged into your USB port. However, as there’s no software support, you can forget about the option to save button profiles for certain games or the ability to download pre-programmed gaming profiles.

The seams of the controller are nicely contoured and offer a very smooth and comfortable feel. The buttons, direction pad and trigger buttons are reasonably positioned so you don’t have to keep looking down, but are let down by a low-cost feel. Most annoying is that the direction pad makes a clicking sound when any
direction is pressed.

The Predator GM-1200 is not a gamepad for advanced users. Instead, it’s a solid and low-cost option for those looking to try an alternative input device to help improve their gaming experience. It installed easily in our tests (Windows XP automatically configured the drivers) and performed reasonably. The build quality is also pretty good (excluding the noisy buttons) and it is also comfortable. Having said that, you’ll soon crave for vibration feedback and programmable buttons. [6]

[Best GamePad Pricing UK]
[Best GamePad Pricing US]

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