Pelican Trick Stick
By: Ben
The Pelican Trick Stick is a very cool arcade pad that adds new life to your fighting games. This brings back memories of going to the arcade and pounding the crap out of the arcade machines. Now because of Pelican, I can relive those memories right in front of my very own T.V.
Feel: I was quite surprised how good the Trick Stick actually feels. The joy stick is easy to move around, and it’s comfortable to hold. The buttons are easy to press, and they are all very big and smooth. There is also a nice rubber grip to rest your hands on. This is great for long hours of game playing. There is also an arch for your right hand so you don’t have to curl your hand up manually to press buttons. This hardware feels good.
The Buttons: The buttons are large and reasonably close together. In most cases, that would be a bad thing, but this time around, it’s great. When you want to start punching instead of kicking, it’s right there for you. All of the buttons are very responsive, and feel good to press. They are very smooth surfaced, and are laid out so each finger can access different buttons.
The Joystick: The joystick functions as the D-Pad on the Xbox controller. This means that there is less chance a came will be compatible with the Trick Stick, as most games require the use of the analogue sticks.
The Joystick functions as it would in an arcade
You can feel where up, down, left, and right are. It has a circle grip, and is very comfortable.
The Triggers: As odd as this sounds, the triggers on the Trick Stick are no longer triggers. They are buttons. They are positioned next to the a, b, x, y, black and white buttons. They are perfect for games like doa3, as they are right there where all the other buttons are.
With The Games: Unfortunately, as of yet, not a ton of games support the Joystick feature. But, at the moment, DOA3 and a few others do. I decided to test it out with DOA3 and Hunter: The Reckoning. It was great. I was kicking more butt in DOA3 than I have been in a long time. Everything was in the right place. It was perfect.
In hunter, it was also great. The only drawback is that I couldn’t use the right analogue stick, as it doesn’t exist on the Trick Stick. All in all, if a game supports the Joystick function, use the Trick Stick for it.
The Extras: I was quite amazed to see the programmable function on the Trick Stick. When you load a combo in a button, it will not work unless you press the combo button at the same time. Some people may find this to be a hassle, but I find it to be a great feature. Now I don’t have to lose function of a button.
The rubberized hand rests are also a very nice addition to the controller. It makes extended play a breeze.
Overall: I would have to say that the Trick Stick is a great addition to your game peripheral library for Xbox. It’s great for DOA3, and I bet that it will be great in many games soon to come. The only disadvantage to it is that there is not a ton of support for it in many games. As of now, I would still go out and buy one. Its great.
Score:
9.5/10
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