Rotokiller a.k.a. "The Equaliser" review

Posted by Toby Crundwell on January 08, 2002
Company: GWS     Product: The Rotokiller

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Features

• 968 dpi ball tracking movements as low as 0.0036" (about the width of a human hair), clutch function

• Drivers capable of 16 bits per axis per packet (up to 256 times more than other mice)

• 6 membrane switches with button shifting, 16 functions available at any one time

• Programmable back-lighting (red and red, four modes of flashing)

• Top mounted cord - illuminating cord drag

• Game manager customizes and loads over 60 exportable mouse control settings per game

More advanced information about the 720 can be found here.

Movement

The 720 is possibly the most accurate device I have ever used. I usually stick to trackballs for their accuracy, but I have to admit the 720 is at least as accurate as my previous two trackballs, the Kensington Turboball and the Microsoft Trackball Explorer. Unlike the Explorer, the 720 had no tendency to slide. I was unable to find out more about the "clutch function". With most mice, when there is not enough space left on the surface, the user would lift the mouse up to centre it. GWS claimed to have a way around this, the "clutch function", which could be assigned to any button through the configuration software. On a basic level, when a button is assigned as a clutch, all movements on the X and Y axis are suppressed until the button is released. A button does not have to be exclusively assigned to clutch (i.e. the primary button can also be the clutch). More on this later.

Navigating the desktop was a bit harder than it should be, although it got better over time. The adjustment was probably due to the fact I was so used to using trackballs. The 720 performed accurately for all intents and purposes on my 1600x1200 desktop.

Gaming

I first tried the 720 with Unreal Tournament, and was pleasantly surprised by how accurate it was. Movement was fluid and accurate, and 180 turns were easy. I didn't actually find the need to use the "clutch" function as I never really needed to move the 720 around to much physically.

The second game I tried was Quake III, patched to version 1.29h. Whilst mouse buttons were recognized, Quake III totally ignored all movements to the X and Y axis, and it doesn't take a hardcore gamer to realize, this is pretty bad for gameplay. I looked this up on the Rotokiller website and this was listed as a known bug. The following has to be entered into the Quake III console before mouse movement is recognized:

in_mouse -1

in_restart

This is presumably more of an issue with id's beta patch rather than the 720. Once the mouse was working, gameplay seemed fairly easy, sharp movements were easy and I found gameplay on nightmare skill mode entirely practical. I did have to turn the mouse sensitivity right down to practically nothing though, as I found initially aiming was just not accurate enough.

Half Life, and more specifically Counter-Strike, was more playable with the 720 than my previous trackball, the more accurate movements being ideally suited for Counter-Strike (rather than the gun-ho approach Unreal Tournament and Quake III encourage.

Select The Rotokiller - Impressions Features, Movement and Gaming Rotokiller's drivers and the device itself Other points of interest & Conclusion

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