PixlBit

Back when I first went to college, I found myself getting heavily into the PC gaming scene. In preparation, I built myself a ridiculous Alienware gaming laptop, complete with all of the best hardware available at the time. About halfway through my first year, Direct X 9 became standardized and before I knew it, my once cutting edge gaming rig was horribly incapable and outdated. Since then, I've laid off the PC gaming scene and moved almost exclusively to console games. In the transition I've greatly missed the amazing precision of the keyboard and mouse set-up provided by PCs, particularly in first person shooters.

Enter Penguin United and their Eagle Eye Converter for the PlayStation 3. Through the use of their nifty device, players can trick their PS3 into believing that the combination keyboard and mouse is a standard system controller. By default, the Eagle Eye maps the mouse movement to the right control stick, a logical conversion as both input devices are used for the same purpose on their respective platforms. All other buttons, as well as the left stick, can be mapped via a simple computer program. Furthermore, players can save mappings that work well for given games, with each configuration file holding two unique mappings to handle potential control differences given the context of the game. These mappings can be toggled on the device with a simple flip of a switch.

Using the Eagle Edit program packaged with the converter, players can also set-up macros and map them to keys (or mouse buttons) in order to squeeze even more efficiency from the device. Finally, the physical device provides a set of turbo switches for each button on the PS3 controller, allowing players to further hack the control configuration on the system.

Naturally, all of these features amount to nothing if the device doesn't work properly with the system. Fortunately, given the right mouse equipment, the Eagle Eye Converter behaves as intended, though my initial test of the equipment produced some extremely disappointing results. As it turns out, my mouse had a subpar DPI and as such it was quite sluggish even when the in-game sensitivity was turned up to max.

After discussion with the developers at Penguin United, they suggested a laser mouse with a high or adjustable DPI (standard for modern gaming mice) to alleviate my issues. A shiny new laser mouse made life much better as the Eagle Eye was now translating my slight mouse movements effectively on screen.

In order to really test the effectiveness of the device I tried it on a number of different games to see how well it performed. First up was Call of Duty Classic on PSN. With some small button configuration adjustments, I was able to experience the game with ease. The mouse movements translated well when the sensitivity was cranked to max, but in comparison to my usual PC gaming sensitivity settings, even at max it still felt a bit insensitive. Overall, playing with the Eagle Eye proved much more enjoyable than using the far more awkward controller.

Grand Theft Auto IV was my second test case, which demonstrated that the device is much better suited for a first person shooter, but some button tweaking and game setting adjustments eventually made the game less awkward to play.

My final, and most convincing test, was Unreal Tournament III, one of the few PS3 games that natively support a keyboard and mouse for control. First I played with the Eagle Eye which, for the most part, felt smooth, though occasionally jumpy if I moved around too quickly. Switching to the native support, moving the reticle around the screen was much smoother with absolutely no hiccups. This is not unexpected, but it did clearly demonstrate that while the Eagle Eye is effective for most games, twitch titles might cause some heartache when the reticle is moving around often and rapidly. Additionally, moving the reticle distances larger than a touch but less than a swipe were slightly awkward and not always responsive.

While the Eagle Eye unit is solidly constructed, feature rich, and easily customizable, it is not quite perfect in its implementation. Players shouldn't expect to-the-PC accurate control, but something very close to it. Unfortunately, if those looking to invest in the Eagle Eye don't already have a gaming mouse, they might find that the price investment is even greater after purchasing a proper laser mouse. The base MSRP on the device is also quite steep, which might be prohibitive for most gamers just to use their preferred control devices. The Eagle Eye Converter is reserved specifically for ex-PC gamers who no longer have a rig to enjoy the latest and greatest shooter titles on.