Introduction

PC gamers pride themselves on many things in the console / PC discussion: true hi-resolution imagery, hardware scalability, but more than anything they take pride in the mouse and keyboard combination. PC gamers (and I count myself among this group) have long extolled the virtues of the mouse as the superior gaming peripheral for most games (driving games and sports games being among some of the exceptions). The genres that dominate gaming on the PC - first-person shooter, real-time strategy, massively-multiplayer, role-playing - are all best played with mouse and keyboard. Within that hardware subset are a myriad of devices from which to choose. We grabbed a few mice to put them through the paces and see how they hold up to a gamer's critical eye.

Sandio 3D Game O'

Approximate Price - $80

The Sandio 3D Game O' promises to provide gamers with "an unfair advantage" by incorporating three analog joysticks into the mouse and essentially freeing up the left hand from some of its gaming duties. The joysticks provide "six degrees of freedom" resulting in X, Y, and Z axis translation and X,Y, and Z axis rotation all through the use of one hand. What this means for gaming - let's say a shooter - is that you can control all character movement with the mouse instead of using the WASD keys for forward, back, left, and right. The Sandio also supports multiple dpi settings (400, 800, 1600, 2000) and the ability to change the dpi on-the-fly should the need arise. The analog sticks on the mouse may sound good in theory, but in practice is another thing entirely.

In order to teach users how the analog sticks work together Sandio packages software called Cube Rotation with their driver that allows you to manipulate a 3D cube in a 3D space. The first problem I ran into was that Cube Rotation relies on the d3drm.dll library that Microsoft does not provide for Vista. I was able to fix this problem by downloading the library and copying it into the System32 folder under Windows. After playing with Cube Rotation for a few minutes I had the hang of the joysticks and loaded up the preset configuration for Half-Life 2 in the Sandio driver. The driver preload sets the left (thumb) 3D stick for forward and back movement and the top 3D stick (index or middle finger) for left and right. The problem is that because you're constantly pushing and pulling on the 3D sticks with your fingers there is a lot of added stress to your hand to hold the mouse in place. Additionally the three independent force vectors on the mouse make it difficult to line up precise shots. RTS games may be a different story depending on how you play them. You can use the sticks to rotate the map and camera while selecting units but you can already do that with the mouse in many RTS games by holding down the scroll button. I can see this mouse being very useful to modders or 3D modelers but for gaming it's just too much for one hand and it isn't comfortable. On the plus side the driver package that comes with it makes creating new game profiles very easy and the mouse tracks very well when at the high dpi settings. The 3D sticks are just getting in the way of a solid laser mouse.