These little extenders, their dark red thumb indentation stamped with the Gears of War logo, snap onto your Xbox 360 controller analog sticks and grant you a whopping 40% extra range of motion. This translates into allowing you finer control over your movements (and aiming) in action-oriented games. The taller stick height also relieves strain on the thumbs, and the indentation helps to ensure that your thumb doesn’t slip off the stick at a most inopportune moment.
While the marketing guys say that these will snap onto the PS3 controller sticks, as well, I found that they didn’t fit my official PS3 controller properly. One of the small pressure clips refused to seat properly which caused the entire extender to be at an awkward angle. The coating on the extenders is slightly textured to allow better grip, and this aspect of the design works very well. Even at this improper angle, my thumb never slipped … until the extender popped off because it didn’t fit properly to the PS3 controller’s stick. Which completely messed the sniper shot I was lining up.
I like the concept of these, especially the indentation to help keep the thumb from slipping. I suspect that the increased range of motion will take a little getting used to, but I have a feeling that I’ll like it. Once KontrolFreek can get them to fit properly on a PS3 controller, I’ll definitely be buying a set, even though I don’t play GoW (and yes, even though I know someone who works at Epic Games; no, it’s not Cliff).
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