Vertically Rising

History of the Onza:

So it’s been nearly a year from the first announcement of Razer‘s entrance into the console gaming market with two new peripherals for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console. At CES 2010, they announced (and had a working demo unit) of the Onza controller, and a 5.1 surround sound headset named the Chimera.

Both their products kept getting pushed back, and it wasn’t until January 2011 that they allowed pre-orders for the Onza (while the Chimera is still on hold). Razer did expand both lines a bit further to include two versions of each product. For the Onza, there’s a Tournament Edition with a few more features (adjustable tension sticks, braided cable, rubberized surface) than the Standard Edition. The Chimera was also expanded to have a 5.1 system over a 5.8Ghz band and a standard stereo system over 2.4Ghz.

There’s been much talk on the ASTRO Gaming Forums about the Onza with many members pre-ordering it. Let me also admit that I was planning to pre-order it as well, but it went out of stock on the Razer site so quickly (even for a pre-order) that I missed out entirely. Razer’s handling of shipping the item out a few weeks late added to the frustration of many customers online. Just this week, some of the members on the forum mentioned that BestBuy was getting them in stock. I checked the next day and was able to secure one at my local BestBuy.

Review:

Let me start this review by saying I am a former fan of Razer, using their Diamond Back mouse for a number of years for PC Gaming. Their company does listen to the gaming community or their representation of the community (which is always helpful to get things changed for future products).

The Razer Onza Tournament Edition is a good, maybe great controller, but could be better…

That’s a loaded sentence, so I’ll jump into things with their key features.

• MultiFunction Buttons – The Onza has two programmable “MultiFunction Buttons” which can be programed to any face button (ABXY), shoulder button (RB,LB) or trigger. They’re found just infront of (towards your body) the regular shoulder buttons and can be programmed pretty easily by just holding down 1 of 2 program buttons, and clicking the button you want it to emulate.
• Adjustable Tension Sticks – A TE exclusive, these allow you to turn a dial found right under the top of the stick to adjust between a very loose to a very rigid turning ability.
• Hyperesponse Face Buttons – These work much like a mouse click would (tactile response).
• Rubberized Surface
• Wired Controller / 15′ Braided cable

One thing that I do have to note is the removal of a great feature they had when the Onza was first announced was a “sharply-lit edge” which produced a neon green glow around the controller (much like the TRON controllers).

Last things to note:

• Some people on the ASTRO forums mentioned their dislike of the curvature of the triggers. I was fine with them (I actually like them, but I tend to pull towards the base of the trigger, instead of the end). I think if the trigger was angled a bit better it would allow for the middle finger to be used with a better feel, and the index finger to be used for the shoulder buttons.
• I was able to use FPS Freeks with these, with a suggestion that I read online that if you rotate the tension sticks, there will be a small gap between the tension ring and the top to fit the FPS Freeks. (I’ll probably do a review of these as well, as they’re still working great!)
• Another company that I’ve had some connections with at PAX East called N-Control is said to be working on a version of their Avenger controller add-on which will work with the Onza. I’m looking forward to this and will see what I can do to get a review unit.

The Razer Onza would be a good buy if you’re looking to get a replacement controller and are into strictly multiplayer FPS gaming. I wouldn’t recommend this at all for fighter games games with heavy use of the D-Pad. The other features they added really help to enhance the feel and usage of a controller in FPS gaming. There is just a bit of adjustment time to get used to this controller, but I’m confident that most gamers will have no problem with this adjustment.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars **** / *****

I tried both Bulletstorm and Crysis 2′s demos yesterday.

Bulletstorm was neat. Felt like Unreal Tournament meets Gears. Or a strange GoW in 1st person. The concept and weapons were different enough from Gears to make it fun. While the level was short, they made it so you can keep replaying the demo over and over again to improve your score. How do you do that? Well, the whole slogan of Bulletstorm is “Kill With Skill”. The game gives you various powers to start combos (sliding kick, telsa cable, boot-kick). Then they’re put into a StreetFighter type juggle move where they hover in the air for a few seconds which gives you the opportunity to shoot at their helpless floating body with your weapons. Various different things can be done from headshots, to attaching a sticky grenade to them, kicking their body, and exploding it when the body is near other enemies (think of a remote air-mail bomb). One of the funniest things that I found was environmental damage. Some concrete walls were partially destroyed, so when I pulled an enemy towards it with the telsa cable, he was impaled on the exposed crossbars of the wall and I got “Voodoo doll” points for it.

Crysis 2 was similar to a Call of Duty style game, but with a sci-fi twist. You get basic classes (Assault Rifles, Shotguns, Snipers, Heavy MG, etc.), but you also have these exo-skeletons that have abilities like instantly adding Armor, invisibility, or a sprint boost. Each of these run off of the same battery, and only one can be used at a time. The game also has all the same COD style weapon and perk unlocks. Unfortunately in order to use items like a suppressor on a weapon, you have to unlock it by completely challenges for each weapon. It makes BlackOps unlock system with points seem like the way all games should go now.

I ended up playing the Crysis 2 demo for a lot longer time than the Bulletstorm demo, though I thought it would be the complete opposite, considering I haven’t even played the first Crysis game.

There were still MANY flaws in the Crysis 2 demo not to be overlooked. Things like client-side advantage, ping, hit-detection, and the speed of players are just to name a few. I know the game’s not completely done, but when you find a bug like the “Tactical button layout” causes the right-stick to both zoom and crouch with a sniper, it just makes you think they really didn’t work on the game.

So does this change if I’m going to buy either game?

I’m still unsure, but Bulletstorm was fun. I think the co-op aspect of the game could be fun as well. Considering it’s an EA game, I should be able to get it cheap. At the same time, not many of my close gaming circle friends may play this, but my extended industry friends probably would. So I may pick this one up (and get that exclusive GoW3 beta, hehe).

For Crysis 2, I’ll continue to play the demo and see how it pans out. It has some neat things about the game (love the sliding when running), but other parts of it need a lot of improvement.

For those not familiar, PAX stands for Penny Arcade Expo, a convention of sort for gamers that was started by the website/web comic Penny Arcade. Starting in 2004, it’s grown every year, and even added a PAX East hosted in Boston in the Spring of 2010.

For me, this’ll be my first PAX. I’ll be hanging probably with the ASTRO Gaming crew and a bunch of the Destructoid guys (BTW: As a plug for Destructoid, if you’ve haven’t visited their site yet, you should. They do a great job of bringing in people into a gaming community close to you with NARPS (No Apparent Reason Parties). Going to one this weekend. ). Being that I haven’t been to a PAX before, I’ll probably be like a kid in a candy store, only this “store” has tons of great free play stations with the games that are coming out this Fall and in 2011. I’m probably most excited to see Halo: Reach (Bungie should be in attendance as they’re close to Seattle and Reach will most likely be complete by then), Gears of War 3 (Hoping the bring out Beast Mode!), and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (which looks really bad ass. C’mon, Invisibility AND a mechanical robot-turret?).

Other things I’m looking forward to is hanging out with the community that I’ve been following over twitter (well, if they’ll let me, haha). I’ve been privileged to converse with a bunch of movers and shakers in the SF Bay Area in the gaming industry (most of which are involved with the DToidSF group) and they’re a nice bunch. Let the drinking and partying begin?

So I’m currently in the process of trying to restart my blog. Of course it takes compiling all of my old blog entries from…3 different sites, all of which don’t have an easy way to import into WordPress (I guess MoveableType would, but that site isn’t hosted anywhere anymore, and I don’t have the archive of it either). So I’m going through and manually cut and pasting 7 years of postings. It’s tedious, but kind of entertaining as I’m passing by some good memories of college life. I’m currently at around March 2002, so that’s only about 8 months into my blogging life and I’m already at 243 posts… yikes.

Wow. Looks like most things work for this. This is amazing!!!