Tilt Play & Final Thoughts
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| View from the top |
Once I freed the joystick from its base, I found the whole experience much more enjoyable. I quickly found that if I calibrated the stick WITH the base, I would have a highly responsive stick once I took the base and sent it packing. I didnt bother to warm up at all, and jumped right into several flight sims, space action, and racing games. There was definitely a major improvement in response time, accuracy, and sheer fun without the base. After the tilt pad roundup, I think Ive gotten a pretty good feel for the intricacies of accelerometers and their tilt responsiveness
and armed with that experience I found the Airstick to be a worthy tilt sensitive gaming device. It was responsive, offered a good degree of proportional control, and was easy to get used to. While the tilt game pads tended to make racing titles more enjoyable, the Airstik easily outshone the gamepads when it came to flight related games, and its NOT only because of the general joystick design.
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| Trigger button revealed |
Although the Airstik was a great tilt sensitive device, it wasnt a particularly good joystick. I found that the buttons were hard to reach, and the general layout of the stick was awkward. For simple games where you dont require a lot of action with multiple and varied buttons, the stick did pretty good. Unfortunately, because it was hard to get to all the buttons with speed and ease, I quickly fell behind when playing games that required some complicated button maneuvers (just imagine not being able to swap between the major buttons as quickly as youd like). Also, there is that matter of absolute finite control
in true flight sims, a normal stick is still your best bet.
I think the Airstik has its place as one of those cool products you show off to friends and have a good time using with a good majority of games
but really its not the most precise and comfortable joystick that you can get in this price range, so it falls short of the mark, especially compared to offerings from the big game device manufacturers.
Final Score: 73%
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