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We take a look at Creative's new Fatal1ty Professional Laser Gaming Mouse and see if it can take it to the big
boys at Logitech, Microsoft and Razer
Over the last couple of years a niche section of the PC accessories market has taken off in a big way. That section is Gaming Mice – high resolution, highly featured mice aimed solely at the hardcore gamer market. For a normal home or business user to buy one of these mice is simply a waste of money. Because so much of the high-end PC components and peripherals market has always been driven by gamers, there will always be a market for these specialized mice, no matter what the price.
This section of the market was kicked off with the Razer Boomslang Gaming Mouse, which was released in 1999, and even though it was based on an old ball-mouse, it was still very well received by hardcore gamers. Razer is still around today, releasing industry leading gaming mice, and has even recently paired with Microsoft to make the MS Habu gaming mouse, but the current gaming/high-end mouse market is certainly dominated by Logitech. Their G5 and the more basic G3 gaming mice are sweeping the floor with their competitors, carrying on from the success of the MX510 and MX518 mouse (which I still use at home). So is there still hope for a newcomer to enter the market? Well… yes.
Enter the Creative Fatal1ty Professional Laser Gaming Mouse.
Creative Labs are no newcomers when it comes to mice, but all of their previous offerings have been more or less your ‘run of the mill’ products, low on features and certainly not high on appeal for the high-end gaming market. This latest offering breaks off the shackles of its predecessors and launches headfirst into the market to compete with the big boys over at Logitech and Razer.
At around AU$70.00 from online retailers, the Creative Fatal1ty is certainly well priced. It features a High Definition HD-Laser engine, with user selectable resolutions from 400 to 2400 CPI (Counts Per Inch – how many times, per inch (2.54cm) of movement, the optical engine sends a report signal to the controller chip on the mouse) . The resolution can be changed on the fly, even without drivers installed, by clicking the small button behind the scroll wheel, to give you slower, smoother movement when sniping, or faster response in the heat of battle. The button cycles between 3 colours, green orange and red, depending on the resolution currently selected.
The Fatal1ty uniquely features 3 buttons on top of the mouse, as well as the clickable scroll wheel, making a total of 4 buttons on top for easy access, as well as one button on the left hand side for your thumb. Creative’s idea is to get your whole hand in on the act, with no wasted appendages as it were. The scroll wheel is nice and grippy with a noticeably notchy movement, something I personally like, I can’t stand a smooth moving scroll wheel in games when trying to scroll through weapons or menus.
Variable weights, or G-Weight Modular Weight System as Creative call it is a nice touch, allowing you to change the overall weight of the mouse. 5 Weights are included ranging from 3.5g up to 26g. While not as customizable as Logitech’s G5 weight system, it is a lot simpler. Just pop the weight out of the top of the mouse and replace it with one more to your liking, and you’re done. One gripe I have with this is that even on the heaviest weight it still feels lighter than my Logitech MX-518, in my opinion they could have made the heavy weight a bit heavier, but that’s just me.
The small, yet important details haven’t been missed by Creative, the feet are made from Teflon and give very smooth, flowing movement on most surfaces. They even say the USB data cable is specially made to reduce any lag, with ‘Zero Oxygen Copper Cabling’ and a gold plated USB connector to ensure the fastest connection to your PC. Perhaps I’m not as hardcore a gamer as I thought, but I can’t really see this making a whole lot of difference, but hey, it sounds cool.
In Operation: ? ?
Here’s where things start to go downhill a bit, I plugged the mouse into my laptop (LG LS70 P-M-745), and Windows XP detected it nicely as you’d expect, I fiddled with the sensitivity button on top which changed colours and made a very noticeable different to the speed and response, so all is going well, but I noticed a very strange issue in its movement when on the middle and low resolution which is going to be hard to explain.
When moving the mouse side to side and up and down, the cursor would stay on a perfect line, not deviating by even one pixel, a difficult task for even the most steady-handed individual. Seeing this, I started doing a few experiments, I moved the mouse side to side on a slight, yet easily discernable angle, and it still stayed on the same pixel line, almost as though the sensor engine could not tell the mouse was moving down the mouse pad. After a few side to side movements at a downward angle, I was at the bottom of my mouse pad and the cursor was only a few pixels further down the screen, barely registering the slight downward movement at all. I did another test, moving the mouse slowly down my mouse mat at around a 45 degree angle from top left to bottom right, the cursor on the screen almost went straight down, only slightly moving across at maybe a 5 degree angle. If I do the same movement at a faster pace, it moves the cursor down the screen at the correct angle/path, but if I do it slowly (like you would do if you were sniping in a game, or doing graphics work) and it went almost straight down… very odd. This was tried on 3 different surfaces with the same result, a cloth mouse pad, a plastic mouse pad and a wooden desk, all with the same result.
Ok, so I hadn’t installed the Creative drivers or software yet, it wouldn’t be fair to talk about a possible flaw in something when I haven’t yet installed it properly. So I popped in the CD and it installed the creative application, a very painless process I must say. In the software there is an option to change the USB polling rate, the faster the polling rate, the quicker the response from the mouse. USB is capable of work at a polling rate of 1000Hz (1ms response time), most mice are run by Windows XP at around 125Hz (8ms response). Increasing the polling rate is a popular tweak for many gamers to get better response. By default, Creative have set the polling rate in their software to the USB maximum of 1000Hz for the best response.
Changing the polling rate down to 250Hz made a substantial difference to the operation of the mouse and the problems I mentioned before, but they were definitely still there and I was very disappointed, and certainly expected more from a high-end gaming mouse, But anyway, moving right along…
The software also allows you to change the sensitivity presets (which by default are 400, 800 and 2400CPI) as well as customize all 5 buttons and even assign Macros to them, very handy for the gamer wanting that extra edge. The software can also assign different settings for different games, so you don’t have to go changing them every time you want to load up a game, the software knows when you load a certain game and changes its settings to match.
I’ve now installed it on my games machine (and yes still had the same issues as before) and loaded up BF2 to see how it goes when the heat is on. General game play and running around is great, the Fatal1ty allows for very quick, sharp movements, and never skipped like some optical mice can when you move them too fast. The scroll wheel worked well for weapon selection, but sniping suffered somewhat. Sitting on a hillside trying to track someone was harder than with my old MX-518, as the crosshair didn’t move as you expected due to the tracking problem I mentioned earlier, so this left me a bit down about the whole experience. The mouse also rattled in my hand when I moved it quickly, the removable weight is not held in very securely and is allowed to move slightly in its housing, quite annoying and sadly gives an aura of cheapness. If Creative fixes this issue and the tracking in a later batch, I’m sure this would be an excellent mouse, as its response and general feel is outstanding, even though it’s not going to win any beauty pageants.
Conclusion:
A well designed mouse with some excellent features and very well priced. Excellent response to high speed movement, good ergonomics, but sadly let down by aspects of its laser tracking engine and some build quality issues. Hopefully a later batch will fix these issues and there will actually be a product on the market to compete with Logitech, Razer and Microsoft.
Rating: 4/10
This product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au
