Author: Shadow8472

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am doing another technology review: this time a joystick. Let’s get started!

Kerbal Space Program is a rocket simulator that’s been out for the best part of this past decade. It tackles the the otherwise daunting subject of rocket science and provides a sandbox to explore the subject on an intuitive level, often leading you headlong into thinking about real-life contingencies. As with many other similar games, it provides a highly customizable control scheme, including joysticks.

As with the Steam Controller, I am only familiar with one previous joystick from when I was younger. Any comparisons will be against that one unless where otherwise stated.

Now that it’s been a while since I wrote the last three paragraphs, and the replacement has arrived, I need to actually write the actual review.

Joysticks these days have almost zero competition. If you want a particular shape, your selection will be very narrow. Mine was between the $50 junker I got, and the $30 Logitech 3D Pro. You can find pictures online of both. I didn’t like Logitech’s high-contrast asthetics or its throttle shape, so I went with the more expensive off brand model.

My first in-person impression was the box. Chinese branding covers it. If there’s both English and Chinese, English is given secondary treatment. While I may be a little off put by seeing another language getting preferential treatment, it just means I am not part of the primary target audience, and I have a more understanding attitude if it’s not being sold of a local store shelf.

If boxes could speak as you opened them, this one would say, “Here, I got it here. Be glad it’s in one piece,” whereas the Steam Controller box would have said, “Here, let me be a treasure chest to keep your new friend safe.” (note: I do not consider the Steam Controller a friend. The quote is just what I imagine its box saying).

Safety insert written after the fact: while I was packing this thing back up for a return, I noticed one place where English was, in fact first: the suffocation warning on an internal bag. What was concerning was that it was in five or six languages, all of them using Roman characters, like English, Spanish, German, French, etc.

The overall form factor of my old joystick and this new one is basically the same: A three axis stick with buttons and a hat switch on top, with some extra buttons and a throttle down below. This new one has a fifth button besides the trigger up top and a total of six down below, which are sure to come in handy with the many, many shortcuts I’m bound to want handy while playing KSP. The new one has some kind of vibration feedback, but I haven’t felt it go off when blowing up rockets. The grip felt like it might be made for smaller hands. One final note that you can’t see form the pictures: there are four suction cups on the bottom instead of those pads that eventually come off.

I started up KSP and started configuring my controls. If the kerbals were whimsical before, now I would describe them as hilarious if I were not the one playing the game. All three main axes were just a little off center, resulting in my rockets listing, toppling, and finally spinning out of control when the reaction wheels only had a single command pod to worry about.

One of the things I remember from playing with a joystick was going into the driver and “playing a small game” to fix it in my “big game.” I now know the words calibration. Included with the PXN Thunder was a small CD containing the driver. I stuck it in my disk drive, made a face at the Chinglish phrase “soulmate to players,” and could not load it because of unsupported characters in the file path.

Undeterred, I pulled the driver file into my downloads folder and removed the offending Chinese characters. Launching the installer, I was presented with a window without an English word in it. Useless to me.

With no way to calibrate, I went back to KSP. My one complaint about the controls menu is that I have to back out all the way to the main menu to access it. Nevertheless, I was only able to keep using my new control scheme by increasing the deadzone. It took a couple days to get the bulk of my controls ready for use. Even then, I decided to wait on setting everything up until I got the new joystick.

I’ve been using the joystick for a couple weeks tops now, and it’s already showing wear. The accessible portion of the throttle has been dying from the middle out. As of writing, I think I can access about the bottom quarter and the top sixth. Additionally, one of the buttons on the base isn’t coming out all the way anymore. I might also point out that that extra button on the top, labeled 2, also doesn’t have anywhere near the click that any of the other buttons have. If anything, it’s been moved to a spot on the base right below one end of the throttle. Is it supposed to do that? I have no clue, but there aren’t any buttons there.

In conclusion: Do not buy this product if you can’t read Chinese. Even if you do, consider getting something that will last longer. You’ll end up saving money in the long run because you aren’t buying as many replacements. Neither the vibration feature, nor the otherwise circular throttle was worth an extra $20. The case is entirely plastic, in some parts it feels extra cheap. If I were given the Steam Controller and this thing and a list of their respective prices, I would have guessed this was the $5 one and the Steam Controller was the $50 one. My only guess is that this product was hit hard by American tariffs on Chinese goods. It is going back.

I would give this a one star out of a possible five.

Final Question: Have you ever bought something with a higher price tag expecting more quality, only to be let down?