Afterglow Controller [360] Product Review

The AfterGlow controller for Xbox 360 is a third party wired controller and it costs $29.99, when I saw it I liked the design and thought the LEDs would be cool and it was cheap so I picked it up not knowing what to expect. I opened it up and it feels a lot more comfortable than the official Xbox controller, the triggers are better too in my opinion. Bumpers felt a bit flimsy but that's nothing to worry about. It has nice buttons almost like the official controller and the analog stick buttons are a bit more "clicky" than the official controller, which is nice because they are less sensitive so you wont be knifing the air as much in Call of Duty. The best part about this controller is the D Pad, it is much better than the official controller and I don't know why Microsoft didn't design theirs like this. While moving around the analog sticks I noticed they seem to stick a bit when I rotate them, I really hoped this wouldn't effect gameplay... The LEDs are really nice, I had the blue one and it looked really good in the dark although I noticed it can be a bit distracting while you're gaming, it has three settings: On, Off and Active (lights flash when your controller vibrates). Don't fall for the LED gimmick because chances are you will have them turned off most of the time. Notice how I haven't mentioned how it works when you're actually playing a game? That's because the pros end here.

The first game I tried playing with this was Call of Duty: Black Ops and I immediately noticed how difficult it is to aim. The analog sticks just suck, there's no better way of putting it. They just aren't sensitive enough, I tried all sensitivities and it was the same on every one. You can't do small adjustments to your aim because it's so slow and if you press too hard your aim will be jittery, this is unfortunately the deal breaker and if they can improve their analog sticks I'm sure this would be a great controller to use. I read online that other people have this problem too so mine wasn't defective, it's just not a good controller for first person shooters which is what I mainly play on 360 so this controller is useless to me.

Since it's a USB controller I decided to plug it in to my computer, windows recognized it as a plug and play device and after a few seconds it lit up and worked perfectly. I tested it out with some Star Fox 64 and it worked pretty well (aside from the awful analog sticks). I'd recommend this controller if you want to use it for PC, it's a good controller to use for emulators I guess.

I ended up returning this to the store and I got my money back so the only thing I ended up wasting was time, but I guess you guys get this review out of it so it wasn't a complete waste of time

Pros: Nice triggers, Lights up, Works on PC, Good D Pad, Comfortable, Cheap
Cons: Wired, Bad analog sticks, Useless for shooters

I don't recommend this controller, it's useless for games that require precise aiming and I would only recommend this to casual gamers who like pretty LEDs