Setup and Installation
The Top Shot comes with a USB or Serial port plug, a driver disc, and the familiar AC adapter for the force engine. The adapter is the “wall-wart” type, which isn’t my favorite, but the stick needs the power. I chose to use the USB option initially, and Windows found the stick, and loaded the drivers from the disc without any problems. Then there was a small glitch, which required me to remove the other joysticks before the Top Shot would be found as “Connected”. After that, I reinstalled my other controllers, all was well, and the controllers worked together. The Top Shot has a power switch, which should be mandatory for a FF device (ever see one shake itself off the table when you get up to answer the phone?), a good design feature. No calibration routines to worry about here, either. Turn on the power switch, put the stick through its full range of motion, move the throttle and rudder to each extreme, that’s it. Simple, and the stick held the calibration throughout my entire gaming session. Just like the Guillemot FF Steering Wheel we reviewed previously, the Top Shot uses I-Force 2.0, and includes a Test Forces tab under the control panel for the stick, and a force gain adjustment. The demo forces are excellent, which is to be expected from a bundled demo of course, but that aside, they are very convincing. I swear the Engine demo is modeled from my old ’68 GMC pick-up, the way it shakes violently side to side, before settling down to a smooth idle.
The stick itself is rather large, and seems to borrow heavily from the famous Logitech organic shape, as opposed to the realistic look of the Thrustmaster sticks. I said it looked like the Logitech, but it feels very different. The Top Shot is larger, and fit my hand much better; I always felt the Logitech design, while comfortable, was a bit on the smallish side, not so here. The stick holds the 4-way tact switch, 8-way hat switch, two small buttons below the hat switch, a trigger, and a final button on the inside edge of the thumb rest. Placement of these buttons was fantastic for myself, though a person with small hands may not be able to get full use from the tact switch. The base holds 4 more buttons, spread into a natural array over the curved surface, leaving your thumb to control the throttle wheel and self-centering rudder. Instead of copying the Microsoft twisting stick rudder design, the Top Shot’s rudder is a small, grooved wheel on the base. It may look odd, but the base is well laid-out, and I found the buttons easy to use without moving my hand.
Game Performance
USAF would be the first challenge for the Top Shot, and it far exceeded my expectations. Push the throttle all the way up, and the stick would kick back when the after-burner engaged, then kick again when returned to normal thrust. Gunfire brought the nose up, and each of the wheels could be felt touching down on landing. Stall the plane, and the stick-shaker (a real component on an airplane) would let me know of my impending death. Overall, it made a fun game more enjoyable and realistic.
Of course, not everyone plays fighter sims, so Terminal Reality’s general aviation sim, FLY, was next. This, in my opinion, was where the Top Shot really excelled. The runway surface could be felt through the stick, and if I tried to lift off before I had enough speed, the stick fought against my pitch inputs. Again on landing, wheels impacts could be felt, contributing to a great flying experience. The abundance of buttons made the keyboard almost useless in FLY. I really can’t say enough about how well the force feedback effects have been implemented here, and it’s a job well done by both AVB and Terminal Reality.
Finally, as if I wasn’t already convinced, I loaded Midtown Madness, a fun little driving game that has seen a lot of time on the Guillemot FF Wheel. While a stick doesn’t exactly suit the needs of a car, I found the force feedback effects added a lot to this game, in ways the steering wheel couldn’t. A force feedback wheel has no way of modeling frontal impact, but the Top Shot could, which made for some interesting trips through Chicago, as I ran into things just to see how it would feel. If I had to buy a single controller, it would definitely be this one.
As a standard joystick, without force effects, the Top Shot is as good as anything out there, accurate, smooth, and comfortable. It’s a great controller, with enough features and buttons to satisfy most gamers.
Using the left side buttons and throttle | Setup and calibration | Force effects samples | Force Gain settings |
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