Unfortunately, the performance of the controller falls far short of the lofty goal to which it reaches. While I find that the actual feel of the controller is superior to the standard XBox controller, mainly due to the much more solid placement of the buttons, the buttons themselves have enough problems reading correctly to make it a frustrating experience, especially when it comes to button-sensitive titles like
SSX Tricky. Combined with a weak D-Pad, the
Control Pad Pro ends up being a sad shadow of the original controllers.
The good stuff first: the macro button feature works, and it's quite nice. As long as the game you're playing doesn't make use of all four programmable buttons, you can set them to pretty much any combo you like, which is neat. I wish that there were a separate button on the controller to execute macros, so you didn't have to take up one of the standard buttons, but that's a minor gripe.
In addition, the controller's improved button layout can help immensely, especially when you don't have to stretch for the White and Black buttons. The rubberized grips also help those of us who tend to get sweaty palms after gaming for too long; I had some marathon sessions of gaming with this controller, and I never once lost grip of it.
Unfortunately, it commits a cardinal sin with the accuracy of its buttons. When you press them, they register ... most of the time. Sometimes you can hit it four or five times 'normally' and it won't register. If you press hard on the button, it almost always picks it up, but I'm a relatively light button-presser, and I had a number of times that it should have picked up my pressing it and didn't. I even had it stop registering the button while I was holding it down tight. To make sure that I wasn't just imagining a weak button action, I started using my original XBox controller again. The difference is obvious; when you press the XBox button (which, admittedly, takes more pressure) it always registers it. I can make the Control Pad Pro buttons go down without registering easily, though, and it can be devastating in games that require precision control.
The D-Pad is also a little flaky, but the original XBox controller doesn't have the greatest pad either, so that's a fairly minor problem.
