Impression: Switchblade 2.5.0 for Xfire
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Ever get tired of leaning over your keyboard for hours at a time in that World of Warcraft raid or just killing time by popping out a few quests? Well a new add on for Xfire called Switchblade allows you to hook up an Xbox 360 controller (wired or wireless) to your PC and use it to kill the denizens of Azeroth all while sitting back comfortably in your chair.
If you haven’t heard of Xfire, it’s a program that allows you to chat with friends as well as keeps track of the games they are playing and what servers they are on. Then if you have the same game, you can easily jump into the same server with them, providing there are enough slots open.
The switchblade program is very easy to hook up and get running. Once you do, you can use the default settings for your controller or configure any of the buttons. Then all you need to do is start up your World of Warcraft account and your all set.
The controller works very well but does need a few minutes to get used to. I was very surprised at how well using a controller worked. Everything was as responsive as you could ever want. Until you have to fight that is, then you have to use the analog to move the cursor over whatever spells/abilities you want to use and then press a button. This makes it harder but in no way impossible to fight. If you wanted to you could always jump over to your keyboard for managing your fights then back to the controller for everything else. It’s not switchblades fault, controllers just aren’t designed to handle MMOs.
Switchblade is very good at what it does, and that is providing a way to use a controller in WoW. Is it feasible? Yes and no. If you are just running about doing mundane stuff then this is a comfortable way to play WoW. If you are in a raid and the pace is fast and frantic and you need responsive timing for getting off your spells and/or abilities, then no, nothing I’ve seen beats the keyboard.
