Wolf King Warrior

Game Performance

So, here comes the fun part of my job; booting up a half-dozen different games to test out the Wolf King Warrior with. It’s just another reason why I love working for bit-tech.

I tested the pad in a variety of different games – the first of which was my old favourite of SiN Episodes: Emergence. There are plenty of reasons to be disappointed and annoyed with this singular, abandoned episode, but the controls and game design – which rewards pinpoint accuracy with delicious headshots – make it a game I keep returning to when testing keyboards and mice.

Booting up the arena mode, I went for a few rounds before setting a new high score and then moved on to a quick burst of Counter-strike: Source and GRAW 2. And yes, before you ask, I did get absolutely pwned in CS:S. I never have been able to get to grips with that game.

In all the games I tried, the Wolf King Warrior held up very well and the keys were all not only very well placed, but were responsive and easy to reach as well. My over-sized man-hand, which can’t be shown in the pictures because I haven’t had a manicure in a looong time, practically fell into the correct position.


The default hand position works perfectly, with WASD under the fingertips, the little finger falling right onto Shift and the thumb taking up most of the vertical space bar. The vertical space bar in particular is a stroke of genius as it can accommodate any sized thumb without requiring any amount of stretching or straining.

Some of the buttons on the Warrior are less well placed, like the Alt and X keys which are a little awkward to press without moving your main fingers off the WASD keys. Others meanwhile, like O and B which are made larger and are separated from the bulk of the buttons, are much easier to press so that a simple re-map of the controls should solve any problems.

Whether the Wolf King Warrior performs as well in non-FPS games is a bit harder to tell, as there aren’t really that many genres that would require a pad such as this. Ones that could benefit from a real key remapping already have more dedicated inputs. Flight simulators? Joysticks. Platformers? Game pads. Isometric RPGs and strategy games meanwhile tend to favour the mouse for the majority of inputs, with keyboards being used for simple shortcuts predominantly.

It’s clear straight away that the Wolf King Warrior was designed almost exclusively for FPS games and action games, but that's okay - in these, the pad clearly excels.

Conclusions

So the pad is comfortable to use and good-looking, but does it actually lend anything to in-game performance? Will it help you score that extra frag?

Well, the ergonomic design and layout of the keys may not look like it was designed for any particular purpose, but they are so comfortable that movement in-game feels completely natural and fluid. With something like this, players can spend more time worrying about their right hand and where the bullets are going to be flying.


If nothing else, the Wolf King Warrior helped me set a new personal high-score in SiN Episodes’ arena mode.

The best thing about the Wolf King Warrior though is its size. Because it is just a cut up version of the Wolf King Timberwolf, it means that players can keep one on their desks right next to an ordinary keyboard and don’t need to swap from one input device to another.

Price is another important factor, and here is the only place that the Warrior gives us mixed feelings. At £26.44 in the UK and $25.99 in the US , the Warrior is competitively priced. In fact, it’s a bargain – but it would have been nice to see it just a little cheaper when compared to the Timberwolf.

Overall though, the Wolf King Warrior is a solid and useful piece of kit for any hardcore FPS fan, which gives an ergonomic and helpful setup for a very low cost. It would have been nice to have some macro buttons, but the Warrior gets by just fine without them.

• Build Quality
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• 10/10

• Performance
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• -
• 9/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
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• x
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• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
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• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

• Overall
• x
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• x
• -
• 9/10

What do these scores mean?