Probably one of the most active markets when it comes to rolling out innovative peripherals is the one that caters to the little hand-held rodent on our desks, which subsequently serves as the desktop extension of our arm when interacting with our computers. Whether it’s highlighting some text to replace on those menacing TPS reports, or spinning 180 degrees in mid-air to plant a slug squarely into your opponent’s forehead (while spamming the “Crotch-Grab” emote and fiddling with your FOV-adjustment aliases because you’re too lazy to just zoom in with the damn railgun), there’s no question that a mouse is absolutely essential for today’s practical PC workplace. Sure, there are some more exotic solutions for gamers (such as the trackball) which can also work very well, but pull into any LAN party and you’ll notice at least 90% of the attending crowd is reliant on the same, dust-encrusted type of hardware to handle their precision aiming. So, it stands to reason that the various companies out there will be cranking out all sorts of crazy approaches to the common mouse to try and earn the love (and dollar) of the common enthusiast gamer, and it’s to this end that I’ve had the pleasure to receive Sandio’s “Game O’ 3D Gaming Mouse”.

I actually had the chance to give it a brief spin earlier at E3 2006 – the developers had a solid concept at the time, and to this end I was very interested to see how well their theory translated into practice. For those who didn’t read my preview on the mouse however, the key point of the 3D Gaming Mouse is the promised “6 degrees of freedom”, which stems from the interesting controls on the left, right, and top of the mouse. These all provide multiple axises of movement (similar to a HAT switch you’d find on a joystick), and thanks to the integrated software, unlock a wide variety of interesting features. Probably the most commonly-promoted use of this kind of setup is for playing FPS titles; with these inputs properly configured, it’s possible to smoothly handle strafing, jumping, weapon switching, and other controls all with your mouse-hand, leaving the other hand free for more important things. My review edition of the mouse came bundled with some quick-setup instructions, advertisements for other products, a driver disc, and of course the mouse itself, complete with a nifty little docking ring that could be clamped on to the bottom, and act as place to rest the back of your hand and move the mouse around. I chose to roll without it, but it’s an interesting convenience for comfort-oriented gamers.

But on to the true power of the mouse; the software. Included with the bundle is a set of default profiles for a number of major titles, including favorites like Counter-Strike, Oblivion, Half-Life 2, and the venerable Unreal Tournament 2004. This makes pick-up-and-play gaming with the mouse quite simple, although any of the inputs on the mouse can easily be re-bound to any kind of keystroke desired. Well, almost any – a somewhat disappointing omission was that the side-buttons aren’t in any way reconfigurable. Given how there’s already a ton of configuration space to work with as it is, this isn’t a major problem, but I found it put a slight damper on the feeling of a purely customizable enthusiast mouse. Nevertheless, this was quickly made up for thanks to the on-the-fly DPI adjustments that could be made (400, 800, 1,600, and 2,000) by triggering both of the side buttons at the same time. Options like this have been built into mice for years now, but this makes the inclusion of such a feature into the Game O’ no less important. There is one other ‘personality quirk’ to the software however – a custom profile needs to be ‘loaded’ into a applet that sits on your taskbar until disabled to use any kind of custom configuration for a game, and there is no way to just specify an “always-on” profile. In addition, loading a profile always produced an annoying beep from my PC speaker (not a Windows beep, an actual PC speaker beep that I couldn’t find any option in the mouse software to turn off), making the process of switching between profiles just a bit more clumsy than it really needs to be. But there’s a shade of hope: I inquired on this with a representative and was told the company is aware of these issues and is working to resolve them with a future driver update. Let’s hope!

While configuring the software for the mouse is a fairly simple affair, actually putting it into practice in a game is something else. I equate the process as spending your entire life driving an automatic, and then suddenly waking up one morning and deciding to drive a stick-shift instead. Trying to play Half-Life 2 with a focus on the mouse for all my movement instead of my familiar WASD configuration was a trying experience at first, but once I knuckled under and just dedicated myself to learning the new system, I actually extracted a good deal of charm from the process. The obvious benefit from using this kind of setup is that your off-hand is completely free to do anything else while you’re running and jumping and shooting, all with the mouse inputs, and this really comes into play for all sorts of situations. If I adjusted the mouse inputs and loaded up a more complex game like Freelancer for example, I found I could literally play the whole game with just one hand, without needing to rely on slow and clunky mouse navigation of the game’s menus. But that’s not all – if I put enough thought and creativity into it, I found I could get a cool setup going for just about any game. Total Annihilation (and the new Supreme Commander felt right at home with this mouse once I had a decent control scheme plotted out, although it was a real challenge trying to justify binding controls to the mouse that I felt I could use just as quickly on the keyboard.

And that’s really what it comes down to with the Game O’ - how it’s used. This is the kind of mouse where you’ll only get out what you put into it; it won’t magically make you a better gamer. There’s no question that once you get over the initial learning curve, the mouse offers some fantastic potential to change how you play a given game (particularly in multiplayer-oriented shooters, where having an efficient control system able to meet the split second timing demanded to win is essential), but it’s really something that needs to be planned out in your head first, to find a setup that works for you. One thing I also felt would have really helped the mouse software would have been some kind of management for macros or scripted inputs – this could unlock a great deal more power for customization-hungry gamers, and ultimately for the mouse itself. Another thing I would have liked would be if the extra controls weren’t just basic six-degree HAT switches, but instead full analogue sticks – although I’m really not certain how difficult this would be to implement.

The only other concern I have is just that the mouse feels very sensitive when you first plug it in (until it’s fine-tuned exactly the way you want it to be via the DPI settings), and that the side buttons could have used a little wider spacing and slightly better positioning. Coming from a past Logitech mouse, I found myself inadvertently hitting the side buttons at random until I eventually got used to the different ergonomics. But then again, if all mouse designs copied each other rather than daring to branch out into new territories, the task of reviewing them would probably be far less interesting.

So would I recommend the Sandio Game O’ 3D Gaming Mouse to my friends? Predictably, this would depend on the exact type of friend – but one point of interest to tap into with this mouse would be the laptop market. After running out of ideas on how to test this thing on my PC, I was suddenly struck with the idea of just bringing it with my laptop. Think about it: the only thing really stopping me from playing my favored complex sim-titles on my laptop was because the restricted keyboard design made playing these games pretty tricky. However, after putting it through the paces, I found the Game O’ was superb at helping me with titles like Mechwarrior 3, and I’m considering getting a second one to become a permanent addition to my laptop pack. Just a thought.

From a basic standpoint, there’s nothing wrong with the Game O’ - it’s truly a solid mouse through and through. The only major thing holding it back is just the learning curve involved in trying to grasp a new and abstract control scheme for gaming. It’s exactly like I mentioned earlier; the maximum potential of this mouse is limited mostly by what kind of effort you put into it, but (aside from some driver niggles) that potential regardless is still great indeed.