The PDP Riffmaster’s analog stick may revolutionize challenge running

21 Mar at 19:00

Cameron Faulkner
(he/him) is Polygon’s business editor. He started covering technology and video gaming in 2013, and moved from The Verge in 2023.

The brand-new PDP Riffmaster appears like a typical guitar controller at a passing glimpse. In numerous methods, the $129.99 controller appearing in April is precisely what you anticipate. But besides its acquainted strum bar, whammy bar, and collections of tinted worries, it has an equipment function that can make it demanded by a group that has no rate of interest in playing songs games.

PDP snuck a Joy-Con-like analog stick near the top of the controller’s neck, ideal alongside where your thumb normally relaxes as you hold the guitar. While its promoted function is primarily for ordinary things, like browsing food selections in Rock Band 4, it opens a box of opportunities for speedrunners and obstacle joggers that delight in utilizing guitar controllers for non-music games.

For over a years, numerous have actually made use of guitar controllers to play (and in some cases, amazingly, surface) games, significantly ones that are tough despite having typical controllers, like Dark Souls. The skill that some exude throughout play is exceptional, considering they’re relocating the personality without an analog stick while additionally regulating the video camera lock-on feature, striking, and doing a series of various other commands with a really unintuitive switch design. Benjamin “Bearzly” Gwin’s control scheme for defeating Dark Souls back in 2014 with a guitar controller is something to see.

Noted non-traditional controller enthusiast, modder, and designer Louis Hamilton (ALSO KNOWN AS SuperLouis64 on YouTube) informed Polygon that where he anticipates the Riffmaster to radiate is by helping the gamer with video camera lock-on and basic activity. Looking back at his time with previous guitar controllers, he claimed “Whenever the lock-on system would untarget a boss mid-fight, I pretty much would tell my chat ‘GG’ as I scrambled to press the camera reset/lock-on button on my guitar in hopes I can see the boss again.”

Hamilton is additionally thrilled regarding just how the Riffmaster’s analog stick can make it feasible to challenge-run “other genres that practically require two joysticks,” like initial- and third-person shooters. He previously finished Halo 3 on Legendary trouble utilizing a various guitar controller, however with a customized control system that’s so penalizing I wouldn’t desire this obstacle on my opponents. He made use of the orange fret to move in between switch tasks, with a lot of switches having twin functions. “I pretty much had to line up my shots with the guitar, then move, so it felt like I was playing a pseudo turn-based game while my enemies were not,” Hamilton informed me. While he doesn’t anticipate the Riffmaster to make non-music games much easier to use a technological degree, he really hopes that there will certainly be much less job called for to adjust its controls.

To address Hamilton’s hope, the Riffmaster is apparently much easier to adjust. Upon connecting it right into my computer and making it possible for Steam Input for all sustained controllers, it “worked” with no tweaks on my component in Capcom’s remake of Resident Evil 4. Anyone trying a difficulty run of the game would likely intend to fine-tune the controls to their choices with control-mapping software application (the analog stick didn’t relocate Leon as it does natively on a conventional controller), however it was a motivating indicator that obtaining usage out of the Riffmaster’s analog stick isn’t restricted to the games it was created for.

It’s difficult to state if the Riffmaster will certainly cause a reemergence of guitar controller-based speedruns and obstacle runs. But its presence alone is an advantage. At $129.99, it isn’t low-cost, however it’s much cheaper than a lot of the pre-owned guitar controllers provided on Amazon and ebay.com. Perhaps the reduced rate will certainly bring in much more gamers to sign up with the area. If absolutely nothing else, I’d enjoy to see several of the old guard placed the Riffmaster with its rates on Twitch.