A mouse is just a mouse right? Plus, with the rise of the notebook we have track pads now (I actually twitched writing that, I freaking hate trackpads). When I first started playing CS (against bots and still… against bots) I struggled because my crosshairs were either flying across the screen or not moving quick enough. I prefer having to barely move my mouse. I’m sensitive like that (Ba dum tss). It’s also probably why I’ve always been so terrible at FPS games; a fraction of movements results in me spraying an unsuspecting wall instead of that pesky Tracer’s head.
Moral of the story? I die. A lot.
Someone at SteelSeries has obviously been watching my game play videos and saw this n00b mistake. So they sent over a Rival 300 CSGO Fade edition mouse for me to test out. So the obvious question is, did it make me better? Or is a mouse just a mouse?
Insert collective groan of despair from serious PC gamers everywhere right here.
So right off the bat the Rival 300 is a heavy mouse. Chances are it is not the heaviest and I’m not exactly a gaming mouse expert but I noticed the weight and I think it made the world of difference for me. It’s also customizable, allowing you to alter the back logo and mouse wheel light to which ever colour you could possibly think of. So pretty. Most importantly though, it is pink, clearly it was made for me (lol).
All the shiny things
Turns out there are a hell of a lot of little tweaks that the SteelSeries Rival 300 lets you do to improve your game. So, the basics: you can “tune” your mouse to specific games so when you open the game you get unique settings for it. In my case, my mouse slows right down when I open Counter Strike. This is pretty cool since I don’t have to mess around with sensitivity every time I open the game or, more likely, forget and go back to dying. The second feature is called “GameSense”, which does different things depending on which game you are in. So for CS, if I have a ton of money and am at full health (almost never, truth be told), my scroll wheel will be green (healthy) and my back icon light will be bright pink (rich) – I changed that as it was originally blue. Fully customizable is fun! It is a rad little feature but for the n00b (aka me) you really should not be spending your time watching your health via your scroll wheel. However, I imagine this is fun feature for spectators of the pros. The SteelSeries keyboards offer similar customization as well with even more detail.
And now, some tech talk
The final feature I want to touch on is probably the most important and gets a bit more technical. You’re able to make the SteelSeries Rival 300 CSGO Fade edition truly yours. You’re able to set each button to do a specific action or continue to do an action until toggled off. You can fine tune your mouse’s sensitivity, acceleration/deceleration, angle snapping and polling rate. You can literally make your Rival behave exactly how you behave in real life. I’d love to give you the technical definition here but that isn’t my style so let me try keep this simple: if I move quickly, the mouse reacts quickly. If I move slowly, the mouse reacts more precisely. I’ve never had more fun watching my cursor react differently as I played with the settings to find “me”.
The tweaks you can do are endless.
So at the beginning of this post I asked you if a mouse makes you play better? The answer is yes… and no. It definitely improved my game in an absurdly short amount of time. I’ve even made a big jump in game – from easy bots to hard bots. Basically pro.
Disclaimer: I was sent the SteelSeries Rival 300 CSGO Fade Edition Mouse to test out.
