Written By:
Date Posted: December 12, 2001

Gaming has been pushing the limits of software and hardware for quite some time now, catering for those of us out there who want nothing short of the best. Faster frame rates, more eye candy, more powerful CPU's and GPU's, clearer and more realistic sounding audio. One area that has not been pushed as much is the input. For first person shooters and many games out there the mouse is the weapon of choice. There are a lot of mice on the market, each with there own strengths and weakness, but the majority of them are aimed solely as a general purpose input device. Infact, the only one mouse I could think of that was relevant to this review and aimed at a different market, was the BoomSlang mice for gamers. They were out there on there own, and were quite expensive. Also a lot of users reported poor build quality. But most everyone agreed they were THE mouse for the "1337". Now Boomslang are back in business again, there mice aimed at gamers, but they are no longer alone in there desire to supply the ultimate gaming mouse. Tony Davenport of Rotokiller contacted us and asked if we'd like to review there new mouse "the Equalizer". This is the sort of thing that is right up my street, and naturally I had to say yes! Big thanks to Tony and Rotokiller for the review sample. Also big apologies for the lateness of the review as well. Real Life decided to get in the way : )

The Rotokiller RTR-720 Rotary Grip Gaming Mouse came to me as a prototype model, though the documentation explained that the main differences between this and the final model would be not much more than extra add-ons such as logo's and the like. When I opened the parcel I was greeted with a very curious looking device, and with a list of its features which I have to say borders on the impressive. The shear wealth of features and do-dads that have gone into this mouse shows just how much thought and effort has been put into this device. They have really gone to town with it.

A full explanation of its features can be found here (). I was planning on explaining all the features of this mouse, but to be honest there's just too many to go into here. What I shall do instead is comment on those features I found to be relevant, be they useless or useful : )

Membrane switches at first seemed like a good idea to me. I was however a bit worried that I may accidentally start firing off a few rounds or jumping around wildly due to me brushing past the buttons, but this was not the case. Infact it was the complete opposite, I found you had to really press the buttons down hard to make them work. Once I got used to it, it wasn't too bad, but at first I found that due to the amount of pressure that had to be applied I was also moving the mouse involuntarily because all the pressure was applied in one place on the mouse surface. This of course affected my aim by a big margin : ). However, after using the mouse for while, I got used to it, and my gaming improved. My average in q3 on DM17 against nightmare bots in Instagib (Rail only) is about 75% over three 300 frags. Using this mouse I managed to get 81.5%. So the extra sensitivity and hair trigger firing helped once I got used to it. One thing I did find which again I was surprised about was the shape of the mouse did actually help prolonged play. The fingertip control of the mouse made for a much easier time on my wrists, though my fingers sure ached after a while. That is something I would rather put down to personal unfamiliarity with, rather than bad design.

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