Steelseries Cataclysm Gaming Mouse Review
The World of Warcraft Cataclysm mouse is one of the more popular
Warcraft gaming mice’s on the market, this is most likely due to the
armour plated styled design to look like the characters from the game,
and it featuring 14 buttons that can bind directly from the World of
Warcraft interface, without ever leaving the game, 16 million colours to
choose to illuminate your device, and many more features. The
Cataclysm is supported by PC and Mac. If you’re a World of Warcraft fan,
or just a gaming enthusiast, take a look at what you are missing out
on.
Steelseries are to date one of the best brands out there for gaming
peripherals, using high quality materials and making a high quality
build standard, while offering features and functions that increase the
users and equipments performance.
The Steelseries World of Warcraft gear has done exceptionally well in
the market. Steelseries has gained great sales from their WOW mice,
which is what we have today for you.
Steelseries :
“Developed for World of Warcraft® players by SteelSeries and Blizzard
Entertainment®, the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm™ MMO Gaming Mouse
invokes the iconic imagery of Deathwing the Destroyer, leader of the
black dragonflight and instigator
of the Cataclysm. The SteelSeries
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm™ MMO Gaming Mouse is fully scalable to meet
and exceed the requirements of even the most demanding World
of Warcraft gamer.”
Exclusive features
2. 16 million colors with 4 levels of intensity and pulsation3. Ergonomic design with an intuitive button layout
4. Easy to customize, drag and drop software allows you to:
• Program all 14 buttons with over 130 preset game commands
• Create your own custom macros or use the in-game macro scripting language
• Develop up to 10 profiles linked to the Armory
• Store your profile and settings directly in the mouse
Specification
Fully Supported and Scalable via• Multi-platform Compatibility
• On Board Memory
• Official In-Game Support
• Advanced Illumination
• Advanced Macros
• Up to 10 Unique Profiles
DRIVER SOFTWARE COMPATIBILITY
• Mac OSX 10.6
• Windows 2000
• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Windows 7
The Steelseries Cataclysm Mouse
Before we begin with the mouse review, we would like to show you the
mouse mat used for the review. We used the Steelseries Cataclysm
Deathwing Edition mouse mat. Which kept a nice grip to the desk and had
no friction when mouse setting were set to low CPI and thrusting the
mouse across the mat, this pad is recommended for user as its very cheap
and would be a nice addition to your WOW collection. The mat is very
large, so make sure you have a big desk. It’s dimensions are 12.6-inch x
10.6-inch.
The Cataclysm mouse strikes me instantly as being visually designed
to resemble the heavy armour worn by the strongest of characters. The
back the armours plating on the chest and arms. The cataclysm mouse
lights up with programmable colour changeable LED lights, that
illuminate through the back of the mouse in-between the amour plated
layers. You will see this cool effect on the next page.
As you can see from the product images, the shortcut of hotkeys are
located around the scroll and on both left and right sides of the mouse.
The hotkeys can be assigned by the software built for the specific
mouse. You can assign one specific button to do the job of two, or even
three buttons that you would normal use on the keyboard that you would
activate together by holding down. So with this mouse you can easily
activate 14 programmable buttons with more than 130 preset game
commands.
The Steelseries Cataclysm mouse is quite a large mouse, and double
the size of a standard mouse. Some users may not feel as comfortable as
others with the size of it, but I would say if you do decide to buy this
mouse, the best thing to do would be to buy a mouse mat with a wrist
rest with it; the mouse is big and high up, which can and may strain
your wrist after long durations of use, so a wrist rest mouse mat is
suggested. The latest Cataclysm Legendary mouse that we reviewed took
similar aesthetics from this Cataclysm mouse, such as the smooth black
rubber, which is allows you a cool hand and make sure there’s no slip
and slid while in the heat of battle.
The hotkeys make gameplay much quicker and easier, and for a WOW
users everywhere you may want to consider the Cataclysm mouse over
whatever it is you are using now. Forget the price, as World Of Warcraft
is your hobby and for some your life. WOW gamers already splash out
£8.99 a month on the RPG game, so after using this mouse I would
strongly suggest getting the Steelseries brand Cataclysm mice. I suggest
this not only due to the comfort and design of the mouse, but because
of the programmable software that comes with it, which is on the next
page.
Software
Once you have plugged in the mouse, you have to go to the Steelseries
website and download this software for it; it should take long as the
size of the file is only small. This is the software used to apply which
keys you want apply to all the mouse’s buttons. This is the main
interface below, which allows you to have ten individual profiles for
the mouse setup, along with added you own personal WOW character and
realm to the setting changes.
Each profile is customary to macro changed and CPI change that can be
assigned to individual buttons on the mouse. Meaning you can change
your while profile instantly while actually in game; you can go from low
CPI with a complete different button configuration and even colour
change, to a completely new setup with just one button press. Yet again
making this mouse, once setup to your preference, an extremely quick and
easy tool. If you are an experience WOW gamer, this mouse will be
crucial to your gameplay once you have experienced it just once. You
won’t contemplate going back to a simple normal mouse ever again after
using this mouse.
Below is the game command drop down list in which as can choose to
change the assignment of all the buttons on the mouse to a custom
action.
As you see on the left pullout, just like the other Steelseries high
end gaming mice, you can adjust the CPI sensitivity, and even adjust the
X & Y axis to make the mouse extremely personal to your own
preference. Nothing has been held back with the Legendary. It has been
made to be seriously personal, which automatically makes it a high-end
piece of kit.
From the lamination pullout at the bottom of the software’s interface
you are able to change the colour scheme of the pulsation light on the
mouse. You are also able to change the pulsating frequency from
high/medium/low and the intensity to high/medium/low.
Conclusion
The overall design for the Cataclysm gaming mouse I feel is slightly
too large for its custom shape. My hands are the average sized male
hands, and my hand didn’t fit as comfortable over the mouse as others
from Steelseries, however other gamers may find they like this size. The
World of Warcraft armour aesthetics however are something that many WOW
fans are going to love, especially with the illuminated colour
changeable lights seeping through the V-shaped armour plated design.
The bad thing I found in usage of this mouse is that hotkey buttons
on the right hand side of the mouse, specifically button numbers 10-12.
The buttons of made of thin plastic that doesn’t have a strong enough
spring of reinforcement behind them. Due to the size of the mouse your
hand fully grips round the device and quite often you find yourself
accidently pressing those buttons on the side, due to how sensitive they
are. It is great to have more quick access hotkeys on the mouse, but I
would say they are definitely in the wrong place, as your thumb has to
go there. If you loosen up the grip of the opposable thumb and try not
to constantly press them, changing all your setting in your game, you
lose grip on your mouse and can’ really use it then. Buttons 8 and 9 are
in a fine place, but definitely 10, 11, and 12 need to go or be placed
elsewhere, possible placing them higher up would be in a perfect place
due to the size of the unit.
The mouse is quite a large £65, but World of Warcraft fans are always willing to splash out on some more WOW merchandise.
