The Trooper MVP is Wolfking USA’s latest gaming mouse. While most gaming mice these days are meant to be controlled with your finger tips, us old-timers remember the days when mice were held with your palm.
They were days when men were men, women were women….Ah heck, I’m just sayin’. So anyway, the Trooper MVP is like that – you have to palm it as it is a very large and robust gaming mouse. It is also fairly heavy. This can be a double-edged sword as while this makes the mouse extremely smooth to control, it also decreases overall ‘twitch-factor’ which can be important in open-field or QCB situations. For a sniper, however, this will probably be just what the doctor ordered. Especially when we talk about the rapid-fire modes!
But I digress, the Trooper MVP is available in three different trim colors, however the main body remains a black plastic shell, and runs a 2400 dpi Avago laser sensor. This is a good step up from the original Trooper’s 2200 dpi laser sensor (which they don’t advertise sensor-maker on). Slightly above the thumb rest you will find the forward and back buttons and on the top of the unit just below the scroll wheel you will find the rapid-fire and dpi switch buttons.
DPI switching can be temperamental with the MVP. We found that switching while in-game caused us to pull our fingers back from the primary and secondary mouse buttons in order to reach the selector. This left us open to attack for a second every time we switched. It is a functional system but we would like to see the dpi selector button moved forward a bit. The three different settings for the MVP are 800, 1600, and 2400 dpi.
The rapid-fire button is what will light many of your pilots out there. The button is marked with an ‘F’ and is located directly under the scroll wheel and above the dpi button. The rapid-fire button cycles between four modes: ‘none’, ‘2x’, ‘3x’, and ‘4x’ (and the scroll wheel lights up a different color to signify which mode you are on). When you press your primary mouse button while in a rapid-fire mode, the mouse will auto-fire additional rounds for you. While in ‘3x’ mode, one button press will cause three to go off in your game. This makes the mouse IDEAL for sniping as every physical click of your mouse takes additional coordination and causes the mouse to slightly move. Firing with the MVP needs only one button click in ‘4x’ mode. Shoot with that set and four rounds will go on target with one click. Sweet.
The MVP also has a higher frame rate than its predecessor, with 7080 fps compared to 6600 fps. The MVP also requires less power with a 7mA output while moving compared to the original’s 8mA.
Overall, the Trooper MVP is a fine gaming mouse that features a very shooter-friendly rapid-fire mode and smooth action. Unfortunately, its mass and right-handed design will alienate some gamers from using it. Thankfully, it is comfortable and only retails for $49.99, making it an excellent value as well.
Then it was a bit of Q&A with the dev team showing us the game. We learned that human characters will still loot mobs in the field and equip any items they wish. Items that are not wanted can be sold, traded, or broken down into their constituent components for crafting later on. Also, new items can be researched and, if you are good enough, you will gain new item blueprints to build from later on. The weapons are being custom designed by Cheyenne Mountain, based off of real-world weaponry but the P-90 will definitely be making an appearance (much to the delight of fans everywhere).
Players have a circular indicator on their screen which will tell them from what arcs they are covered by surrounding objects, etc. Enemies will also appear as blips on this display. If they are inside one of your covered arcs, you will receive a defensive bonus. If they are outside of it, then you better move your butt to some better cover! When you target an enemy you will see their cover arcs as well. If you maneuver outside of their cover, you will gain an attack bonus against them.
This feature will, hopefully, keep the Leeroy Jenkins’ charges to a minimum as without thinking through your tactics your goose is surely cooked.
The mini-games are all done on a Flash layer (though processing is still server-side so don’t get any funny ideas).
You play as Jason, and proceed on your quest to obtain the golden fleece, which is said to have the power of resurrection. On your journey, you are accompanied by the other Argonauts which include the likes of Hercules and Achilles. In addition, you will meet several more throughout the game who will join your crew. What we saw was an awesome display of brutality which reminded us, slightly, of watching the battle scenes of the movie 300. 
A couple well-struck hits depending on your weapon-type should kill the standard-variety mob. A big emphasis in combat is placed on getting around armor, and in the demo I saw being played, Jason used his spear to counter-attack and take out a well-armored foe. His spear, while not the best against groups of enemies, is excellent at exploiting the ‘chinks’ in even the best armor. In addition, when Jason or his companions score a brutal hit on the enemy, they are often dispatched in the goriest of manners…hehe.
A HUGE element of the game comes from which patron god you have the most favor from. Just about everything you do in the game from conversational choices to weapons you use more than others will affect which god you gain favor in. The patron gods are Ares, Hermes, Apollo, and Athena all have different focuses. For instance, Apollo favors the player with the options of learning more defensive skills while Ares will favor the player by giving them thee option to learn more offensive skills. As such, you increase their favor by using items that reflect that. Using your mace, which is very slow but very powerful, will increase the favor of Ares. You can gain favor in whatever gods you see fit in order to customize your character’s abilities to the fullest.
For those of you who ‘get it’, you know what we mean. And you will understand why we are so excited about Flight1’s Ground Environment X – USA & Canada. Normally, our reviews are very objective and give a good pro vs con argument of a product. Not so in this case. And that is primarily the fault of Flight1, who has such a great product in GEX, it is hard to find a ‘con’ to it.
Enter Flight1, and their add-on to the game, Ground Environment X. GEX replaces all those ‘frumpy’ ground textures with photo-realistic ones that cover the entirety of the US and Canada (yay Canucks!). The difference is very noticeable in FSX and amazingly noticeable in FS9, where the ground textures are considerably worse than FSX to begin with. The textures are extremely crisp and have better organized auto-gen in most areas, meaning that you shouldn’t have trees popping up on top of buildings, etc (although this still happens now and again).
For $34.95, you would be hard-pressed to find any better texture replacement for Flight Simulator 9 and X that has the quality and feature set of Flight1’s Ground Environment X – USA & Canada.