Gaming Successfully with a Mouse

The PC is still a major platform for gaming particularly when it comes to cutting edge graphics afforded by the unrelenting leaps in video card processing power. Whilst top notch graphics can be an important aspect to gaming it would also be fair to say that effortlessly interacting with the environment and prevailing against the challenges in the game are also important. Computer hardware that cannot adapt to suit the way you need it to work can severely limit your gaming success.

One critical piece of hardware is the humble mouse. In days of old they had a one or two buttons and before the advent of Windows 95 that right button was largely unused. Scroll wheels then made an appearance allowing scrolling without having to drag the mouse around whilst horizontal scrolling was later introduced.

However, over the last decade or so we have seen a massive explosion in the range of available mice including those designed specifically for gaming. My current gaming mouse is the Logitech G700 and there are numbers features that I find indispensable, specifically:

1. Gear shift – allowing you to engage or disengage the friction on the scroll mouse at the push of a button. Personally, I leave the gear disengaged for web browsing for smooth scrolling whilst I engage it for gaming to allow for precise weapons selection,
2. Programmable buttons – whilst you do tend to game with a keyboard in tandem with a mouse sometimes it can be difficult to contort your hand to reach keys further away from the home position in the thick of the action. Having extra programmable buttons on the mouse can help simplify and condense your setup and reduce fumbling around for the right key,
3. Adjustable DPI sensitivity – low DPI sensitivity will mean that you will have to move your mouse further to move your cursor or in-game field of vision compared to higher DPI sensitivities. This means you have to exert more effort to track a target or move around the game environment – valuable time when others could have already got you in their sights and pulled the trigger. Furthermore, larger movements of the mouse can also be problematic as you can run out of mouse surface whilst tracking. You may need to experiment with DPI settings for each game you play to find the optimal settings but it can mean the difference from being slow and sluggish to being a sharp shooter.

Of course, the features that are important to you may differ but it is worth doing your homework to find the mouse that is the best fit for your needs.