PDP Afterglow Prismatic Wired Xbox One Controller for PC Use

There’s not much more I can say about the design and function that hasn’t been said on the initial review by Michael Sarratt. The controller is pretty much the equivalent of an Xbox One controller with some really cool aesthetic features and some cool extra buttons that are actually very useful. It works flawlessly… on the Xbox One.

For those who do not know, a majority of the games are designed on the Xbox consoles before being ported onto other consoles and PC/Steam. Which is why the Xbox 360 controller worked so well for the majority of PC games, ported or not. It was the first controller that worked perfectly as a joypad for PC. I have been PC gaming since Doom and have always looked for a good joystick and joypad that worked for playing PC games, and not until the Xbox 360 controller has a a controller worked without lag or bugs on PC games. They worked so well, wired Xbox 360 controllers seemingly almost never went down in price. Imagine my enthusiasm at the release of yet another controller to use and play co-op. (There are a good amount of local co-op PC games you can play if you have enough different devices connected)

Back to the PDP Afterglow Prismatic Controller, I connect the USB to the computer then to the controller and it lights up! Then “BUNG!!!” drivers fail to install. So I peruse the instructions, and there’s no real clear directions on this other than plug it in and the drivers should install. I tried this on a Windows 7 OS and it talks about Windows 10 so maybe that’s why. However, I figure that if I manually download the drivers it should work. Microsoft does not offer the drivers directly, they say go to the properties and “Update Drivers” and it will work. It doesn’t. I ended up getting the drivers here from a third party site.

I download and install the drivers, then go into the controller’s settings and connect the drivers. The little white light signifying the controller is connected and ready to use comes on. I’m set. I load up One Piece Warriors 3, which is basically Dyansty Warriors with One Piece characters. It loads up, but the controllers aren’t naturally mapped as the 360. Rather than pressing the ‘A’ Button and ‘B’ Button for accepting and rejecting, I had to use ‘X’ and ‘Y’. Considering no game does that, it is very out of the normal and annoying. However after remapping the controller I am able to get most of the typical button mapping, minus the triggers. The triggers control a Z-Axis, or in this game’s case the camera’s left and right pan. Which if you played any 3rd person game with fast paced motion, you know the need to have fluid control of the camera via the right thumb stick. Well you don’t get that. I play a game, and the controller is perfectly responsive, albeit unnatural feeling due to the lack of right stick camera control and it prevented me from getting my S-Ranks on the missions.

After a level, I go into the controller settings and find out that the left and right triggers strictly control the Z-axis and do not represent any buttons on the controller’s inherent mapping. This almost made me lose all hope. I then load up Batman Arkham Knight, another disappointing PC experience, to see if a game that is perfectly in tune with the Xbox controller’s standard button mapping, would somehow allow me to use the full function of the controller. My hypothesis was that One Piece Warriors was likely a port from Playstation, thus not likely mapped for PC controllers that aren’t the 360. Thankfully I’m as smart as I think I am, and I have concluded that the issue with One Piece is more due to the game not inherently designed for the Xbox One controller on the PC version and that most other titles will work flawlessly. While playing Arkham Knight I was able to test every single button and direction of the controller the on the flawless one frame per minute rendering that was supposedly fixed with a patch. Everything about the controller was flawless at that point, the game is a whole other session of complaints that I won’t get into.

Overall, PDP’s Afterglor Prismatic Controller is great for PC gaming. The controller works flawlessly for the majority of games, and only takes minor effort to get installed. However I would not recommend purchasing it strictly for PC gaming. At least not yet. At the $49.99 price point, I would say pick up some old wired 360 controllers, like PDP’s Wired Rock Candy Controllers or some other 360 Controllers. They may not have the same sleek look and feel of the Afterglow Prismatic, but they will work instantly on any respectable gaming PC and innately with most games even if they weren’t specifically designed for PC gamepad controllers. But if you’re not a single system elitest and/or happen to have both the Xbox One and a PC, this controller can and will work double duty for you and would be worth the investment.

Find out more about PDP and their products here.