In the gaming world there are few things as annoying as not having the right tools to keep up in your favorite game. Just ask any gamer about trying to play with a bad internet or LAN connection, or a slow keyboard or a buggy mouse and you will get an earful. Because of this an entire new industry sprang up a few years ago just to address this. This is the eSports industry and it is a monster. Right now we have a ton of items that are listed as “for gamers”, but the question is: what is really a gaming peripheral and what is not. In most people’s minds a gaming peripheral should be high-end in terms of performance and build quality. It should have features that benefit gaming in multiple ways while having a sense of style and customization. Today we check out a peripheral from Genius named DeathTaker that is allegedly meant just for gaming. Let’s find out if it really deserves the name.
The Genius DeathTaker - The DeathTaker is a claw grip style mouse that is surprisingly light for its size. To help compensate for the light weight Genius has thrown in 6 4.5gram weights that you can drop into your DeathTaker to give it a little more substance. The initial light weight of the DeathTaker is due to having plastic as its primary construction material. Those extra weights will come in handy for more precise control.
To install them you will need to remove part of the top cover and then pull out a small “tray”.
Genius lists the DeathTaker as an MMO/RTS mouse which means that it is best suited to Massively Multi-player Online games or Real-Time Strategy games. Both of these typically have a number of commands that are run from keyboard shortcut or through menu items. The way you gear a mouse for this is by giving is a ton of customizable button and the ability to store Macros in the mouse. Genius has done both of these with a total of nine buttons and storage for up to five Macros. You can also create a few profiles just to keep your favorite games separate. You configure both of these through the DeathTaker application (which we will cover below). Getting back to the specs of the DeathTaker you get an adjustable laser that ranges from 100dpi to 5700dpi. This can be adjusted for both X and Y to match exactly what you want. You can also make adjustments on the fly through the use of a single button near the scroll wheel. This allows you to move between the different levels quickly depending on what you are doing. To ensure that your movements are clean and smooth Genius put nice, wide Teflon pads at the front and back of the mouse. This helps you glide smoothly over whatever surface you are not.
Like many gaming companies Genius went with a cloth covered cable and a gold plated USB connector. The latter is just for show as the benefit of using gold is so minimal that it really does not matter.
On the flashier side of things Genius went with customizable LED lights that are capable of displaying up to 160,000 different colors. These lights are present in the GX logo and the scroll button. These lights also can be configured to pulse as well as for intensity (again we will talk about that a little later).
Overall the DeathTaker, while light, is a fairly decently built mouse. Now let’s take a look at the software that comes with it and then how well it performs.
