This wasn’t the first time I was able to get some hands on time with the Novint Falcon.  I had messed around with it almost a year and a half earlier at Quakecon 2007.  At that time, there wasn’t a game that could use it and the Novint people displayed this as sort of a proof of concept.  You’d walk around this generic level and use the unique interface to “feel” the objects in the room as you made your way around it.

This year at CES, Novint has a whole slew of video game companies in their pocket. Left 4 Dead, Battlestations Midway and Quake Wars were just a few of the games that now work with the peripheral. Does it matter? Find out my thoughts on the new and improved Novint Falcon as I try to figure out if this is the greatest thing ever, or just another gimmick.

The concept behind the Novint Falcon is that it allows you to feel force feedback in three dimensions.  To illustrate this, I played a demo where various virtual objects would appear on the screen.  Things like sand paper, ice, and molasses were displayed.  To it’s credit, you could “feel” the difference between the different objects. The ice felt slippery, the sand paper was coarse and the molasses was difficult to move through.  That’s all fine and dandy, but how did it feel to shoot zombies in the face?

The real test for something like this is how it handles existing video games.  I did get a chance to use the pistol grip with the Falcon while playing Left 4 Dead.  As a long time gamer,  I had difficulty in controlling the cursor in the game.  Without some kind of support to base your hand, I was floating around a lot. When you couple that floating feeling where your arm is just there in space and you have to exert effort to keep the gun straight, as opposed to a mouse or joystick, where your arm is usually resting on something, it took a bit of getting used to.

Shooting stuff in L4D was an experience. All of the different weapons had a different “kick” and when you shoved a zombie, there was a noticeable force feedback.  Overall, I was all over the place with the cursor.  I had a really difficult time getting used to it, to the point were I was really fighting the controller to just shoot straight.  Being a long time mouse and joystick gamer, I have a set way in which I interact with video games, which probably increased my learning curve even more.  Newbies might have a much easier time with the Falcon, much like a new Wii owner would prefer the steering wheel over the controller and nunchaku.

I also was able to take a turn with a driving game.  It was a game that was designed for the Falcon specifically and this was where the Falcon really shined.  While I didn’t care for the interface, which was basically a ball with buttons on it, I was told that a steering wheel peripheral is being developed for use with driving games.  The force feedback in the game was fun to play off of, as you could really get a sense of inertia when skidding around tight turns.

In all, the Novint Falcon boasted a large number of third party support from Valve, Infinity Ward, EA, Eidos and others, with more promised in the future. This goes a long way toward giving it credence within PC gaming circles, as without the ability to play the popular games out there, it’s just another fancy paper weight.

At the end of the day, while it was very interesting and quite a bit of fun at times, for $189.00, I cannot recommend this product for anything other than novelty purposes.  No serious gamer would get any benefit out of it, while most newbs, that would get the most out of it, would never dream of spending almost as much money on the peripheral as they did on an Xbox 360.  For now, I’ll stick with my mouse and joystick.

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