HORI DAEMON X MACHINA JOYCONS HOW TO
HORI DAEMON X MACHINA JOYCONS PORTABLE
HORI DAEMON X MACHINA JOYCONS PRO

HORI DAEMON X MACHINA JOYCONS PRO

The Split Pad Pro felt like an improvement for pretty much everything I used it with, except maybe Tetris 99. The cross-promotion only extends to the black-and-red color scheme and the “X” logo on the X button. You don’t need to be interested in this game to pick up the Split Pad Pro, though.

HORI DAEMON X MACHINA JOYCONS PORTABLE

The stark, bright visual style is a good fit for the Switch, and the quick mission structure makes it ideal for portable play. Produced by a veteran of FromSoftware’s Armored Core mech series, Daemon X Machina is similarly a pretty niche game, with fun aerial combat that you’ll need to wade through mountains of exposition and menus to discover. The most obvious way to use the rear buttons is to assign face buttons to them, letting you access those commands when your thumbs are otherwise occupied by the analog stick. These are useful in complex action games like Marvelous’ new Switch-exclusive mech combat title Daemon X Machina, which launched alongside the Split Pad Pro and uses up pretty much every button on a regular controller. The Split Pad Pro also includes turbo functionality and customizable buttons on the back, similar to the paddles on the Xbox Elite Controller and its various derivatives. The plus / minus and home / share buttons are a little weird and rubbery, but not to the point where it’s a problem. The analog sticks are glorious compared to the Joy-Cons’, with a luxurious range of motion. The D-pad is only okay, but it’s a huge improvement over both the Pro Controller’s and the Joy-Cons’ button-based facsimile. The face buttons are big and responsive without being clicky, while the shoulder buttons rest naturally under your fingers.

HORI DAEMON X MACHINA JOYCONS HOW TO

Hori knows how to make a good controller, and for the most part, this is a good controller.

It digs into your palm with reassuring heft It digs into your palm with reassuring heft. The Switch is constrained by the need to be fairly slim and flat the Split Pad Pro is not. But after a while, it gets easier to relax and just play the thing, and it’s vastly more comfortable than the default Switch setup. The Switch screen seemed smaller than ever, and my instinct was to grip the controllers tightly for fear of dropping the whole contraption. It turns the Switch into a bizarrely long handheld that is in no way suitable for use outside the house.Īt first, this felt awkward. Take a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, split it in two, and add Joy-Con rails to each side, and you’re pretty much there. The $49.99 Split Pad Pro is exactly what it sounds like. So when I saw that Hori, maker of the D-pad Joy-Con replacement, was working on a pair of large, officially licensed pro-style controllers designed for use in the Switch’s handheld mode, I knew I had to check it out. I imagine the upcoming Switch Lite will only make matters worse. As much as I love the portable aspect of the Nintendo Switch, I cannot pretend that it fits my hands, which are roughly the size of the Mano del Desierto and cramp up after any significant length of time with Celeste.

Hori daemon x machina joycons