Gaming

Gaming

Okay, so far, I’m thinking that the Realforce RGB is a classy, almost cerebral keyboard, and I like it a lot for typing. How am I going to like gaming on it? To answer this question, we dive into some of our favorites, Project Cars, HOTS, and Witcher 3!

Project Cars

Playing Project Cars with a keyboard is a little bit like grating hard cheese with a butter knife. You can do it, but it’s not ideal. Project Cars requires both static presses and lots of little keypresses for the steering. I bind throttle to the WASD and steering to the arrow cluster. It kind of works. The RGB does pretty well here. You can assign colors to the backlight for those clusters through the software and save it as a profile, which also works pretty well. The Ducky YOTG has this as a hotkey, which is very convenient, but it’s difficult to change the colors. Win to the RGB for that.

Using the APC didn’t matter a whole lot with Project Cars. The snap at the beginning of the RGB’s Topre switch meant that I invariably bottomed out, making it impossible to ride the actuation point. This is something that a linear MX switch can do very easily, and I’d say better for games like Project Cars. If you’re just mashing buttons, though, neither the RGB or a linear switch keyboard will give you any benefit. So there’s that, I suppose.

Heroes of the Storm

FPS shooters are fine, but RTS is where a keyboard like the RGB with its APC can really benefit a gamer. After watching hours of gameplay, it was time to take the wheel and start playing HOTS for myself. I dusted off my authenticator and got cracking with Heroes of the Storm.

As you can tell, I totally pwned the tutorial. I’m not a RTS player, not since college and Starcraft: Brood Wars, but I do it for you, dear reader. I must say, the APC was interesting, I knew the RGB would activate the keys with barely a tap, and so I played quite nimbly. The RGB with APC is a clear win.

Witcher 3

It fits like an old shoe. I thank Witcher 3 for not smelling like my old shoes, too. You know, if you could smell the world of Witcher 3, it would not be pleasant much of the time. Yup, /r/showerthoughts in a keyboard review. You’re welcome.

Most FPS games are static, press and hold, keyboard controls. The 45g weight of the Topre switches is very good for my fingers. After playing much longer than I should have, my fingers were fine, not a single issue with fatigue.

The RGB is a tactile switch keyboard, with a crisp snap at the top. I normally use a MX linear switch for my gaming, since a tactile bump can potentially get in the way of the fingers. But it also depends on the game. For RTS, I don’t think there’s anything better than the short actuation switches, and a tactile bump would be catastrophic. Linear all the way. For FPS, the tactile snap of the RGB’s switch is ridiculously good, and the solid feeling of the keyboard itself makes me think it will withstand a lot of adrenalin fueled button mashing.