I recently bought the Steelseries Stratus MFi controller, best decision in ages

[Davehaslanded]

I work 2 night jobs. One of which tends to be long and quiet and generally in the past, I've always just put TV shows or films on my iPad air 2. But recently, it dawned on me that i really hadn't done much gaming recently. I love my Gaming PCs, but i simply don't get the time to play as much as I used to a few years back, before 'life' really took over. I'd considered getting an MFi controller before, but the costs were stupidly high. (You buy into the Apple Eco system, you pay the premium. I accept that) But recently, prices have dropped, and I've got to say, I am really pleased with my purchase. 

 

The controller is small, but not uncomfortable. It only took me a few minuets to adapt from using the Xbox one controller that I use on windows for certain games. The buttons feel pretty good

 

Last night i sunk a good 4-5 hours of time gaming into my iPad, something i never would have done with touch controls, and even continued playing at home when i had a spare 5 mins. (Its a console that can go to the toilet with you lol) 

So far the games I've played are; Real Racing 3, Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders, Call of Duty: Strike Team and Oceanhorn (The best Zelda game that never was).

All these games have been great, and i'm excited now to try out some games that i've previously missed on PC and don't have the time to play now; eg Bioshock, and old games that have been released with controller support; eg, All GTA's prior to GTA 4 and Tomb Raider. 

 

The only issues i have is the Battery life hit the iPad takes with a resource intensive game and a constant iPad connection, but i can plug my iPad in at work most the time and/or i have a portable 25600mAh battery. 

My only other gripe is that so far, I've found no games with remappable buttons. (A pain in Call of duty due to muscle memory being different) Because Apple supports to different types on controller; Simple, think PS1 controller, and advanced, think dual shock controller, Some simpler games only have 2 or 3 commands, which are inexplicable mapped to multiple buttons in some odd effort to 'use them all up?'

 

In summery, for anyone like myself who misses the days when we all had a lot more spare time to play games and are happy to play at 30fps, this is a great purchase, and controller support is far better than Apple have (and rather short sighted i think) advertised.

 

If anyone does already own one or buys one based of me sharing my experience, please let me know and share you experiences too and maybe help find some great games. Apple really haven't supported this feature since introducing it in iOS7, even if some devs have. It will be interesting to see if the new Apple TV rumored to be announced on 9th Sept 2015 supports the controllers based on what we've heard so far.