It’s been the year of the PS5 Pro controller with PlayStation’s official DualSense Edge, Nacon’s recent Revolution 5 Pro and Razer’s insanely expensive attempt, but none have been as innovative and customisable as the PDP Victrix Pro BFG PS5 controller.
I want to talk about the coolest innovation in the PDP Victrix Pro BFG controller and that is without doubt the fact that almost every face button is interchangeable. No need to worry about whether you like your analogue sticks offset or symmetrical as you can have either by just simply unscrewing the top of each segment and cleverly flipping it around. There’s no hall effect sticks on offer here, but I think that the fact that they totally pull out hopefully negate that a little bit.
If that wasn’t enough for you, the entire right side can be swapped out with a fight pad that has flatter, more clicking versions of each of the four face buttons as well as the R1/R2 buttons on the top right as well. Obviously, this will only be useful for fighting game fans, but it’s still super cool to be able to swap out entire components of a controller.
Like with the rest of the customisable controllers on the market, you’ve got a variety of analogue sticks of different heights and a number of D-Pads on offer too, but more interestingly is the analogue stick gates that cleverly limit movement. Again, not something that I’ve seen done before, but super clever and effective.
PDP has this incredible patented trigger stop mechanic that allows five different stopping points which is more than I’ve seen on any controller and truthfully I don’t know that I could go back to anything less. The difference between each of them is super small, but when you’re getting into this level of controller, all of the little differences in personalisation matter.
There’s also four back buttons on the back of the controller and I’ve often criticised PS5 Pro controllers other than the DualSense Edge for how they handle mapping these (unless you’re using the PC app), but the solution here is simpler than most. You just press the dedicated button on the back, hold down one of the back buttons and then select which button you’d like to map. There’s three easy to distinguish profiles that you can store on controller too.
The Pro BFG controller connects over a USB-A dongle that can be used with the PS5, PS4 or PC, and if you’re wanting to connect audio, there’s a 3.5mm port that you can connect a headset to for low latency with a number of different EQ profiles onboard the controller in addition to being able to control the audio levels through the controller.
Unfortunately, even though this is a PlayStation licensed controller, just like all of the other third-party PS5 Pro controllers, you won’t get any form of vibration or adaptive trigger functionality whilst gaming on a PS5, which is a bummer.
The weight of the controller is a little bit light for most people’s liking as well, and I really loved that the Nacon Revolution 5 Pro had a number of weights that could be swapped in and out, so that’s something I’d like to see on the next version here, but what is on offer is a really solid controller with some excellent ideas in customisation.