crkd Neo S Controller: Linkin Park Fortnite Festival Edition Review (Hardware) – Hybrid Thingmie

It starts with one thing, fortunately I do know why. It didn’t even matter how hard I tried, I was going to review this controller no matter what. There’s a score if you’re desperately waiting for the end, but it might be worth your time to scroll up from the bottom and read the full thing? This is a cool controller and it’s worth passionately screaming about. So, shut up when I’m talking to you.

The crkd Neo S range are cool controllers. Along with Linkin Park, the range includes straight up Fortnite branded editions, Bruno Mars and even Rocket League is on the way. There’s every chance Epic Games are also big fans of the crkd Neo S line of products but there’s no real evidence of that as far as I can tell.

This one though caught my eye, not just because I’m a huge Linkin Park fan – and I’m not gonna be two faced about it -, but it was damn near specifically made for one of Fortnite’s best modes – the Fortnite Festival. A game that takes you back to the days when we were blasting out Faint on Guitar Hero III with reckless abandon. Since Guitar Hero is now lost in the echo, Fortnite brought back the genre in a major way through Festival, and this controller is designed to sink one step closer to that rock star experience it turned out we all rather missed a little bit.

It wasn’t all that easy at first, whilst the controller was simple enough to Bluetooth to my PC (or your Switch or your mobile/tablet, if you’re so inclined), reverting back to the 5-Fret button layout was quite the castle of glass, and it did take me a little while to get back into the tone and the violent rhythms. If you’re old enough to remember owning a Nintendo DS you may remember Guitar Hero: World Tour, a handheld edition of the game that came packed in with a grip you could plug into the system that would emulate the fret on their pack-in guitars.

The Fortnite Festival Edition set up immediately reminded me of this – unsurprisingly as former GH developers worked on this controller – and after a few terrible attempts at getting to grips with the fret buttons I began breaking the habit and it became a very natural way of playing Festival, like I played it on the DS fifteen years ago. It was little touch and go for a while there but I picked myself up. No more sorrow (sorry, that was a cheap one).

The catalyst of why I’m such a big fan of this controller though is its ergonomics. I think at first it’s probably easier to run away from its design. It’s about the size of a mobile phone and feels like one in the hand, as you might expect looking at the Neo S itself.

Fortunately the buttons feel great, as do the hall effect thumbsticks (which again if you wish you can swap out the tops for different ones), and as I took Fortnite back into (From) Zero Build mode, the game recognised it as an Xbox controller, which makes sense as the ABXY layout is exactly the same. The buttons immediately mapped and I didn’t think about where my fingers and thumbs needed to be, they just settled into a natural placement. In terms of weight, as you’re holding on it’s not particularly heavy, but certainly has enough heft to suggest you’re holding a premium product in your hands as you play.

The roundedness no doubt helps in this, and the lack of sharp edges benefits a controller of this shape. There are also two buttons on the back which can be mapped to any input you like.

I wanted to give the controller a proper play session though to see how it lasted and as I connected it to my Switch and booted up Breath of the Wild, two and a half hours later there’s no sign of the Neo S becoming powerless, and I was hugely impressed with how long it lasted in more intense sessions, particularly I never once felt my hand cramp up or become so numb, or felt the need for the controller to hit the floor. It gave me everything it had, and that’s pretty good going as good things go.

I’ve cut the bridge, sorry, this review a fair bit to ensure I focus on the fundamentals of a Neo S controller. I decided to leave out all the rest and proclaim that in the end, I genuinely think this is a great controller, and whilst I don’t think its shape will feel natural for everyone – it didn’t for me at first – I think in the shadow of the day this a qwerty, sorry, a quirky alternative to the more standard controllers out there.

At least this one won’t end up in pieces on the floor when you lose to a child sniping you from half way across the map. And he was out of the storm.

He got me from the inside.

(OK, I can’t think of any more Linkin Park songs to squeeze into this review. I’ve given up. Sorry for now. Good goodbye).

The crkd Neo S Linkin Park 5-Fret Fortnite Festival Edition controller is available now on crkd’s website.

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional controller. For our full review policy, please go here.

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