Playstation Controller Back Buttons

Number one son is in town for the weekend. We went shopping today and he bought something rather interesting. Back buttons for the PlayStation 4 controller. They are a nifty moulding that fits underneath between the controller sides. By cunning use of a moving plug they wrap themselves around to make it look as if they are part of the controller. They provide two extra buttons that are really easy to press with those fingers that normally wrap around the controller to hold it. They are configured using a tiny OLED screen and a single button. You can get them to produce a button press that is mapped onto any of the other controls.

For example, you might replace things that are rather hard to do, like pressing in the thumbsticks, with rear button presses. And some actions, for example change up and down the gears in a driving game, are crying out to be put onto controls like these.

They work with all existing games because as far as the game is concerned there is nothing new happening. The game is getting the control inputs it is expecting, but they are being triggered in a different way.

I’ve been told (quite rightly) that I don’t play games at the stratospheric level for such add-ons to really pay off for me, but if you want to do things like shoot when jumping or easily change gears, they are worth a look. Apparently in the UK they are being sold exclusively by Game.