Precise, but sticky

I purchased the saitek p2500 cyborg force rumble pad at walmart for $20 or $30 (I cant quite remember) to replace an old plastic digital gamepad. I intended to mostly use it for racing, adventure, rpg, and first person shooter games.

The packaging was decent, I didn't bother with the manual because the installation was fairly self-explanitory. I first tried simply plugging the controller in, the computer recognized it, all the buttons, and the analog worked just fine. Then I installed the software to get the rumble to work, and installation was smooth and simple. I opted for advanced installation, which gives me a frigin awesome program that lets me assign any keyboard, controller, or mouse movement, or series of such, which was very useful in games which do not support controller configuration. Also, in the controller settings, there is a program that automattically calibrates the controller for you, and you can test the rumble, while hearing sounds of common things found in a game (ie. if you press button two, you will hear a monster roar and feel the rumble)

Simply put: software 5 stars

Gameplay with this controller is great: fits in your hands very nicely, the rumble is alright for me, (I usually turn it off using the right button in the middle of the controller) and the analog sticks move smooth and are very precise, they also double as buttons which works well for uses such as using the scope on your sniper rifle :)

But with the good, there is always the bad, and this controller has some to mention :(
The only problem i have with this controller is that after about 3-4 months of usage, the buttons stick and are hard to press, which messes up gameplay when you constantly have to pound on the accelerate button to get it to operate properly. I am not hard on my controllers, but i now have to be to get any results with the buttons now, after i have used the controller for about a year now (knowing full well that i am just hurting it more) The only buttons that are not sticky now are the ones on the analog sticks.

As much as I would like to reccomend this controller, I will not until saitek fixes this design flaw. But if this problem is fixed, this controller will kick butt on ANY controller next year. Therefore i am giving this 3 stars for potential :)