War, what is it good for? Absolutely everything if you’re a Call of Duty player. And with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 now in the wild, gamers are always looking for something to give them an edge over other players. And this latest controller from PDP just might be it.

This officially licensed wired controller manages to quietly impress considering its affordable price point of £34.99/$37.99.

The first difference you notice getting it out of the box is its weight – or lack of it. As it’s a wired controller, it lacks the heft of a wireless controller with its battery pack; if you’re only used to wireless, as we were, it takes a little getting used to, but your hands will soon be thanking you for not having all that weight in them.

It sits comfortably in your hands, and again, if you’re used to the official Xbox controllers, it feels no different, so it takes no readjustment in that department. Where it does need getting used to is in actually gaming.

The first game-changing aspect is its 2-way stop true hair triggers. Now the default settings for COD are left trigger scope, right trigger shoot. Using the original Xbox controller, you may feel a little disadvantaged occasionally in multiplayer games, as we did, with other players seemingly getting the jump on you; it’s often like a western shootout, face to face with an enemy, but nine times out of ten it feels as if they get the better of you. We often put this down to PC gamers, rightly or wrongly, who can certainly tailor their gaming experience to a far greater degree than console players ever can, with refresh rates, non latency issues etc. And although these hair triggers won’t resolve that issue outright, it does feel like the odds are slightly more even.

If you’re not familiar with what they do, it’s simple: there are two switches under the controller, one for each trigger, that when slid down, shorten the travel distance of each trigger. So when you fire your weapon, it responds quicker as the actual trigger has less distance to travel than it normally would. The left trigger is the same in that your scope comes up quicker than it would normally. This means that you should be in a better position to reply to any hostility that comes your way.

This is our first time using hair triggers and we can say, without doubt, that it has improved our overall multiplayer experience.

The fact that it’s a wired connection also probably helps. We have always turned our noses up at wired controllers, but the fact we’re no longer having to feed our controller AA batteries in quick succession like a battery addicted hungry hippo, is refreshing. The supplied cable is long enough to reach from the console to our sofa without getting in the way unduly, and after a while you don’t even notice it. And the fact that the cable isn’t permanently attached means that if you need it to be longer, you can just pop on eBay and get one long enough to suit your needs.

It’s not just a battery issue either, as the fact that it’s a wired means there’s almost no latency between your button input on the controller and the action on screen, which again can only improve your gaming experience.

Something else we’ve had no experience with before is using paddle buttons under the controller. This one has two, where our middle fingers naturally rest on. They are mappable with any other buttons, that can be altered in the controller settings in game. The left one we have mapped so it reloads ammo with just a gentle key press. We haven’t assigned the right one to anything as yet, but we may use it to change weapons in game. But of course if it doesn’t work out, we can map it to something else.

It should be said that we consider ourselves fairly average COD players, playing for about an hour a night, having prestige level one at around 46 right now. But we have seen a noticeable improvement in our overall COD gaming since using this controller, which we weren’t necessarily expecting.

There is also an app (of course there is), accessible on the Xbox store and the Microsoft store (for PC gamers), that allows further customisation, such as the dead zones of your sticks etc that can be tinkered with (or not) until you find what works best for you.

And on top of that, it comes with a funky design, featuring everyone’s favourite stuffed bunny, Mister Peeks, that actually glows in the dark.

Considering the accessible price point, the REMATCH GLOW advanced wired controller is pretty impressive, all things considered, bringing with it a set of features that we would have to admit would prove a struggle going back to a regular controller.

Our only quibble would be that it doesn’t come with Hall effect joystick modules, but at this price point, that’s hardly surprising.

And of course it’s a controller that not only will work with any other First Person Shooter you play, but will also perform like any other controller for all your games, across all genres.

As far as COD is concerned, it won’t make you the best player on the map (unless you already are, in which case, watch your back mister), but you should, without question, see an improvement in your playing style, and going some way to make you the killing machine that you want to be.

So what are you waiting for soldier? Pick up that controller and do your duty.