Customer Reviews

Pelican Silent Scope Light Rifle PL-2038 - Light gun - Microsoft Xbox

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

OVERALL
The rifle, in my opinion is a very capable piece of hardware. Contrary to what most people apparently think about it, I like it! It probably depends on a number of different factors - pretty much whether someone would enjoy it or not lies within the default brightness of your TV and the patience of the gamer. In the end, it really can work like the arcade game without so many disappointments experienced by other gamers. Also, keep in mind that the brunt (or all) of the problems are associated with Silent Scope Complete for the XBox. If you are playing House of the Dead III, for example... All of the brightness level, scrolling, and detection issues disappear!

ASSEMBLY & PREPARATION
The assembly's easy and the manual guides you through the calibration. I actually didn't have to turn my brightness up really high. I used the game option in the silent scope complete xbox game to increase it slightly. Say, if the normal brightness is 20, I notched it up to 30 or so. It was enough to gave it a slight tint of white.

Still, the brightness wasn't so high that I was blinded or anything. On some stages, I really didn't notice it. And the accessory is so cool that adjusting to a little bit of increased whiteness (the few times I did notice) is insignificant for the performance increase you gain. It's really not that bad of a trade-off.

The trick is to get the level of brightness (game settings NOT your actual TV settings) to just the exact threshold of being faulty and being smooth. I humbly suggest you crank up the brightness to the point where the crosshair detection is silky smooth and ignore how freakishly bright your screen is... THEN you start decreasing the brightness while testing your crosshair movement at the same time. Continue to decrease the brightness until your crosshair starts jumping and skipping all over the place. THEN return the brightness to the last level of silky smoothness (which should just be back one digit) and tada! You minimized the amount of brightness on your screen while maintaining your maximum detection level. Note that this is for the GAME's brightness setting. It's probably not a good idea to begin fiddling around with your TV's brightness levels until you absolutely think that's the last draw. If you adjust the game setting brightness (rather than your actual TV's brightness), you won't have to re-adjust your brightness on your TV everytime you want to watch it or play something else. The xbox will save your settings so you won't be messing with the screen everytime.

Still, the fact that you MUST adjust anything to your existing game settings does count against some gamers. Therefore, overall this accessory is limited to a four star score. But that's still pretty awesome. It all depends on whether or not you're willing to fine tune your instruments. Don't expect this thing to perfectly tuned right out of the box. Once you get the nasty brightness dilemma out of the way, you can start tweaking it for a headache-free experience with the game. Granted, the gun will work satisfactorily now, but it'll probably leave a mediocore taste in your mouth... That's why I resorted to some small adjusting with the scope settings...

Now, I like to fine tune anything that's possible. And that's fortunate for me, because I recommend you go to each game setting of Silent Scope Complete and enter the "adjust scope speed" option (or just do it when you get to whatever game's your favorite, I did it all at once so I didn't have to worry about it later). There you can manually adjust the zoomed scope movement -- which REALLY HELPS YOU AIM BETTER. It was very slow to aim at different targets while zoomed in with the scope. Don't look into the scope while you're trying to adjust the zoomed scope speed (under "scope zoom on" option) because that counts as pressing a button and will make you exit the adjusting screen. Instead, do exactly what it says, press "A" which is the trigger and then you'll be able to adjust the zoomed scope scrolling speed with the joypad to your left of your trigger hand. Keep adjusting it with the pad while you scrolling around and test the speed of the zoomed scope.

Note that if you didn't adjust your brightness properly, you probably won't see much improvement in adjusting your scope movement, since your base crosshair detection is already faulted. However, even at it's maximum speed, some gamers are bound to find the zoomed scope movement still too slow... Well, that's really a personal problem at that point, because the arcades didn't have lightning fast zoomed in scope either. Meaning, you should zoom out if you want to swing your crosshair across the screen AND THEN zoom in when you actually want to shoot something between its eyes.

Again, if you are playing House of the Dead III. There's absolutely nothing to worry about. Just plug the gun in (ignore all the attachments) and start calibrating it then play!

WEIGHT
Now with all the technical stuff outta the way (hope it helps)... The actual weight of the rifle gets cumbersome of you're holding it for long periods of time -- but that's just common sense. Besides, it was meant to be an arcade game, not an rpg with terrorists. It'd be nice to mimic the arcade and have your rifle propped up on something. This is assuming that you're playing Silent Scope Complete. If you're playing House of the Dead III, then you don't need ANY of the attachments. Without all of the extra parts, the gun is much lighter and easier to handle. PLUS, you CANNOT deny the coolness that is the pump-action reload built into the barrel of the gun. If anyone's played House of the Dead III in the arcades, then they know how cool it is to have light gun SHOTGUN for an accessory. Note that House of the Dead III features an inescapable auto-reload feature (meaning you can't turn it off). But still, what kinda fps gamer EVER waits to run out of ammo before reloading? (the auto-reload will kick in everytime you run out of ammo)

So there you go. My two cents on this whole thing. It's a good deal! You just need to make sure you know what you need to do before you can enjoy the product. Make sure you set yourself up for some simple fine-tuning and patient experimenting for a half an hour (that's how long it took me to fine tune everything, it may differ for you) or so. You might as well tweak it to your finest points, you paid for it! It'll give its love back to you.

When i first heard of a special rifle gun for silent scope i thought to myself "finally! something that'll let me get into silent scope!" I used to play it on Dreamcast but i couldnt get into it because controllers are no fun with gun games.

I got home with it and when i opened the box i could feel my dreams coming true, the gun was huge and felt awsome, i was so excited!

I plugged it in, turned on the game and watched the gun calibration automatically come up. I thought i had a fualty gun at first because it was not registering with the second target. Anywhere i was shooting, it was not picking up, finally some random shot registered and it brought me to a screen where it wanted me to change the brightness. I did not understand what it was asking me to do. I hopped online and read some reviews on it and tried turning the brightness way up. On 47 out of 50 i can get it to register in dark areas. THIS IS ASBURD, why would a company make a product that forces everyone to play with a super bright screen that hurts your eyes constantley when it switches back to normal in between cut scenes.

Unfortunately, i really got my hopes up with this one. The biggest thing that will never stop bugging me the most, is how you have to make the tv so bright. The gun picks up fine for House of the Dead, so im guessing it's a software problem within Silent Scope. The only thing that comes to mind is maybe that's a drawback so it can be HDTV compatible.

The kickback is pretty good, the pump is awsome. I do not understand the technology behind the sensor, i think, either it should detect your face there or it shouldn't, i dont see why that needs to be calibrated. I don't think it could be any harder to calibrate either, it's always sensing at random times, throwing off my menu selecting or inturrupting gameplay. And what's up with the atleast one second delay?

This had so much potential, and it has these problems with it that boggles my mind wondering how they released this to the puplic. After an hour or so you get used to the delay when your onscreen target moves and can actually start having some fun with the thing instead of thinknig "i spent (product amout)on this?!" The gun does add a lot of fun to the game but the buggy features bring it down, plus the fact that i can't stop thinking "what if.." .

The rifle works great with Silent Scope Complete and the auto-scope feature really adds to the whole experience. However, the downside is that the screen brightness has to be much higher in comparison to the Mad Catz Blaster for the reticle to move smoothly on my TV screen. However, this seems like it's more of an issue with SSC since I was able to use a normal brightness level with House of the Dead 3. Additionally, if the auto-scope isn't adjusted correctly, it can work against you since the scope will randomly enable/disable during gameplay.

Another problem I had with the light rifle is firing rate. Since HotD3 requires quick shooting, I found myself shooting much slower using the light rifle than with the Mad Catz Blaster due to the position of the trigger. Anyone that's used to the smaller light guns will probably have the same problem since it's what we're used to. Also, the autofire of the lightgun is horribly slow, so it's more or less useless since I can shoot faster without it. Same goes for the burst mode (three shots per trigger pull).

On the up side, the rifle seems to be significantly more accurate than the MC Blaster when properly calibrated, especially on SSC. Most of this is due to the size of the light rifle. It's much easier to hold the light rifle steady than other light guns.

All in all, the rifle is a great piece of hardware and I recommend it to anyone looking for a solid SSC light gun. However, I don't recommend it for games like HotD3 since the light gun is heavier (even in shotgun mode) and seems to be more difficult to shoot quickly.

I really regreted not to read other reviews early.I paid $50 for it
yesterday with high expection. But it thoroughly disappointed me.
The scope movement is jerky, lots of time you can never focus on
your target. And you have to adjust your TV to very uncomfortable
brightness to make it work. It's much much worse than the original
controller of xbox. What a waste!!! I am going to return it today!
If they don't allow me to return, I will put it on ebay to sell to
anyone paying more than 10$.

silent scope complete is thje best game in the world with the rifle. the rifle is just like the arcade except now u dont have to wasted endless quarters on it. this will also help expose silent scope to the world instead of being arcade exclusive if u want a rifle action. get this game if u get the rifle, it is hella worth it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was so happy to know it's on sale and bought one home to play my Silent Scope3
But the focus is jumping from point to point. It's really frustrated to use this rifle to
aim sharply at any emeny. It makes the game un-playable with this rifle. I have to
go back to use xbox controller in the end. The worst case is, they didn't let me
return it (even if I just bought it 5 hours ago) with everything looking like origal
packing. DO ensure seller allow to return if you are not satisfied before you buy.
Unless the 40 bucks cost like 40 cents for you.

This rifle is a joke. It has a amazing look-and-feel. I neverhesitated to buy it when I saw it. But when it is connected to xbox, it gave me horrible gaming experience. I hated it. How can they sell this kind of junk? I will cut all connected cables on it, and give it to my 3 yrs old nephew to play with, he may like to have a handsome gun.

..I CAN GO ON FOR HOURS ABOUT 300000mil REASON NOT TO BUY THIS PIECE OF JUNK. THE SCREEN BRIGHTNESS, THE CALIBRATION, THE FACT THAT IT COMES OUT 2 ABOUT 100$ TO BUY BOTH. ..when i got the scope i was so happy. its looked like it had 5 million featues to blow s*** up. but then i got the game mama mia if u wanna buy the rifle fine buy the rilfe it looks cool ill give it that parents buy them one to shoot there freinds for pretend. but if they play it with the game ur children will disown u

This thing is a total waste of time. I should have listened to the reviews I read that said it sucked. Don't make the same mistake I did. Run away!!! Run away!!!

The seller I bought this from has neglected to reply to any emails sent to them. The rifle had missing parts and does not work properly. This was my first experience with Amazon and I will never use it again if this is how business is done here. I will also spread the word to all the people I know that buy things offline not to purchase off Amazon due to the problems that I have encountered.