“Accessibility allows us to tap into everyone’s potential.”
― Debra Ruh, founder of TecAccess
PlayStation’s first foray into the world of accessibility hardware has arrived. I present to you, the PlayStation Access controller (or as my able-bodied friends affectionately call it, the PlayStation Bop It). Introduced as a versatile controller kit that is customisable to meet individual players’ needs, the peripheral will release on December 6th with a recommended retail price of $139.95AUD.
Thanks to PlayStation Australia, I was sent two PlayStation Access controllers for this review. My goal with play-testing this hardware was simple; the controller’s tagline calls for Empowered Play, but does it truly leave me feeling empowered as a disabled gamer?
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Does the PlayStation Access empower me as a disabled gamer?
“Everything hurts and I’m dying.” – Leslie Knope
You would probably like to know what qualifies me to be a reviewer for a controller designed for disabilities, and rightly so. Though I may present often as an able-bodied person, my disabilities are invisible to the naked eye (but not to blood tests).
In 2019 I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, an auto-immune disease that resembles stereotypical arthritis, but it comes and goes. This means that I can feel fine one day, and be unable to get out of bed the next. To combat this, I was prescribed a medication called Methotrexate. This drug is more commonly recognised by its use in chemotherapy. Yes, you read that right, chemotherapy. I take a small dose of it on a weekly basis, and without going into the science of it all (I’m not a doctor), it can manage my condition sufficiently.
On a bad day, I may appear at work with my walking stick, with a wheelchair, or not at all if I am unable to drive my car. It is also on these days that I wish I could distract myself from the pain with video games. I own a pair of compression gloves which help a little, but often I am unable to game for prolonged periods of time due to the pain in my fingers as I try to wrap them around a controller.
There will come a day when my condition is too great, and the wheelchair/bed-bound lifestyle will become my norm. When that day comes, I want to know that my love of gaming can continue.
Gaming has, and will continue to be an accessibility feature in and of itself, as even walking-sims will allow me to experience things I will no longer be able to do – like the literal act of walking. However, I can’t do any of that without a controller that caters to my needs. This is why the PlayStation Access controller is so important to me.
This article has been written with my disability at its core. Fundamentally, my thoughts and opinions are based on my own unique experiences with this controller. In this instance, your experience or the experience of other reviewers could differ considerably. Despite this, you may still find value in my observations.
Thinking Inside The Box
The aforementioned medicine I take for my condition is obviously a very dangerous chemical. If it found its way into the wrong mouth, such as that of a child or a pet, it could do the unthinkable. As such, my medication comes in a bottle that is impossible to open.
Quite literally, my anti-arthritis medication comes in a bottle I can’t open because of my arthritis. It’s as hilarious as it is ridiculous. Which brings me to my next point…
Accessible packaging is important.
If I have to ask another human being to grant me access to the medication that allows me to function, I am no more than a cat or a dog that begs its owner for food – a fundamental right and need. Is that analogy visceral? Does that make you feel uncomfortable? It should. For far too long disabled people have been made to feel less-than. That is why I will rave about the accessible packaging of the PlayStation Access controller until the day I die.
Does the packaging empower gamers?
Lacking twist-ties or plastic shrink-wrap, the PlayStation Access controller comes in a box that was designed to empower disabled gamers. Case in point: my arthritis was bad the day this controller arrived in the mail, but I did not need to call on another person to wield a pair of scissors or use their strength. I merely opened the box, removed the controller, and away I went.
However, I did have a little mishap with the seal tabs. Please note: the tabs are designed to be pulled across the box, not lifted up.
Plug ‘N’ Play Or Flail?
What makes the PlayStation Access controller great also adds to its hindrance. I would not say that the setup for the Access controller is cumbersome, but it is certainly not an enjoy-right-out-of-the-box experience. To play with the controller, one must first set it up with both buttons and profiles.
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The controller comes with a box of buttons in various shapes and sizes. These can be swapped out easily by squeezing the release trigger underneath the individual button and lifting. They are lightly magnetised, so when you want to place a button they are easily attracted to their designated spot and snap into place. Huge wins all-round here.
Each button can be customised with individual rubber nubbins that designate the controller prompts: triangle, square, cross, circle, R1, L1, etc. These could be a little bit trickier to swap out on a bad day with my condition, but for me, these will likely be a set-once-and-forget type situation.
Setting Up Access Profiles
Once the buttons are in place and labelled accordingly, you must then set up a profile. Profiles are saved layouts in which you can map buttons to certain points on the controller. Each controller can have up to three individual profiles, and these can be interchanged at the press of a button.
It is important to note that if you swap a profile on the fly, it won’t change the button icons on the physical controller – you will still need to swap those out yourself.
Players have the choice of playing with just one Access controller, two Access controllers, an Access controller alongside a Dualsense, or two Access controllers alongside a Dualsense. These combinations may seem overwhelming in theory, but in practice they work seamlessly.
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Overall the set-up is fairly streamlined, but it will require a little more patience if you want to swap between games with different profiles.
Can you use the PlayStation Access controllers on PC?
If you’re a PC gamer looking to add the Access controllers to your set-up, I’m afraid I am the bearer of bad news. As of writing this review (pre-release), the Steam controller configurations do not play nice with the Access controller. Below is a screenshot of a page I was stuck on and could not get past.
Hopefully, this is rectified post-launch as more people get their hands on the controller.
What games work great with the PlayStation Access controller and what games don’t?
PlayStation advised me that 7-10 days of acclimation is typical with new controllers, and I fully expected this going in.
With a little over a week to experience everything I could with this hardware, I chose three games that I felt would encompass the full range of what I would want from a PlayStation console: Spider-Man 2, Fortnite, and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy.
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Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Does Whatever A Spider Can
I wanted to try a game that was celebrated for its accessibility features, and one that I had not yet sunk my teeth into. Cue Spider-Man 2.
Initially, I booted up the game without touching any of its accessibility features to see how it would fare on its own. Spider-Man 2 contains a lot of fast-paced action, as you would expect of superhero media. While I was still getting used to the controls, both of the game and the controller itself, I found it too difficult to play.
After 30 minutes or so of going almost nowhere, I dove into the menus and adjusted the play-speed of the game to be 70%. This setting does not affect dialogue or cut scenes, but rather it makes the gameplay and action sequences happen in slow-motion. I coupled this with a setting that allowed me to increase the window for parrying and dodging. Together, I found this was enough to help me grasp the gameplay.
The PlayStation Access controller paired with accessibility settings makes for a fantastic gaming experience. Sadly, not every game puts enough thought, time, and money into settings like these.
REVIEW: Review | Spider-Man 2 (PS5)
Overall I THOROUGHLY enjoyed playing this game, and could recommend it to other arthritic gamers looking to pick up the Access controller this Christmas.
Yeah Fortnite We ‘Bout To Get Down (Get Down)
More like get downed. My attempts to play Fortnite were atrocious. However, I don’t believe this is a fault of the Access controller itself. I have always been a mouse-and-keyboard gamer when it comes to shooters. Those kinds of skills do not translate well to a controller, no matter which controller you pick up. Ultimately, it was not fun to play. I struggled to land a single shot, and my team was constantly reviving me.
One evening, as I was playing with friends, my left hand began to cramp. I chalked this down to an issue with my button mapping. However, since it is not something you can easily change on the fly, I felt obliged to stay and game rather than stop everyone else in the party for 10+ minutes, jump out of the game, go into my settings, and mess around with layouts and profiles (they’re nice enough people that I know they would have, but I didn’t want to ask them). I just pushed through.
Perhaps with some re-mapping and more time, I could get used to using the Access controller for Fortnite. While I’ll certainly try to spend some evenings using it, I think I am better off using a mouse and keyboard for the foreseeable future.
Jak And Daxter: The Precursor Of My Career
For my third and final game, I decided to put Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy to the test. This game was formative in my childhood years. For someone who had exclusively played Super Mario World up until that point, it was eye-opening. This is what games could be! It was such a definitive moment in my life – the moment I fell in love with gaming.
Upon booting up Jak and Daxter I could not move past the start screen. Cue the Roblox OOF noise.
Being a port from the year 2001, the game will only register the press of the START button to proceed (unlike modern games where it’s usually “press any button” to start). Try as I might, the designated button for the TouchPad I had set up on my Access controller would not register. The only way I could proceed from this spot was to press the TouchPad button on my DualSense, which worked first try.
Not a great start, but I continued on…
The controls on the 2017 port of the Jak and Daxter games are old-school in the worst ways, and being older games they do not allow for button-mapping or contain any accessibility settings. You really have to dig deep and find your inner child, the one who’s still playing on that PS2 in your childhood bedroom, to be able to maneuver in this world.
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Nevertheless, the Access controller does work with this game. Despite the START button not registering, the rest of the buttons and controls register just fine. I was able to complete all of Gyser Rock, the tutorial level, with complete ease – I would say as competently as I could on a regular controller. That’s a BIG tick for me.
Don’t Pat Yourself On The Back Yet, Sony
In conclusion, this controller is a great step in the right direction for PlayStation. Yes, I said step. We are not at the goalposts just yet. There are still some flaws in the practical application of the controller – not being able to press the start button to initiate a game is a pretty big whoopsie on Sony’s part – but there is more to empowering gamers than just that.
For starters, to successfully play any of the games mentioned in this article you would need to acquire two of these controllers, one for each half of a regular DualSense. This doubles the cost of what is already an expensive kit. Why does it need to be more expensive to buy one Access controller, which is half of a regular controller, than to buy a single DualSense? I could always guess as to why, but regardless of the reasons this price point puts disabled gamers on a back foot.
Beyond this, I believe that the PlayStation Access controller should become a standard choice when purchasing a new console. Insane, I know, but imagine this: you walk/wheel into your local store to buy a brand-new PlayStation 5 and the salesman asks you which controller you’d like as part of your pack, a DualSense or two Access controllers. Revolutionary.
One more point I want to get across. I can not stress enough that this review is based on my personal experience of a controller that is designed to cater to a vast sea of needs. While I’ve outlined the PlayStation Access’ usefulness for someone with arthritis, I can not vouch for its benefits for other disabilities.
I will leave you with parting words from the late Judith Huemann, an American disability rights activist: “Part of the problem is that we tend to think that equality is about treating everyone the same, when it’s not. It’s about fairness. It’s about equity of access.” (Emphasis added).
For more information, check out the official PlayStation Access controller website here.
Quest Daily was given early access to the PlayStation Access controller by PlayStation Australia for the purpose of this review.
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