Oh Razer, your sexy mice have received such high acclaim by the general public, especially from gamers. Sure, you may cost a bit extra, but that’s the price for elegance, style, and beauty all in a single package. When I looked for a keyboard to replace the shitty one Microsoft shit into my hands, your beautiful Razer Lycosa caught the gleam in my eye and pulled me in like a free case of mountain dew. I couldn’t resist, the $70 was nothing to me as previous experience and box marketing told me I was getting one of the top products on the market. You were sleek, you were back-lit, you were shiny, and you promised to behave, and I made you mine. You promised you would respond fast, you promised me a convenient touchpad so I could manipulate my media player from in game, you knew what I wanted and promised to deliver.

I brought you home and unpacked you with care; you were my new baby, I wasn’t going to harm you, not even on accident. I pulled you out and saw your reflection in my eye from my reflection off of you. You were well polished, sexy, lightweight, everything I’ve always wanted. I eagerly took you immediately to 3rd base and put your sexy male USB connectors into my PC’s female connectors. We were a perfect fit together, both of us knew that. Sure, my greasy fingers left obvious smudges on your glossy finish, but looks aren’t everything in a relationship, especially our relationship.

But not was all it was meant to be. You just couldn’t let me have it all, could you? Sure, installing a driver to control the lighting is no big deal, but why must you hurt me and make me choose between media player freedom and backlighting control? Perhaps I’d like to use Zune media player while still having the WASD cluster lighting active. Or perhaps I’d like to use foobar with the backlighting turned off. You also forced me into your little box, by bugging when I didn’t have the driver installed. You’d change your lighting and not go back, with my only resort being to installing the driver (you wouldn’t even respond to reboots!).

Then you started failing to deliver on your promises. Your touchpad media keys became unresponsive, leaving me with only my custom hotkeys left. Then your keys began to bug while I was playing my favorite FPS’, leaving me unable to walk left, right, or STOP walking left or right. When I have you coming in through the back, it’s no fun having to plug you back in, mid-action. You also failed on your cluster promise. You forced me to use Shift for brake in racing games, because you couldn’t handle Up, Left, and Down like you said you could. Why did you lie to me, Lycosa? Why did you take our relationship and crash it into the ground?

Oh Razer, I don’t know how much I can trust you anymore. I gave you a chance, and you took advantage of me. How can you prove to me that it’s worth my while to forgive you?

To put it blunt, I give this keyboard a 2/5. Sure, it’s functional, but not completely, and for the $70 price tag that’s way to much to ask for. You’d be better off finding a different keyboard.

Okay, so a little backstory: I got myself a shiny new pc (it’s quite fabulous, really), but for the time being had to suffice with a crappy wireless Microsoft mouse and keyboard (which we all know are terrible for gaming). So of course I was gonna play the most beast games I could find to stress test the mofo. So, of course, with Burnout Paradise being both sexy and one of my favorite games EVER, I just had to try it.

While I did find my pc quite sufficient for handling the game on the highest settings, I found the keyboard quite unacceptable. Why?

1. Couldn’t change music in-game since Microsoft neglected to add next/previous buttons to their MEDIA keyboard
2. The connection for it sucked, causing some inputs to either go undetected, or simply act as a stuck key since the kill signal wouldn’t go through (which is more annoying than you think. Ever get stuck going left at top speed in Burnout? It’s not a pretty sight).

So, I had absolutely no choice but to go to best buy and pick up a Razer Lycosa for $79 (I might have died otherwise). Unfortunately that means I missed a payment to my friend for my PC (oops! forgive me Travis). It was nice, sleek, and look perfectly geared toward what I wanted to do: play games and control my playlist at the SAME TIME (let that be a lesson, Microsoft!)

Sexy beast is sexy!

So I immediately hooked the bad boy up and installed the drivers. Great! Now what? Oh right, try out configuring the keyboard (maybe play around with the WASD lighting for shits and giigles). Lets take a look; uh-oh. The software only allows you to configure the media keys for four media players: WMP, iTunes, Real Player, and Winamp. It’s all good though, I suppose, the only other media player I use is Zune, and only for syncing my music to…well, my zune.

Alright, lets play some games. Great, this keyboard is nice and responsive! I could get used to this! Let’s go to the next song now *pushes “button”*….

AHEM, I said next song *pushes “button” again*…

YOU FUCKER, NEXT SONG *practically smashes the “button”*

*Media player changes song*. About time you asshole. Hopefully this shit is temporary and I only need to break the keyboard in a bit or something.

*3 hours later* Ugh, I need a break from trying to break in this keyboard. Time to put my music on hold. *Presses the pause “button”*

*Media player goes back to the beginning of the song*. The fuck? This is the play/pause button, not the restart song button! *mashes the “button” some more*

*Song restarts some more before finally stopping*. The fuck was that all about? You know what, I’ve had it with this shit, lets see what happens when I uninstall the software.

So, I uninstall the little shit and guess what? My media keys start functioning normally, and now I’m allowed to use them with whatever media player I want! What the fuck Razer? Why would you cripple your own keyboard to function INCORRECTLY with media players? Why not leave the media shit *UNTOUCHED*? Wouldn’t that make more sense?

So, to all those who plan on getting a Lycosa and don’t have a big need to control their keyboard lighting or macro/profile ability, do NOT install their shit drivers.