Driver

The driver for the Isku+ Force FX and other recent Roccat peripherals is aptly named Roccat Swarm, and the latest version, 1.9202 at the time of the review, can be downloaded here. The installer is 119 MB in size and the installed driver takes up 225 MB on your hard drive. System utilization is minimal, so there is nothing to worry about on that end.


Once installed and opened up with the keyboard connected, Roccat Swarm will recognize that a compatible device has been connected, which will, however, have it prompt for an update with a "module" for it. Oh boy, here we go again. This is where my issues with the driver took place with the Suora FX, so it is now time to find out if things have since improved.

Color me pleasantly surprised! The driver update went without a hitch, and in turn, I then got a prompt to update the keyboard's firmware as well. The application window briefly closed during the update and appeared elsewhere, so excuse the part in the video where I had to manually drag it back into the frame. Regardless, following a successful firmware update, I was finally prompted to remove the USB connection and re-insert the cable to finish the process.


Now I was able to fully access Swarm, which included the Isku+ Force FX module aspect. I am still not sold over Roccat's implementation to have a driver with add-on modules that need to be separately installed per device. It does on one hand allow for a leaner setup, but having a 200+ MB install size with other supporting applications, including AlienFX support as well as the Swarm mobile app suite, goes against this. Similarly, this prevents a plug-and-use experience, and I dare say a lot of end users would not be too thrilled about the additional effort they'd have to put into it all.

Regardless, there is a pinned settings menu already, and you are free to unpin the existing ones or pin some more across the other menu pages. Given there are a total of four menu pages otherwise, I ended up just leaving everything unpinned after my first look. This first video above also goes through the global settings options available in the driver. The second video, aside from going through the by default pinned settings on character repeat, also demonstrates the profile manager which is very useful in conjunction with the various hardware keys that can be assigned to switch profiles (as has been done already out of the box with the Thumbster keys). The keyboard relies on software profiles here, and so note that you need to have Swarm installed and running for these to work. A profile would thus be a collection of the rest of the menu options customized around a specific application or game. Next to this is the macro manager that works as expected with delay options available as well. These macros can be saved and then assigned to specific keys, and the dedicated macro key column is perfect for this.

The general features menu has the character repeat options we already saw pinned, and along with it comes the option to add a virtual sound to each keystroke. You can take a look at some of these in action here. Personally, this is not my cup of tea, but I will never say no to having options. You can also quickly set up LED feedback as per your system's activity, which can, for instance, have the keyboard not light up when the computer is in sleep mode. Finally, there is the all-important option to reset the keyboard to its default state.

The next menu is all about key assignment, and we have the option to go with a virtual keyboard or list. You can pick from among the vast majority of keys, especially those associated with a membrane switch, and quickly preview its default assignment. If this is not to your liking, you can re-assign the key based on a set of options at the left, including some application-, game-, and even OS-specific options. You can drag and drop them to the two assignment slots available. This second slot is the result of Roccat's Easy-Shift[+] wherein a key can be assigned to toggle (or activate when held) a second set of options for other keys. If you have a compatible mouse, you can use a mouse button for this also as this will work for the keyboard as well (and vice versa). This opens up a huge number of possible custom keys and assignments here, especially in conjunction with the software profiles.

The penultimate menu page is for key illuminations, and a quick glance reveals that there is no per-key lighting here. This is in line with what we saw on the previous page, wherein backlighting takes place through a single sheet of LEDs present under each switch. So the options we have available here are drastically lower, and it ends up being a selection of some presets only as seen on the left. From top to bottom, we have fully lit (static), blinking, breathing, heartbeat, live heatmap, and impulse. You can set all 16.8 M RGB color options via the color wheel, manually enter the R/G/B channel entries, which range from 0 to 255 each, or choose to have all lights be used simultaneously, wherein the colors transition from one to another in a cycle. There is a live preview option for a way to quickly visualize the effect before applying it. There are also sub-options for brightness, speed, etc., where valid.

The last, and arguably most important menu pertains to the Force FX settings. As we saw before, the Isku+ Force FX has a cluster of six-keys that make up the pressure-sensitive zone. These six keys can be configured such that the pressure applied post bottoming-out acts as an analog control range, and there are even discrete steps to allow multiple actions to take place depending on how much force is applied. To begin with, you have to assign a key to toggle the Force FX settings on/off, and there, you can choose from a list of available buttons (Caps Lock, macro key column, Thumbster keys) which are otherwise non-critical to the operation of a 104-key layout. You have the option to toggle or even hold to activate as per your preference.

With that done, go ahead and calibrate the keys, followed by setting up specific settings if you find yourself with a light or heavy touch more often than not. Finally, go ahead and browse through the available preset options to get an idea of how to go about things here. You will that notice Roccat has set up some game profiles with analog controller options, wherein you have two triggers, a D-pad, and four-button layout, including some FPS games wherein Roccat has the Force settings set up to correspond to two or more different actions based on how much force is applied (which is influenced by the calibration and set up as well). You can also customize your own layout, but note that there are only six keys available, and so it can be very awkward to use in games that ask for an entire controller worth of buttons or have some actions that work well, say, on foot but not in a vehicle.

Roccat still has a ways to go before Swarm can be considered user friendly even for beginners, but the more stable experience this time around definitely helped improve my opinion of it. There remain a few things that are amateurish, however, such as not having an actual tooltip where appropriate, as there are instead placeholders that read "comment" or even "commend". Since this does not detract from the functionality of the driver, I will be lenient here, but you can do better than this, Roccat!