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The four year mark of a console generation is an important milestone. It’s generally a halfway point, where the first few years of hype settles into routine. That presents a challenge for third-party accessory manufacturers who always need to find new ways to spice up products like headsets and controllers for players who have accumulated plenty of good add-ons over the years. How many more ways can you make the same product feel fresh?
That’s the challenge Scuf faces with its latest Xbox controller, the Valor Pro. The new wired gamepad brings some premium features to Xbox Series X/S and PC players, though nothing that’s exactly new. There are no shortage of ways to get back paddles, adjustable triggers, onboard sound mixing, replaceable parts, and hall effect joysticks on a controller in 2025. The Valor Pro collects all of those disparate staples into one $100 purchase, but it’s a tougher sell now than it would have been in a less crowded market three years ago.
There are a lot of features packed into the Scuf Valor Pro, but it’s your standard Xbox controller at its core. It comes complete with an X-shaped home button and a familiar ABXY layout. Every button is where you’d expect it to be and the build quality feels high enough, though I can see where its face buttons could get a little sticky over time. The only major improvement over the standard Xbox Series X controller is that it includes hall effect joysticks, which theoretically should make them more durable. Any premium controller would feel incomplete without them in 2025, so I’m glad that the Valor Pro delivers out the gate.
There’s less room for error right now than there was a few years ago now that the competition is stiffer.
As for the other side, the Valor Pro packs in four back buttons. There are paddles on either side that bleed into the grips and two small buttons between them that are shaped like crystals. The layout here is functional though a bit strange. The back paddles take a bit of force to press down, while the central buttons click down with ease. They’re so sensitive, in fact, that players have the ability to remove them altogether and slot flat stoppers in their place. I adapted to the feel after a while, but they do pale a bit next to some more creative competitors.
The back button layout has a slight impact on comfort, too. To hold it and access those buttons, I find that I need to raise my grip a bit, letting my palms hover over the grips rather than laying perfectly flush against them. It doesn’t feel quite as natural in my hands as a standard Xbox gamepad.
Similarly awkward is its volume control method. With the Valor Pro, players can independently adjust their game and chat volume using two wheels nestled onto a ridge between the grips. Both wheels can be reached easily enough with my thumbs and pressed into mute either channel on the fly. The wheels are a bit stiff, though, and inset fairly far back into the controller’s frame. It takes a few flicks to fully spin them, as I’ll end up accidentally muting channels if I press my thumbs in too hard so I can get a firm rotation in.
None of these quirks are enough to make the Valor Pro feel cheap. It still feels like a solid gamepad that’s still fairly comfortable once you find the best way to hold it. It’s just representative of a running theme with the Valor Pro: There’s less room for error right now than there was a few years ago now that the competition is stiffer.
Where the Valor Pro looks to stand out is in its customization potential, an area where Scuf thankfully excels. There are several parts that can be easily removed and replaced here thanks to magnetic parts. That starts with the translucent faceplate, which can be snapped off with little effort and just as easily popped back on. Even if you only loosely fit it where it needs to be, it will firmly snap into place and stay there.
The parts underneath the faceplates can be removed too. Both joysticks can be plucked off with ease, as can the D-pad (though it takes a little trial and error to figure out the best way to get a grip on it). The only design quirk is that it can be a bit tricky to slot the joysticks back on, as there’s a fairly thin slot in the cap that the module needs to be slotted into. The back buttons have that problem in reverse, as they can be awkward to pry off (by way of a thin fingernail groove), but they slot back in with ease. Even with some inconsistency across the board, there’s some great design ingenuity here for folks who love to tinker with parts.
What’s more disappointing is how little actually comes with the package considering its price tag. For $100, you only get two extra joysticks and a pair of back button stoppers. You’ll have to pay extra if you want different sticks or D-pads. It also only comes with one fairly drab faceplate and additional ones will cost you $30. Usually a premium package like this comes with a few extra parts — just look at the excellent Victrix Pro BFG. The Valor Pro feels a bit stingy by comparison, though I imagine that any more extras would have made for a pricey package judging by Scuf’s other controllers.
In terms of actual input customization, the Valor Pro does pack in some nice extras. First, there are its triggers, each of which can be changed to a quick tap via two easy-to-reach levers on the back. When I lock one in place, it essentially turns that trigger into a short button press that clicks like a mouse. I did notice some awkward behavior with the triggers during my testing, though. While playing Avowed, I found that left trigger holds weren’t always registering. Every once and a while, I’d need to press it down again to access my grimoire’s spell menu. I worry about the long term durability here if that’s already happening in a few weeks.
As for the back buttons, each one can be remapped to your liking. There’s also a profile button between them, which holds some basic layout presets (ABXY, D-pad, etc). That’s a handy feature, though it can be a little awkward to use on the fly. When I switch profiles, I momentarily lose button functionality until I make a selection. All that means is that this is the kind of controller you’ll need to set to your liking before you start rather than trying to make quick tweaks during gameplay.
When I list out the features, it sounds like the Valor Pro is loaded enough to justify its price tag. The reality, though, is that it’s mostly doing what its competitors are doing with an extra part upsell on top. That already makes it a tough proposition, but that gets a bit harder thanks to some of its limited functionality. For one, it’s exclusively a wired controller — an immediate sticking point considering the cost. Naturally, you’re paying for the customization here, but I’ve rarely ever seen a wired controller this generation cost more than $80. Its closest parallel is the PowerA Fusion Pro 2, which throws in an extra faceplate, a carrying case, and a third trigger lock position for a similar price tag.
The Valor Pro is a better value that it seems.
I’ve had some issues with device compatibility in my testing, too. The Valor Pro works with Xbox Series X/S and Windows 10/11 via a USB connection, though I found that some PC games weren’t correctly recognizing it when plugging it in. I also tried connecting it to my Razer Handheld Dock Chroma via USB to play with a docked Steam Deck to no avail. It works most reliably as a wired Xbox controller, though I did run into one instance where I had to disconnect it and plug it back in to get my device to register it.
As feature rich as the Valor Pro is, these little caveats do add up. It’s fairly solid as an all-in-one controller that pulls every trendy third-party feature from the last four years into one place, but plenty of other gamepads do what it does better. Want a modular controller that you can tinker with? Get the Victrix BFG Pro. Want a gamepad with onboard sound mixing? The Turtle Beach Recon does way more for $60. And of course, the Xbox Elite Series 2 is still the one premium controller to rule them all, even if it costs a pretty penny.
The Valor Pro is a better value that it seems, though; I’d argue that you’re getting the features of a $180 controller here even with the tradeoff of its wired connection. Heck, it’s a steal compared to the the $200+ Instinct Pro. Scuf knows how to load a controller up with bells and whistles that feel so naturally implemented that they might not even register as extras at first. It’s fairly cost effective as a premium option, but that’s largely because it doesn’t come with much in the way of additional parts. You’ll need to shell out for those, potentially bringing your total price back in line with the best Xbox controllers.
All of this makes for a complicated recommendation. If you simply want a controller that feels premium enough out of the box and don’t mind playing wired, the Valor Pro is a fairly good option even with its quirks. Beyond that, it’s outclassed by other competitors that either implement similar features better or include more in the box for a reasonable amount extra. A Scuf controller is a commitment, as you’re investing in one go-to gamepad that you can tweak over time with parts. Whether or not it makes sense to start that process four years into the Xbox Series X’s life is up to you.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.