Usually when I'm offered a product for review I'm cautiously enthusiastic. When Patriot offered up its Viper V570 Blackout Edition mouse (and accompanying RGB LED-festooned mousepad) to review, I was considerably more interested than usual. I hadn't seen the Blackout Edition before, but I was already familiar with the Viper V570 from scouring the depths of Amazon listings.

The taxonomy of gaming mice was more or less established by Razer and Corsair. Razer decided that gamers playing massively-multiplayer online games want lots and lots of buttons, and advertised its Naga mouse as an MMO gaming mouse. Otherwise, gaming mice were generally targeted at FPS players. It wasn't until Corsair came along with its M65 sporting a "sniper button" that we had our first mouse targeted specifically at FPS gamers. Holding down said button temporarily reduces the mouse's DPI and thus sensitivity, improving accuracy in fine motions.