Talismoon has a long way to go if they are trying to establish themselves as a competitor in the gaming accessory marketplace.

Let's face it. The Xbox 360's design is about style. Love it or hate it, the unique form factor and cool details stand out in ANY entertainment center. That said, there is definitely an appeal to customizing ones hardware to make it a little more unique. Enter Talismoon's Evolve XBOX 360 controller face plate. With two faux fur (cow and leopard) patterns and multiple colors, the Evolve (in theory) allows you to add a little originality to your 360 controller. The question being: is it really worth the trouble?

Appearance

Since appearance is the primary purpose of the Evolve faceplate, one would think that Talismoon would have put a fair amount of effort into providing a very attractive product. Oddly, when installed I found that the faceplates made the 360 hardware look decidedly cheaper. With the "Jungle Edition" faux fur products, the actual "fur" was poorly fitted to the face, allowing the unattractive plastic substructure to show around the edges, and causing the buttons on the controller to look off-center of the holes cut in the face plate.

The coloration of the "fur" was equally disappointing, with the non-white sections looking faded and uneven. The chrome style plate fared significantly better. While the fit was not as precise as the first-party faceplate, there was no real problems with alignment. Once the god awful installation process was completed (more on this later) the finished product looked reasonably nice, although as with any metallic finish, picked up fingerprints quite easily. Something else to consider is the fact that you are only replacing the face plate, meaning that the bottom half of the controller remains the original white color, so you end up with a two tone peripheral in the end.