Welcome to Gear-ing Up For Gaming, providing you with tips for essential gear that you could use for your epic gaming sessions. From headphones to controllers to special peripherals, these will help you get the most out of what you play, whether it's a casual round of Tetris or a hardcore get-together of Titanfall. This week, we kick off this column with a look at the modded controllers being offered by Evil Controllers.

With game controllers, you're usually stuck ordering the pre-made colors released by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. However, with Evil Controllers, you can take customization a step further.

The company starts out with a typical controller, like the one you would find in stores. These can be any given controllers, including PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360 (with regular or "Evil Controller" D-pad, consisting of buttons in place of the typical design). You can do this at the top of the menu to get started on your customization process. For good measure, pre-designed Wii U, Wii and GameCube controllers are also available.

From there, you'll make a number of decisions on how you want to design to go. With each step, you can see how your modification applies onto the controller, so if you don't like the way something looks, you can change it to something else and see if it suits you better. With Nintendo controllers, you simply choose from the colors that are available.

After choosing your shell, the outer color for the controller itself, you'll move on to side rails, which fit the left and right sides of the rear of the peripheral.

Next up is Mods. With these, you can really customize the performance of your controller, beefing up the rapid fire options or adding a Master Mod that works best with certain games, like Titanfall and Battlefield 4. First-person shooter fans will definitely want to consider this option. Pro Buttons can also be added to the back, with either A/B or X/Y functionality, depending if you want to fire with your rear fingers away from the triggers. This is completely optional.

Thumbstick colors are next, and vary from blue to orange to purple. These are cosmetic changes at best, as the control sticks still perform exactly the same. The real treat, however, are the face buttons. You can change these to solid colors, chrome and, on some models, even bullets, to represent your hardcore first-person shooting style. D-pads have similar colors as well, and, again, with the 360 build, you can opt for buttons in place of the usual D-pad set-up. The other controllers, however, use typical D-pads.

Finally, with some controllers, there are options, like having a different LED color on the Xbox One controller. We went with red, as that fits into the build of the controller itself, although you're free to pick from a number of options.

Overall, a well-modded controller can run you anywhere from $90 to $150, depending on what all you put into it. While that may be questionable for getting "just a controller," realize that Evil Controllers puts a lot of work into each one it builds, and it comes with a full guarantee should something feel off to you. It's not a one-and-done deal, the team actually delivers on a peak performance.

Considering most folks look for a truly remarkable controller to go along with their experience, the Evil Controllers units come highly recommended, no matter what console you own.

You can check out Evil Controller's custom made offerings (as well as its make-your-own-controller options) at the official website, and to make your own controller, click the "Custom Controllers" link.