Valve Steam Controller Review — Master of None

[Marshall Honorof]

While the Steam Controller can adequately replace a traditional game pad, a mouse and a keyboard all at the same time, it doesn't fill any of those devices' functions particularly well.

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[guy15s]

You should probably try an actual steam game with the controller if you're going to test how responsive it is. I play Witcher 3 with the controller and I experience issues where my control scheme won't recognize diagonal inputs on the stick, something that it has no problem doing on Steam games. It could just be that your settings were not quite right and you probably would've benefited by playing an actual steam game with community profiles that have been fine-tuned for the game. I agree that there is a bit of a learning curve with the controller, but after about 5-10 minutes, I still found it multitudes easier to work with than the XBox controller, especially given how seamless the experience can be since you can actually easily use the controller in almost any interface, including desktop.

I am definitely looking forward to the non-steam game improvements, though, and they could definitely afford to focus on making control settings more accessible and ironing out some of the bugs the controller has with certain games. I still think it is a shame, though, that you chose to focus on non-steam games and critiquing controller responsiveness on controller configurations you built in a day. The steam controller is definitely very particular and finicky right now, but it seems you took the least optimal path for the controller to have a chance to shine.

 

[guy15s]

It's a shame you didn't try any actual steam games. I currently play Witcher 3 outside of Steam and it has a lot of control issues that don't come up on Steam games. The lack of responsiveness and everything might have just been due to you using a DIY controller configuration you built with a day of testing on a non-steam game. The controller still has some kinks to work out, but I'm a fair bit disappointed that you didn't at least try a Steam game with a community profile that has been ironed out so you could actually judge the controller's performance, and not the steam configuration settings and the controller's ability to cooperate with non-steam games (which both admittedly need work.) Also, this is just anecdotal and I do agree that there is a bit of a learning curve, but I found the learning curve to get more comfortable with the Steam Controller over the XBox controller extremely short, if not instantaneous. It's really not all that out of place, and the haptic touch pad, while different, fits much better with UI made for PC's and I can't see how you wouldn't see an instant improvement from that over trying to perform mouse actions with an analog stick. The learning curve away from KB&M, though, has definitely been difficult in some respects, though. Mostly only when I'm playing non-steam games on shoddily-made custom profiles, though. 😛