Steam controller, thoughts?

[TheObscureGamer]

 

Brought a Steam controller on Tuesday for $18(had those $50 off Gamestop coupons and was the only reason I got it), which is the day it came out. Comfortable but the plastic is not as good as what's on the PS4, the face buttons are small(almost twice as small as the Xbox One's). No headphone jack or rechargeable battery pack. The analog stick, while not as nice as the one on the Xbox one's controller, but it's not bad at all.Some non Steam games are not working properly with the controller. For instance with Need for speed Most Wanted(the 2006 one), even when you go into the options to change the controls, some of the controls do not do anything. Some are able to be change while some don't do anything, as if you're not even pressing a button. Age of empires 3 works well. Don't have any modern games at the moment so I can't say how those work but for games that are in steam, you just press the home button and you can quickly change the controls effortlessly.Another cool thing is that you can download control configurations that other people have made that fits the game the best. The back triggers are a nice addition and I think this should have been done before A minor nitpick for me is that the front of the controller has some glossy matte on it so it gets fingerprints easily and scratches would get on there(I'm assuming) pretty easily so not a huge fan of that but overall it's a solid controller and I'd recommend it. SO who else has one or may be thinking of getting one?

[leods]

I won't get it, because if I am palying a game that benefits from muse and Keyboard I Play with mouse and Keyboard. But I've seen a bunch of Reviews, and seems like the experience with this is actually good. That's nice to hear.

 

Maybe down the line if this get widespread native Support I'll get one.

[goldenegg]

Since I pre-ordered, I got mine a month ago.

 

Generally, it's fairly disappointing. I was hoping the right touchpad would provide higher precision than a thumbstick, but that isn't the case. I'm hoping that it can be improved with software updates (there have been several already), but I'm not sure how much is simply due to the hardware.

 

The mapping issues you mention are due to the controller acting as a keyboard + mouse, rather than a controller. If the game is expecting a gamepad, it will not see any input.

[MrMaddog]

Was thinking of getting one along with the Steam Link for FPS an other mouse based games, but I'll end up using an X1 gamepad for console ports and emulators...

[omegadot]

I picked up a Link + Controller bundle on the Steam sale this week. I've put about 5 hours on it so far and I can't say I like the controller that much. It's a bit squished to make room for the big pad things up top and otherwise it's just OK. The right touch pad is useful sometimes (I enjoyed playing Civ 5 on it) but I much prefer the Xbox One controller for the majority of use.

 

The link itself I like quite a bit. I had some initial problems with updating the controller over blue tooth (they didn't include a USB cable) and getting the host to connect but once I configured my laptop to stay awake when shut they mostly went away. I think I had some issues with something stealing focus at first as well. Sometimes the Steam Controller input would just stop working. If I mashed all the buttons it would alt tab eventually. It was weird and frustrating but it seems to be solved.

 

I've mostly put time into Ultimate Chicken Horse and Rocket League. I played a few rounds of CoD: Ghosts but the Steam Controller was a pain to use. It was basically what I'd expect if I played with the laptop touch pad. I was may more accurate switching to the Xbox controller. The streaming performance was quite good, however. I did not think I would enjoy the streaming experience very much at all but I'm pretty happy with it.

[StopDrop&Retro]

I'd like to try one out. Because I haven't, that's why I won't buy one. With something like this when you have a new take on an old device and customers need to 'feel the difference' they really should have set up demo kiosks in places like Best Buy.

[omegadot]

I'd like to try one out. Because I haven't, that's why I won't buy one. With something like this when you have a new take on an old device and customers need to 'feel the difference' they really should have set up demo kiosks in places like Best Buy.

 

Agreed. And even then some games play well and some are rubbish due to the PC ecosystem never really being aligned behind a controller or control scheme. This thing sort of straddles the line in being useful for PC or Console style games and it sorta gets it right. For what it's worth at this point I'd spend no more than the sale price for the two items together. I know a few with steam links but almost none with the controller. All the opinions seem to be "It's alright"

[Punisher5.0]

I just use a PS4 controller. Of course the only down side to PC gaming though is how iffy games are with pads. If the steam controller worked with everything then I'd try it but I doubt it very much considering even the xbone controller can't do that.