Post #2438910

I've been fiddling with the Steam controller for a few days now and it's really good, I really don't think any reviews really do it justice, skipping over advanced features and just going "oh I don't like the gyro or touchpads" when they've not really delved into anything apart from defaults for an hour and then figured that was good enough to post a review. So, I'll do my best :P Something I noticed a lot of reviewers said is that they figured it felt cheap, though I'm not really sure how. It has a reassuring heft without being too heavy, and the plastic feels fine. It's plastic, and feels like plastic, such is plastic, I dunno what controllers they're comparing it to or maybe I have low standards. All the standard controls feel great, I played some 2D games like Pizza Tower and it felt just as good as my dualsense for such purposes, didn't feel like I was compromising dpad/face buttons or anything for the additional extra features. The analogue sticks also feel great, they're among the best I've experienced, similar to if not better than my dualsense with aftermarket TMR sticks. However, the extra controls are what drew me into this controller, and where my main interest lies that most reviews just gloss over lol. Maybe the most tame of these are the back buttons, that "pro" or "elite" controllers from Sony and Microsoft make you pay hundreds for, and that can be of limited use on PC, or some third party controllers. They are very handy for getting inputs off the face buttons so you can look with the stick or trackpad while inputting actions, or just having more inputs, such as using them as modifier keys to activate different "layers" if you're playing a game that has a zillion inputs. For myself, I used them mostly to get actions away from the face buttons and used one as a gyro aiming pause button. Gryo aiming has been incredibly exciting for me. While I've played around with gryo aiming on my dualsense (I missed the boat on my OG steam controller, when I got it not many people seemed to be talking about it), it has been a lot more comfortable on the Steam controller, with the shear number of ways to configure it. Right now I have it on all the time, and paused when I hold one of the back buttons. I have noticed some lacking in the configs though. I noticed I can't set up any complicated conditions for gyro to activate/deactivate. (I can't, say, set the grip capacitive sensors to turn it on but have that overridden by a button, so that the gyro doesn't go nuts when I let go of the controller to type in chat or something) but it's a minor complaint for me. Others may find such settings critical. The touch pads have been very nice too, I think I preferred the old round ones but these are very responsive and usable. I have been setting sensitivity so that a swipe from left-to-right on the pad results in a 180deg turn in game, which has felt nice for major flicks and using a gyro sensitivity of 4.5 (4.5 in game rotations for every 1 IRL rotation) and it's been working very well. The trackpad is maybe a little far down, so I think the back buttons to keep common inputs away from the face buttons is a great idea. Something I only briefly tried, but am excited about, are the on-screen menus the trackpads can do, and can even normally act as camera but show a menu when another button is pressed, or even if you just press on the pad a little harder. If you have a very hotkey heavy game you can still play it with enough effort. I've run out of characters now, if people actually read this I may write more :P