My Steam Controller Review

[Rallywagon]

Good day everyone, Rally here and I am going to do a little device review for you all. This past October I happened to pick up the Steam Controller on preorder. I got the controller to replace the DS3 with motionjoy that I was using. It worked but the controller is old and getting a bit worn out, and to be honest, I'm ready for something new. The main uses for the control will be driving and flying in GTA V, playing rocket league, top down city sims, arcade style racers and flight games that don't particularly work well with my sim rig and various other random games that play better on a controller.
As part of the preorder I recieved got Rocket League and Portal 2. Steam said that they would be shipping the next round of devices December 1st, but it appears they got them built faster than anticipated and I received mine today. Lets see what it looks like!

Spoiler: The Boxing

Spoiler: The controller

Impressions out of the box: To begin with, I love the box, but hate the fact that the shipped the thing in a bag. I would have loved to have had a pristine box to reuse for a RPi or Ardiuno project. Like the rest of the product, the box is actually sturdy and well made, for cardboard that is. That said, even through the bumps received throughout shipping, nothing made its way past and the controller arrived safe and sound. The controller itself feels very good in the hands. It actually feels better built than a ps3 controller, and has a very satisfying weight to it. It doesn't feel like cheap plastics. The lobes off to the lower left and lower right arch up, as opposed to down as you would typically find on a console controller, which helps to keep your thumbs aligned with the touch pads and stay comfortable during extended sessions.
The controller has two touch pads that operate like sophisticated versions you find on a laptop, along with an analog stick, four buttons similar to an Xbox controller, even following the color and letter scheme. There are another six buttons, two on each shoulder as per the norm, and two on each side of the bottom. Finally, there are five clicks for each pad; up, down, left, right and center (at this time, I am uncertain if the right pad has five or only the center click, will check and update this later). Oh, don't want to forget the select, start and center "power" button. Needless to say, this controller has quite a but of room for custom configurations!

Initial game play impressions: So, in order to properly utilize this device, you must have Steam downloaded and running in big picture mode (BPM). I am hoping that in the future this will change, but at the moment, it is what it is. I personally play most of my games off Steam anyway, so it doesn't bother me much, though I dont much care for the look of BPM and usually don't use it. Guess that's changing. Now, within the controller configuration option found in BPM, there are a SLEW of options and things to configure.
The two games I tested this on was GTA V, of which I played for about a half hour before the game crashed on me. The second game I used for the initial test was Rocket League. I've had this for about three weeks waiting for the controller to show up. Today was my first time playing, and what a game it is!
Now, I want to give this a great review here with GTA V, but at the moment, no dice. I must say, with how configurable the controller is, this thing will likely need to have some time spent perfecting the setting and getting it optimized to each game I play, and to be fair, I am not exactly expecting this to replace the ol keyboard and mouse for FPS and GTA style 3rd person games.
Now, for driving in GTA V and Rocket League, this performed great!

My thoughts for now: At this point, I am not going to give this controller a rating, as I have yet to really play anything that utilized the main components of the controller, the track pads, however, I will be playing some banished, Endless Sky and a few other games to get a real feel for how this all works together. Expect a more in-depth review to come in the next week or so after I have had time to really get this set up and have had the time to play with the gobs of options. I'll also add a more thorough review of the configuration menu and options contained within as I learn more about what said functions do. I do have to say, at $50 bucks, if you are considering a controller, this one just might be the one. With just the analog stick and plethora of buttons its a not a shabby deal. Add in the possibilities to be had with the touchpads and it just might be great!

 

[Rallywagon]

Day two update: I am starting to get used to the quirks of setting up the controller. This portion, Steam has a long way to go. Currently the most successful way I have found to get any setting made to the controller to work is to go into Big Picture Mode (BPM) on steam, change the settings on the controller, then back out of BPM, launch a game and change what settings I can from the in game menu. Currently, to my experience there is not reliable way to change the setting through steam while a game is running. Indeed, I found some games, such as GTA V and WarThunder (WT) played nicer with the controller once I launched them without BPM running. I am sure that as the controller progresses things like this will be addressed.
That is to speak of games that do not launch from steam. The two experiences with that so far was with Portal 2, which was to be honest, about what you would expect of a controller in a FPS, and Endless Sky, a top down space sim. Portal 2 was also the trickiest of them all to configure, as every change required a restart of the game, twice if you forget to start BGM back up before launching the game and you wish to configure something else on the controller. Luckily that isn't much.
That was about it for the negative. The controller itself is very nice indeed. With just a little more calibration, I think this will actually have an edge over a mouse piloting planes in WT. Using the right pad to emulate a trackball style mouse worked really well for me. at this point in time I am not having much success with getting the left pad or joystick to do much. I have made the left track pad a d-pad and assigned my throttle there, perhaps after more experimenting I am hoping I can get the joystick working as, well, a joy stick. However, even as is I definitely liked it overall better than a keyboard and mouse.
For Portal 2 and GTA V it worked just about the way I expected. I won't likely be using it for anything other than vehicle control on a FPS or third person style game. The mice still reign supreme here. And unfortunately I was not able to
At some point I will be picking up Diablo 3, or a similar game to give a try, and I still need to download and try Banished to see how, or if it will work with those. One game I tried briefly and had no luck with was Endless Sky. It didn't seem to register any of the button presses. It may be there is no controller support yet in that game though, so it may not work at all, or may need a different setup entirely. I'll come back to that one.
The next time I get this bad lad out, I am going to give tank battles a try in WT and World of WarShips, then I'll settle in on a couple of games to play over the long haul.
Thanks for taking the time to read my review so far
Next update around I'll get more into the technical side, such as the setting themselves, how the pads function, and the neat tactile "haptic" feed back of the control. I'll also update on how well the controller did with tanks, I was surprised by the planes, so who knows...

 

[Lain]

Looks nice, but I can't believe modern controllers are still using non-rechargeable batteries.

 

[Rallywagon]

I am too, but, once these two have gone flat, they will be replaced with a set of rechargeable AA's.

 

[Rallywagon]

Ok, going in for round two of testing. this time around I think I'll try Portal 2 and WarThunder.

 

[Rallywagon]

Ok second update is up.

 

[Coxis]

Nice read, thanks. I'm considering this as well, if only for the novelty of it. I don't picture myself playing any of my PC games on the couch, however the touch pad thing is so appealing.

I got one question for you. This is how I grip my PS3 controllers. I like having my index fingers rest lightly on L1 and R1 and my middle fingers hovering over the L2 and R2 triggers at all times; I find this improves response time / accuracy. I really like the prospect of having those paddle buttons on the underside of the handles, I'm just wondering how feasible / comfortable it would be to press them effectively with only your ring fingers. What's your experience?

EDIT: Okay, I guess I have two questions. Have you tried connecting it to your PS3? I once tried connecting a really old, W98 era joystick to it and it "worked". All the buttons and axes were scrambled all over the place, but it worked. Wonder if that's the case for this controller as well?

 

[Rallywagon]

I have not tried connecting it to the PS3. There is the ability put a usb cord to the top and it is USB native I believe. I'll give it a test and see if it works, but, TBH I wouldn't count on it. As for the first question, It works great that way, as that is also how I play. I had an accident a few years back that took a good portion of my left index finger, and hitting the L2 trigger with it is now awkward and uncomfortable. With the way the controller contours, almost like an upside down PS4 controller, it really sits well into your hands and even with the index and middle fingers up, the bottom paddles are very easy to depress as all of the ring and most of the pinky are actually on the paddles.
As more and more support for the controller grows, this controller will quickly move out of the "novelty" realm I am thinking. it's not going to replace a keyboard for an FPS, but it has some great potential in other realms of gaming for sure.

 

[Coxis]

the bottom paddles are very easy to depress as all of the ring and most of the pinky are actually on the paddles.

Right on, this is great to hear. If you have a chance to try it out on your PS3 I'd appreciate that. I'm sure it will work, obviously not to the point of actually being usable, but it will register presses and maybe work on the menus.

 

[Rallywagon]

OK, so, i took up to the kiddos room and gave it a go, no dice. It controlled things in the main GUI, but wouldn't do much in game. I tested it on little big planet, minecraft and dead nation. Only game I got any response was on little big planet, and that just brought up the chat menu and backed out. Maybe with some experimenting something may work, but its not looking promising.

 

[bevo]

I received my controller today. Every thing I have tried there has been a slight delay with the right touchpad. It's been pretty unusable really. I'm also not getting the haptic feedback very often.

If steam is really wanting to try and get console players into pc gaming this controller and how difficult it is to setup isn't going to work. It was a pretty frustrating experience the entire time I used it.

I do really really like the triggered on the back of it though. I would like to see console controllers add them. It's so much better than the bumper buttons on the ds4 and Xbox controllers.

 

[Rallywagon]

Interesting. I've not experienced any lag using the controller. The setup can be tedious though, I do agree there. And you sort of need to change the setup from game to game as well. Being a brand new device, I expect there to be lots of changes, I also believe they are taking user feedback on this, so be sure to get on steams forums and put at issues and recommendations you have there as well.