Thoughts On The Final Steam Controller

A fellow named Devin White has written up a lengthy blog post on his experience using the final iteration of the Steam Controller, and it's well worth a read.

I was most interested in reading about how it worked with FPS games, and I'm pleased to read at least this fellow liked it:

QuoteI played Team Fortress 2, Borderlands 2, Fistful of Frags, and even went old school with Star Wars: Republic Commando.* Here is my main takeaway from these games: technically, I feel like yes, playing with the Steam controller is not as precise as a keyboard and mouse. I know this should be the case.

But it did not feel that way.

Even when playing multiplayer, every death and every kill felt fair. I never thought, “Darn, if only I had a mouse and keyboard.” Sniping, in particular, felt like an improvement. Lining up shots by feeling your way over the target felt more natural than playing with a keyboard, though twitch aiming is undoubtedly not as accurate.

I also agree with his main concerns:

QuoteMy main controller issues were the issues that come when you try to play any PC game with a controller. Finding a control scheme that both has everything you need while also being comfortable and functional was sometimes difficult, but even with that, Valve has made it easy to re-assign keys and customize your settings to exactly how you see fit.

Biggest problem with playing PC games on a TV is not the controller, but the UI. Squinting at my TV to read small text is not great when you are in a multiplayer online game and there is vital information onscreen. However, with the amount of console games getting ported to the PC and PC games being designed to be ported, this issue was not frequent.

I was playing games from across a room on Linux for ~6 months on a big TV, and the experience sucked. I can't think of many games that allow you to adjust UI size, text size and things like that. I really hope SteamOS can push developers to include such things, as it will still be an issue when SteamOS is out. It won't be such an issue for action type games, but for strategy games, the UI is generally used a lot more, so scaling options will be a must.

You can see the full blog post here.

I have one pre-ordered, so I will also be giving it my thoughts. Sadly, I missed the early orders, so mine will be up in November when they reach general availability. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.