Steam Controller

[Summary]: The Steam Controller provides a unique and advanced way to play nearly any game. The level of customization offered easily beats other controllers while coming close to the expensive, dedicated controllers for a genre of games, such as a racing wheel and joystick. Though it won't outright beat the best tools, it can get very close in functionality, all for the price of $50.This ultimately allows two distinct advantages for two playstyles; Play nearly any game, any way you want, for the most comfortability, or play nearly any game with a controller that allows you to gain maximum performance. (or any combination thereof)[Intro Description]: This controller is not perfect. As valve's first consumer iteration, it has flaws, most are smaller, some may be more significant depending on preference. If you want something different or have found the conventional keyboard + mouse/standard controller to be lacking at times, the Steam Controller may be able to satisfy your needs. : My cons are subjective, some may not care about what I find to be a con, others may say it makes the controller unusable. I suggest you imagine what it is like to play in your style with the cons. Additionally, due to the level of customization, you may be able to get around the cons more easily than with a standard controller.-(Analog stick), I find the analog stick's convex (curves down and away from thumb) tip to be a slight annoyance. In more intense situations I find it is easier to slowly slide off of the stick, requiring more re-centers, a minor issue to me. The analog stick is also harder to click than regular controllers, again, a slight annoyance.-(L/R Bumpers), The biggest con for me are the bumpers. I find the bumpers to be too awkward to use in most situations. Despite their large size, they have nearly imperceptible travel distance before clicking. To make it worse they are also very stiff. This contrasts with most of how the controller feels, with everything giving a sense its state (you can tell how far you need to push, or how much you have pushed), the bumpers are the only exception. It gives no hint of when it is about to be clicked, potentially causing a lack of confidence to use.-(Plastic), Some people complain about the plastic used on the outside of the controller. At first, it appeared cheap and almost rough. I have found it to feel quite durable, despite its appearance. I do have to note that the controller looks significantly worse in Amazon's pictures, it looks much better in person.-(Noise), Aside from the bumpers, this may be the biggest con to some people. Unlike every controller I have used, the Steam Controller makes a great deal of noise with its buttons. The bumpers make a sound very similar to a mouse click, but louder. The grip buttons make a more hollow-sounding click, which is also loud. The track pad click sound similar to the grip buttons. If you want absolute silence when you play, this controller may cause issues. If you play with a fair amount of sound, or especially with headphones, you may not notice it at all. : Again, due to the amount of customization, people may find different pros for different reasons.-(Configurability), By far this is the biggest pro. The track pads, gyro, triggers, everything, would all be useless without the ability to fine-tune the controller to your specific needs. It allows you to play any game and any playstyle with the same controller.-(Track pads), The second biggest pro. This is what makes the Steam Controller distinct from other controllers. With the track pads, you can emulate a joystick, a D-pad, a mouse, a single button, and even a "touch menu", allowing the pad to use up to 16 buttons in a grid pattern, or a radial menu as a ring, similar to weapon selection wheels in some games. To keep the controls from getting confusing, the touch menu/radial menu appears as an overlay when you put your finger on the touch pad, allowing you to see what you are going to select.-(Haptics): The haptic feedback is invaluable to me. It is used to get an enhanced degree of control over the controller. With track pads, one can feel exactly how far their finger is in relation to the border, it allows you to feel as if you are clicking buttons when you are swiping the touch pad. It can be used to also enhance the clicks of the triggers, giving definition to the custom range that you set.-(Grip buttons), Most controllers don't have grip buttons, this allows for even more adjustments according to preference. A distinct advantage is it allows you to keep your fingers on the triggers, your thumbs on joystick/track pads, and still press 2 more buttons to reload or jump.-(Triggers), Aside from acting as standard controller triggers, when fully pressed in, the triggers will physically click, adding yet another button that can even be independently used from the trigger (thanks to the configuration software).-(Gyro), This takes some practice and much tweaking to fluidly use, it also has many uses. The gyro can act as a mouse or joystick, allowing some interesting uses. In shooter games, you can tune the gyro to make fine aiming adjustments while keeping a touch pad to make wide sweeps. In racing games you could use the gyro to steer, if you don't like the analog stick. In flying games, you could use the gyro to pitch and roll, yaw, or something more interesting, like to use mouse-headlook. :-(Software/How to set up the controller), With all of the configurability, the big question is, "how can I play 'any game' with the controller?" The controller can be used as soon as you connect it to the computer, either via micro-usb or wireless receiver (which is provided with the controller, and 2x AA batteries). In this state, the controller is limited to emulating a mouse with the right track pad, mouse scrolling with the left, and arrow keys with the analog stick, along with left and right click with the triggers.In order to unlock the full potential of this controller, you will need Steam. When the controller is connected to the computer and steam is running, all of your personal settings and mappings will be in effect. Steam also stores your game configurations, so you can plug in the controller on a friend's computer, log into steam, and you'll have your settings saved.Steam also encourages using "big picture mode"(BPM), a more controller-friendly user interface. Though you don't need to run in BPM to play or even configure a game for the controller, to change the controller's more advanced settings, you WILL need to run in BPM to change them (but you can exit after, with your settings still in effect). Using BPM you can change the desktop configuration (when steam is on but not in-game), special commands (such as turning the controller off) used when holding the steam button and another button, and the big picture controls."HOW TO PLAY A GAME?": With the controller on, simply run a game through steam, then press the steam button on the controller and select "configure controller" to make a custom configuration for the game. You can also save the configuration as a local file, upload on the steam cloud, upload to the steam community (for others to download), or download a community configuration yourself. This saves much time in configuring because you can download a community file and customize as you see fit."WHAT IF MY GAME ISN'T ON STEAM?": To run a game not supported by steam, there are 2 ways. The first is to add a non-steam game to steam, where it will launch the executable of the game, as well as inject the steam overlay, which allows you to configure the controller.The second way is a workaround if the first option does not work. You can make a new "action set" (think of it as a seperate profile for the same game, so you could have a specific action set for driving, and one for flying in the same game) in the "desktop configuration" (when you aren't playing a steam game), then make the profile for the non-steam game, then simply switch to the action set while you play the non-steam game.This has downsides, however. The overlay won't work, and you won't be able to use the touch menu, which allows 17 individual buttons on a touch pad. Thankfully, I have been able to add a non-steam game and play it without problems, I suggest running steam in administrator mode and making sure you aren't running any injectors, such as "sweet fx". : With all of the advanced options, it will take some time and a lot of tweaking to find what you like. No single configuration is best except your own. With the ability to assign "shift buttons", you can have as many buttons as you need, this is also excluding separate action sets. If you don't mind configuring a game and tinkering with options, the limiting factor is much time you want to spend to get familiar with the controller.

I've seen a lot of reviews about this controller from people who used the early releases, and there is one thing I want to say to them: "Early Release", there are always slight changes to a product before it is released to the public.Alright, now that that's over with on with the review. I got this controller on Friday, 11/13/15 and it is now 11/15/15 and this is my 2 day review. I have grown to believe that this is a great controller. It has tons of features and buttons and little "hidden" program options. For instance, I can program one of the touch pads act as my mouse with a specific sensitivity, slight actions depending on gestures used on it (like track ball emulation), and inverted axes. There is also a "Mode Shift" option that lets you configure the Touch Pad with completely different settings if you do a soft pull on one of the triggers (or any of multiple other buttons). Example of this: I am weird and when playing a game I control the camera with the X-axis inverted, only if I'm using a controller, however when I go into "aim mode" or look down my scope or whatever, the steam controller lets me switch the Touch Pad to not having the X-axis inverted and to decrease sensitivity. (I apologize if that was a difficult sentence to read) The cool thing is I can actually change the "style of input" completely with this mode shift, so I do a soft hold of a trigger and my mouse turns into a touch menu, or a scroll wheel, or a button pad (Like for going through a menu). Basically there's tons of things that can be done to make this controller work the way you want it.You don't have to program each and every game from scratch, there are 3 templates (by default) and you have access to the community shared configurations created by other people. Sadly I noticed that as of right now it is a little difficult to take your configurations from one game to the next (Like taking configurations from Assassin's Creed II to Brotherhood). Configurations are saved in the following locations: "%ProgramFiles%\Steam\controller_base\templates" is for templates and "%ProgramFiles%\Steam\userdata\%your steam userid%\241100\remote\controller_config\%specific game code%" is for each specific games. You might find it easier to make a configuration a game that is blank or defaulty and name it what the game is to make it easier to figure out the game codes while browsing around.There are tons of buttons on this controller and you can program them in whatever weird ways you want too (they even sound like weird ways to configure them). The 2 triggers are analog as a soft pull, and when you do a full pull it becomes digital, so you can program each as to different things. In addition when programming the analog stick, you can program a specific button press/action if you take the stick all the way to the end. For example, while playing Warframe I have the analog stick configured so that once push it all the way in one direction it hits the Sprint button, than when I do a soft pull on the Right Trigger I go into a crouch/slide, and finally when I finish that pull on the Right Trigger (turning it into a Full Pull) I go into a jump. This makes parkour work amazingly. I've turned holding W and Shift to Sprint, going into a slide by holding Control, and tapping Space to jump, into only using an analog stick and pulling one trigger.Some of the reviewers I've read have mentioned the gyroscope for the controller, and you know what? That's configurable, so don't act like it's forced on you. It's actually really cool and I'm looking forward to using it with the Rift. I haven't used it much but I can actually set it up so that if I'm setting in a spinny chair while holding the controller, and I spin, the my character spins! Now that wouldn't be useful for right now when your trying to play a game using the monitor in front of you, but you don't have to program it like that, maybe your flying and you actually want to "Pull Up!" you could set it up like that.Last week I read a review from someone who fell in love an early release of this controller and compared it to switching from QWERTY to DVORAK. At first I disagreed, but as I've used this controller more I can agree now. I can play these games that I've been playing for years or even a new game very well with a mouse and keyboard, but that's because I'm use to my keyboard. (I can hit most keys on my keyboard without looking at said keyboard). The point is, trying to use the Steam Controller is just like when I tried to switch to DVORAK years ago. I could very easily right now switch back to keyboard and mouse and forget about the $50 I spent on this controller because it isn't instantly easy to use. However, there are so many options that it could actually make my life easier in a lot of ways if I learn how use this controller. Heck, this controller could very well increase my gaming experience. What I'm trying to say is, don't knock it until you've spent the time to try it our properly. This controller has so many configuration possibilities that everyone online could have a different setup even though they're playing the same game.Steam MUST be open to use the controller yes that is true and there's no way to get away from it, but once the controller is working, you can use it as a normal mouse. Steam does not need to be your active program, at least on Windows, no clue on other operating systems. That is one thing that is sad about with this controller. I WISH that there was a plug and play component of this controller that would revert it to specific settings that make it act like a normal controller. D-Pad is just a D-Pad, touch pad acts like an analog stick, to be used as an analog stick, but it's not. That's my one complaint about this controller.All in all, I've fallen in love with this controller. Even though it's only been 2 days of using it...of course I've gamed pretty much all of that time (minus a few hours to sleep). I'm strongly recommending this controller for people to use, but remember this is the first release of this controller, but Valve spent a lot of time designing this there is a reason it wasn't released over year ago. The most important thing to remember about this controller is, programming. Do NOT expect to open up Fallout 4 click some random configuration for the controller and everything to be happy days. Your going to be click that Steam button, go to controller config and be remapping buttons for the first 2 hours of the game. Yes, that makes getting into the game a little tough, but once you get a basic setup for a 1st person shooter, you'll be able to build off that for the next one you play. And I say 2 hours because you'll be going back to make minor changes a lot, you could be playing the game for an hour after your last change and than say "Hey I think it would be better if I did this." OK, I'm finished you can stop reading, get this controller and remember it's completely different from any other controller out there.