They’re spongey and vague because pressing anywhere on the touchpad feels like you’re pressing down the center. The touchpads can be clicked, but pressing them feels down right nasty. The slight rumble lets you know how fast you're swiping and the motors didn’t have a noticeable impact on battery life in my testing. One thing that did help slightly was the haptic vibrations, which are controlled by motors under each touchpad. While thumbsticks will always return to center, my thumb constantly hunted for dead center to help reorient myself.
The reason why using the right trackpad is problematic is because there’s no center reference. I constantly overshot my targets and relied on the right thumbstick for accuracy instead. I tried tweaking the sensitivity of the pads for various games but I could find any setting that felt natural. Traditional controllers use a thumbstick to let users look around in games, but with the Steam Controller, you’re forced to use the right touchpad to look around and aim. It works great for typing in Steam Big Picture mode or in SteamOS, but it ultimately fails at replicating the speed and precision of a mouse for gaming. At times, it actually works as a trackpad to control a cursor, like when navigating the web browser in SteamOS or playing dungeon-crawlers like Torchlight 2. On top of making the controller look like a permanently surprised owl, its dual touch pads emulate using a mouse. Dual Trackpads What makes the Steam Controller unique is its dual touchpads. The trick is to use the tip of your thumbs instead. The touchpads and grips are angled upward, which will strain your thumbs if you’re trying to lay them flat. In the hand, the Steam Controller is comfortable, after you get over some initial awkwardness. This makes the controller relatively light, which is good for extended gamplay sessions. The Steam Controller is made entirely of plastic, except for the single rubberized thumb stick. Its buttons are stiff and don't offer much in the way of feedback, an issue typical with cheaper gamepads. Even when compared to the regular Xbox One controller, the Steam Controller feels like a cheap gamepad you buy to play iPad games. Holding both the Steam Controller and Xbox Elite Controller side by side, there’s no competition the Elite wins in every way, but it should given its $150 price tag.
A Sea of Plastic The first thing I noticed about the Steam Controller is how cheap it feels. The Steam Controller attempts to be a jack of all trades, but in reality, it offers a mediocre gaming experience a majority of the time.
#Steam controller manual Pc
While many multi-platform games support controllers, there are PC games that were designed to be used solely with a keyboard and mouse. In order to make PC games work in the living room, Valve had to design a new controller to play just about any game.