Steam Controller Review

Many things have been said about the Steam Controller since it's release. Some good, some bad, and some really ugly. That's close to a movie title I think? Anyway, I've been using the Steam Controller for the last week or so for Fallout 4 and messing around with other games just to see what I could get out of it, and so far I'm quite liking it. I think I'll split up this review into the three aforementioned categories what could also be a movie title or cliche'd phrase.

The Good: 

The Steam Controller is incredibly unique. It's goal is to marry PC gamers with their couch. Valve wants to assist with PC gamers and their back problems by allowing them to game from their couch instead of hunched over at a PC. Props to them! If you don't care about your back, or comfort whilst gaming this isn't the controller for you.

Their solution was to add two track pads to the standard controller to act as the mouse. Now, I get the idea...there's basically no way to play a game like, oh...Starcraft on PC from the couch. You need your mouse and keyboard and Valve thought to themselves how do we give the player a way to play this without that? This was how they chose to fix that problem.

Now, I will admit, I haven't tried to use the Steam Controller for a mouse-like point and click type game for two reasons. One, I honestly don't see it working very well for those games in general especially RTS games, and two I rarely like those games anyway. I've effectively been using the controller for games that it does work with, but wasn't precisely intended for, though strangely works the best for anyway I feel.

As stated above I've been playing Fallout 4 mainly, so I'll discuss that. I must say, the controller works fantastically better than I've been reading from other sites in my opinion. I think it helps that Bethesda put out an official setting for the controller for their game, which I have ripped and stolen for other FPS games and I must say it's the perfect way to play these types of games on this controller, with the slight addition of Gyro for aiming.

The main draw for the controller on this game, or another FPS game in particular is the track pad and Gyro aiming. The track pad acts like a mouse and a joystick at the same time with the setup Bethesda provided. Slight movements on the right pad acts like a mouse with a mild track ball so if you flick it the character will spin. I don't typically use the track ball, but it's there if you are fond of it. What makes it like a joystick though is if you drag your thumb to the edges, any edge, it will start to move like a joystick moved all the way to the ends. This works marvelously well once you get used to it.

Coupled with the gyro aiming, which activates any time your thumb rests on the right track pad (or whatever you want to customize it for) you can get extremely precise aiming. Much better aiming than two sticks I feel. It's as close to a mouse as you can get. If you've ever used a Wii pointer or PS4's gyro typing, it's a lot like that. It feels great, and I'm getting headshots now like a champ after 30 hours of use. I fully feel acclimated to the controller now for FPS type games.

For most other games the controller is perfectly serviceable but it's just like any other controller. For instance, racing games work the same as any other controller, side scrollers same, action games same. I've already wrecked the first boss of Dark Souls with it without any issues. The controller has another slight advantage with the two bumper buttons on the back of the controller allowing you to set things like run to those buttons rather than pushing in the left stick. I've always hated pushing in the left stick so I find this addition to be extremely welcome. Other controllers need to get on board with this. I'm sick of pushing in the left stick!

This is becoming a tangent so I'll sum up a few more quick positive points:

+ Battery life is insanely good. Haven't had to change them yet after about 40 hours
+ You can customize everything to infinity and beyond so if the controller doesn't feel "right" you can tweak it to hell until it does feel right.
+  Strong community making controller templates for most of the popular games
+ Let's you use Big Picture mode the way it was always intended

The Bad: 

There is quite a list I've come up with while using the controller that bugs me. These are all minor annoyances, I'm saving the things I hate for the third category.

- Batteries. I don't like batteries for controllers. As mentioned above the battery life is incredibly good, but I'm still annoyed by this.
- The controller is a touch too big for me. I have incredibly small hands and my left hand does get sore after about 3 or 4 hours which in my 25 years of gaming has never happened before. The shape of the controller is anything but ergonomic.
- You have to learn to use this. That's annoying for most people, but I found the experience to be fun. I will say I'm about 90% acclimated to its quirks now but I don't know the average gamer wants to learn how to game all over again which this controller kind of makes you do.
- The left joystick click requires too much force to click. It's pretty useless because of this. Thankfully the controller  has extra buttons to replace this with.

The other few annoyances I have with the controller is less the controller's fault and more of an oversight on Steam's part. There are a lot of games that just don't function well with Steam Big Picture mode. Either they freeze up, or the UI doesn't function or some other nonsense. Take Crysis Warhead. I love this game so it was one of the first I tried the controller with. Getting it working right was a mind numbing chore however, because Crysis doesn't work with Big Picture mode. Most other games, you can hit the Steam home button and tweak the controller again and again, which you have to do to get things right. Crysis just says NOPE. Hitting the button brings up the Steam UI BEHIND the game. So you can't see what you're doing...Instead you have to close the game and tweak it from there. This is incredibly frustrating but luckily I got it working after much tweaking.

Not only is it a problem getting games that don't like Big Picture mode to work, but getting games that don't allow for Mouse + Controller combos working is a HUGE pain in the ass. Going back to our example of Crysis, or Just Cause 2 even, the game will stop working if you're using a combination of Controller and Mouse settings on your Steam Controller. For instance, do you like Gyro aiming? I know I do. This activates the "mouse" portion of the controller. But do you want to move while aiming? Well that activates the "Joystick" of the controller. In-game, you just can't do both, and if you try, both games just top accepting all your inputs for about 5 seconds while it struggles to figure out what the hell you're doing. Valve knew this would be a problem, so there's a way around it but it's really annoying. You have to assign all the buttons to Keys and your Mouse instead of using the pre-programmed controller inputs most games have. This takes a lot of time and effort as you would imagine.

The other major issue here is games that are NOT Steam games. While you can link games to Steam to work with big picture mode, even Origin games, and it works very well, the big issue you have is you get no community assistance what so ever. You have to fend for yourself on those games. There really should be a way to search games to find controller settings. For instance, I have GTAV, but I have it through Rockstar's site, not Steam. I would love to just search the templates people have made for GTAV for the Steam Controller, but...I can't. I literally have no way to get their templates.

Lastly, something that bugs me with Fallout 4 is even if I wanted to use a mouse and key I have to unplug the Steam USB dongle because otherwise Fallout 4 will refuse to use anything other than a controller if it's plugged in. This is Fallout's fault mostly, there should be an in-game option to turn the controller off like other games have....but noooooo.

The Ugly: 

While I have mostly positive things to say about the controller, and I feel it's a lot of fun to use, it functionally cannot replicate a mouse and keyboard with the accuracy you're going to need for the games it's trying to put you on your couch for. For instance, I'm loving it with Fallout 4 and I got it set up with many other games as well. But there is a small category of games you wouldn't want to use it with. Not a BIG category mind you...you know...just MULTI-PLAYER games.

That's right, while it's wonderful for a game like Fallout 4 where the AI has the brain the size of a small grain of blue cheese, this just isn't something you're going to want to use against people with 8200 DPI mice against in CS GO. You wouldn't stand any chance what-so-ever. Sure, you MAY be able to get accustomed to this controller enough to make it workable for a game like that, heck you may eventually be pro at it. There are people that compete with Xbox controllers against Mice players after all, even though they are scientifically gimping themselves by using a controller. I already feel more pro at using a Steam Controller for Fallout 4 vs my PS3 controller I normally use on PC. But I'm miles away from being as quick and precise as I am with my Mouse.

And you can absolutely forget about using this controller for Diablo 3, or Starcraft, or even World of Warcraft and especially not League of Legends or Dota 2. So, I've just outlined probably 90% of the current PC gamer player base outside of those Minecraft weirdos. Yes, the most popular games on PC quite frankly, I wouldn't advise you ever attempt to try this controller with. These are mostly point and click games, or competitive games, or with an incredibly high number of commands like WoW. There's just not enough mouse accuracy here or enough buttons in general to make this compete with the mouse players you'll be playing with. Hilarious that Valve would release a controller that likely would never be useful for their most popular game in Dota 2. No one in their right mind would try to use this thing on that game.

Conclusion: 

I really like the Steam Controller overall. As I've grown used to it I can find the genius in it for some games and it is actually a better choice than a standard controller in some cases. In other cases it's confusingly worse or at worst, entirely unusable for say Dota 2. Which begs the question, were they searching for just a "way" to play computer games from a couch, or a "better" way. Because, sometimes it's better, sometimes it's just not even an option. But the games you'd think it was designed around like games that rely mostly on Mouse movements like a Dota 2 it's just not great at all. The touchpads were meant to replace the Mouse, or so I assumed, but all it really did was replace the second analog stick on a standard controller with any amount of success.

So this controller would be a wonderful improvement if it released on, say a PS4 and games were designed for it. It would be fantastic to use with Battlefield 4 on PS4, but you'd be really gimped if you used it on PC facing Mouse players. There outlines the major issue with the Steam Controller. It innovated the Console controller VERY well, and is a poor imitation of a Mouse and Keyboard on PC. The major problem of course, as should be obvious, is it came out exclusively for PC.

If you are gaming on PC and mainly use a controller for your gaming however, I highly recommend this controller. If you're like me, and this controller clicks with you as fast as it did for me, you will absolutely love the extra buttons, the Gyro mouse-like aiming, the endless customization, and the extra precision offered by the right track pad over the conventional second stick, which for me, never felt right in gaming. This feels right. This feels like a welcome evolution to the conventional controller.

*A cheaper alternative to couch PC gaming though, get a wireless mouse and keyboard with some sort of board or lap-desk which would immediately replace any benefits the Steam Controller provides aside from comfort (as a key and mouse on your lap is less than comfortable).*  

Star Wars $50 Season Pass! Outrageous!

I'm appalled, absolutely dismayed. This highly anticipated game of 2015 released in November has come out and has the gall to charge us $50 for a season pass! And what does it offer? Well we don't really know exactly. Presumably more maps, most likely. What an atrocity. That's almost the price of the whole game itself! What a terrible display! Gamers won't stand for this, we won't have it!

Curse you Call of Duty Black Ops 3 for your overpriced DLC!

....

Plot twist, wasn't talking about Star Wars at all. Nope, unlike all the other news outlets like IGN, Gamespot and yes, even Destructoid whining about Star Wars having a $50 season pass, I'm going to instead complain about Call of Duty doing it. Why? ...Uh...well because no one else is apparently. Which is really weird, I mean I guess we're supposed to expect this from Activision but not EA? Did I just write that sentence? lol, yeah even I can't keep a straight face whilst typing that. Were we really taken aback by this? Was this really THAT unexpected? Please, give me a break. These guys gave us BF4 with a $50 season pass, and we DIDN'T expect them to do that with Star Wars Batllefront? Let me try to dumb this down for you guys. Battle is in BOTH titles, but one ends in Field and the other ends in Front.

Ok, that's completely irrelevant but I found it funny anyway so as long as I entertained myself then I did my job.

Not to write a huge diatribe or anything, but I couldn't be more annoyed by all these articles decrying the horrors that is the $50 DLC Star Wars is shilling and still yet no one moans over Call of Duty doing it for the last 7 or so years. Does Activision pay off these media outlets to not complain about it? Honestly, I'd love to know the answer to that.

Frankly, I'd complain about all of them if I had the time or made money doing it like Angry Joe does. I'm sure we'll see his Battlefront review soon and expect there to be a LOT of whining about Battlefront's $50 DLC. What I HOPE though, is we don't see him exclude CoD from this nonsense. Hopefully, he lumps them all together...but I somehow doubt it. Everyone else is treating this game like some kind of trailblazer for $50 season passes, like it's never happened before. It's driving me utterly insane. Again, I don't approve of it either, but I'm also not shocked by it.

Honestly, I'll probably pick up the DLC when it goes for $20 or so if it does for Battlefront what it did for Battlefield 4 which added a TON of stuff for its overpriced season pass. DICE does a really great job of supporting their games after release. So, I'm expecting to see some good stuff from the season pass and the other free stuff they promised to provide the game as time goes on.

Ultimately, my main point here is, the $50 season pass idea is a shitty one, and has been for the last 7 years. To suddenly whine about it now makes me mad because you weren't there when I was whining about it 7 years ago and BECAUSE of your silence back then we STILL have this shit happening today. Thanks...you smug bastards...

*You're also probably the same people that were buying the $50 season passes back then and only now just realized you were being screwed...*

PS - I've not been buying them before not buying them became cool.

Entitled Gamers vs Greedy Developers

There's a bit of upheaval in the video game world lately involving angry fans over how things are priced, and how many people buy things before a game comes out. No better of an example of this can be made than the recent spat Angry Joe has had over the new Warhammer game which seemingly "cut" out the race of Chaos and stuck them in as a pre-order bonus.

Angry Joe, for anyone unaware is completely against sales tactics like this which appear to be anti-consumer on the surface. He is genuinely upset over the state of gaming these days with pre-order bonuses, game bundles that come with skins that are already in the game, and DLC that doesn't feel worth the price in any way. He's fully justified feeling this way as a consumer, though he does go overboard in fanning these flames without having a lot of evidence to support his opinion. Sometimes we do get evidence like in the case of Street Fighter x Tekken, or when DLC areas are discovered in games like Destiny prior to release.

What makes the case of Warhammer so interesting though, is the developers actually responded and provided what I feel to be a very level headed and understandable response. You can read it here. As with everything there are two sides to every story. Consumers confidence in gaming has gone downhill incredibly fast when obvious corporate greedy tactics surface and aren't addressed. But here, we see their side of it and should be able to identify with them on what's going on and put the rage aside.

As we see in their response they outline what kind of funding was received with the game, how pre-ordering is a great thing for development teams and support of any project, and ultimately why the Chaos class was designed to be a DLC / pre-order race. It makes a lot of sense when it's broken down this way, versus how it appears on the surface when fans view it. What fans fail to understand a lot of the time is people making these games are just that, they're people. They are making a product as good as they can make it, overcoming obstacles we'll never know about, and trying to be successful at it. And, yes, sadly "success" does include making a profit. Would Sega invest in their future projects if they go over budget on this, and fail to deliver success? They certainly wouldn't.

I would like to take a moment though to dissect both sides, as I feel there's hyperbole on both ends. Angry Joe rants and rages about anti-consumer policies. This is how he gets views. He regurgitates the fans distaste for seemingly greedy tactics from developers. He can't ever prove what they're doing is greedy unless data miners discover it for him. He never takes each situation uniquely either, simply lumping them all together as one overarching game developer greed...thing. As if all of these developers meet together to discuss ways to suck their consumers dry of all their money. He's a sensationalist, he'll probably not admit it, it's his job though so I don't blame him. But people need to recognize this to have a level headed understanding as to what is really going on.

From the Warhammer developer's perspective their response is pretty heavy handed. "Happy gamers" peppered throughout feels like being talked down to. We get it, we're your customers, you don't have to lick our shoes. They outline it's not about making money, but about being able to produce more content in the future. He's right, but he's wording it to appear noble. Quite frankly, yes, they need to make a profit to stay in business. It's like any business. So yes, it is about the money, you don't need to lie about it.

As for what costs what, how many races Sega was able to "fund" them for their game, well sadly we just have to take their word for it. Games cost way more to make than they ever have and the prices for games have stayed stagnate for a very long time. It's no wonder studios have found multitudes of ways to fund their projects. But at the end of the day that's what it has come down to. Either finding ways to support the content they make, or stop making it all together. Obviously, these guys love what they do and want to keep doing it, which is making games. We either have to respect that, or simply don't support it. There's no sense whining or getting angry about it. If suddenly in the next Mario game Yoshi as a power-up cost $10 to unlock, I'd probably stop playing Mario games. Understanding of course, that Nintendo probably needs that funding, I'd prefer they find a different way to achieve that.

And that's where the two roads meet ultimately. Developers have to find ways to fund their games that don't alienate their fanbase. Was creating Chaos Warriors as pseudo pre-order incentive one of those good ways? Seemingly not. In retrospect there just wasn't a great way to convey the message of their finances in with the message they sent to fans by announcing this pre-order "incentive." It just doesn't come off that way. In the developer's mind, it would have been DLC later on, that was the plan, so they felt like this would be a nice bonus for fans who buy early. To consumers, we just can't view it that way because it appears as if you're shilling content you've already completed. Appearances are EVERYTHING in sales.

In conclusion, the Warhammer guys did screw up here and hopefully they've learned they need to be more careful about how a consumer views something versus how they view it. As for consumers though, quit being whiny bitches and try to convey your dislike for something with a bit more integrity. It makes us look bad, and guys like Angry Joe popularize this poor behavior (though admittedly is incredibly entertaining to watch).

*Just chill out*