The size of the grips also means it’s a bit more of a stretch to reach the one and only left analogue stick. They’re awkward and feel as if they will tire your hands more quickly than alternative pads. Curving into your palm rather than away from it, these chubby stumps take a little getting used to. While not wildly wider or taller than the Xbox One or DualShock 4 controllers, it is a lot fatter. ![]() When it comes to design, there’s nothing subtle or sleek about the Steam Controller. Once your batteries are in, plug in the USB Bluetooth receiver, turn on the Steam Controller and voila, you can start using it right away. Although you can’t use the USB cable to charge the controller. You can also use the microUSB cable that’s part of the extender to connect the gamepad to your PC if it runs out of juice. They snap in place and have a little lever to pop them out when they need replacing. Pop off the back and slot the two batteries in – one goes in either grip. The box comes with a Steam Controller, two AA batteries, a Bluetooth USB connector for wireless pairing, and an extender that lets you move the connector closer to your PC. But it risks being seen a master of none and a tepid living room replacement for the mouse and keyboard. It attempts to bridge the gap between PC and console gaming, aiming to be the gamepad that’s a jack-of-all-trades. The latter lets you play games on your TV via your gaming rig, but it’s the controller – with its haptic pads – I’ll be looking at in more detail here. That’s set to change next month with a raft of Steam Machines hitting the market, but in the meantime Steam has released two peripherals: the Steam Controller and the Steam Link. And we’ve yet to see any living-room boxes on shelves. It’s been two years since SteamOS was announced, and almost as long since we got a first glimpse of the Steam Controller. Steam’s owner, Valve, has taken its time entering the hardware scene. Read our original review from October 2015 below: What is the Steam Controller? Gamepad fans looking for a more refined, customisable option would also be better placed investing in Microsoft’s stellar Xbox One Elite Controller. Finessed gamers looking for ultimate accuracy would still do better with a keyboard-and-mouse setup. The combination of factors make the Steam Controller feel incomplete and make it hard for me to recommend. There’s no happy medium, which makes rapid aiming at a horde of incoming zombies a tricky experience, even after six months honing my Steam Controller skills. They are reactive, but their sensitivity flips between sluggish to super fast in the blink of an eye. Playing Left 4 Dead 2, Killing Floor 2 and Warhammer: End Times Vermintide, I’ve never been able to get the right sensitivity level on the pads. They work great on some titles, particularly turn based strategy games, like Pillars of Eternity, but they’re not up to scratch fast paced genres, like shooters. This means that in most games, a lot of the Steam Controller’s buttons haven’t been assigned an action. The control generally defaults to the Xbox pad’s layout if a custom Steam configuration hasn’t been set. I’ve found myself regularly having to build my own scheme from the ground up, just to get the most out of the Steam Controller’s improved button layout. Outside of a few notable exceptions, such as XCOM 2, the loadout system hasn’t taken off. The Steam Controller continues to feel like a beta product. However, many months on, this hasn’t happened. ![]() This should have made it easy to find decent control schemes for most games, even if the developer didn’t bespoke create a Steam Controller setup. You can then share any control scheme you make with the Steam community. The Steam Controller lets you customise what each button and axis does on a game-by-game basis. Related: Best gaming PC specs to build yourselfīut what really set it apart was its loadout system. ![]() The touchpads’ tweakable sensitivity also promised to offer mouse and keyboard precision on a gamepad – something console gamers moving to PC have longed for, for quite some time. The atypical touchpad setup and customisation options made the Xbox and PlayStation’s gaming pads look like archaic children’s toys last year. The Steam Controller brimmed with potential when it first came out. Steam Controller long-term review by Alastair Stevenson ![]() Steam Controller long-term review: Six months of use show funky peripheral’s major shortcomings
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