Renzatic on 11/2/2016 at 21:52

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These are the trials and tribulations of me learning another funky controller. In a lot of ways, it mirrors the first time I tried playing games with a mouse and keyboard, considering my early years were primed around consoles. In fact, it's been a lot like learning the NES gamepad back when I was 10, going from the joysticks I used for my old Atari 800, then learning how to use the analog stick on the N64 back when I was 17 or so.

I've long since realized that each time I try a new style of controller, I can't help but think how much better I'd be playing with what I'm already used to. I'm already feeling that with the Steam Controller, but with that realization in mind, and the pure potential of the thing, I'm sticking with it.

Day 1 (officially yesterday) -

I finally got around to unboxing the controller around 10ish last night. The first thing I wanted to try was an first person game, but a little more laid back than a straight up fast paced shooter, a'la Borderlands, and Serious Sam. So I fire up Outlast, start a new game, and spend about half an hour running around the courtyard in front of the asylum, tweaking the controller the entire while. Joystick Mouse with trackball enabled seems to be the best way to control most FP games.

Witcher 3? Played beautifully right out of the box. I barely had to tweak anything.

XCOM 2. Probably the weirdest of the bunch, especially when you consider this is the type of game the Steam Controller is mostly intended for. It's not bad exactly, but moving a cursor around and hitting the trigger buttons for left/right clicks does feel a little strange.

Cities: Skyline. It's a little more straightforward than XCOM, but it still feels weird. I could see the control scheme working, though it'll take some getting used to.

Day 2

Today, I thought SCREW IT, and installed Serious Sam and Borderlands 2. My hand is permanently frozen into a claw.

BL2 works well with the Joystick Mouse setup. Took some tweaking, but I got it into a nice comfort groove for me. Shooting on foot is fine, though doing the same in a vehicle feels sorta spastic.

Serious Sam. Now this one's weird. The Joystick Mouse is way too slow for some reason, so I picked a prebuilt control scheme that uses straight up mouse emulation for the right pad. After knocking the sensitivity down a few notches, so you're not moving around like a coked up chipmunk on Adderall, it became fairly playable. It's still way overly sensitive. If you flick your thumb a little too fast, you'll do a sudden 180, and I can't aim quite as well with it as I can a mouse, but it is a HELLUVA lot quicker than an analog stick. I've managed to get a ways into the 4th stage on normal, so I'm getting the feel of it. Still gonna take a bit longer before I can say I'm good with it, though.

MORE TO COME!

Renzatic on 11/2/2016 at 23:57

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You don't get much more fast paced than Serious Sam. That game requires you to jack the sensitivity up to ridiculous levels just to be able to survive.

Though now that I'm getting a feel for the controller, it's not quite so bad. It's all about subtle thumb control.

Next up: DARK SOULS 2!

Back from Dark Souls'n.

This might very well be the best DS controller ever.

For the most part, it's not that much different. It takes all of 10 seconds to get used to using the pad as a right analog stick, and that's mostly due to the fact it supplies you with much, much faster camera than what you're used to if you've played the game primarily with a 360 pad. About the worst I could say about it is that the bumper buttons feel a little mushy.

The one thing that makes it so great is something you wouldn't expect. The community supplied control scheme I used has the B button double mapped to the right squeeze button underneath the controller (what do you call those, rudders?), and it's....kinda brilliant. For some reason, it feels like it gives you so much more solid control over your rolls than hitting the face buttons.

Totally subjective thing, but I like it. I'll probably be playing DS3 with it.

henke on 12/2/2016 at 06:24

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Thanks for the write-up, Renz. I'm not feeling the itch for a new controller at the moment, but I I'll probably get one of these eventually.

Renzatic on 12/2/2016 at 21:10

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One thing I've notice is that the more practice I get with it in Serious Sam, the more sensitive I set it up to be, so that I'm making finer moves with shorter thumb swishes.

The upside to this is that it gives you near mouse-like precision. The downside is that it makes your hand tired very, very quick.

Renzatic on 13/2/2016 at 01:08

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"They're so soft and smooth. Do you use topical creams?"