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Another Steam Controller Review

I have particularly fond memories of using the first Steam Controller at my good friend's house.

Not fond memories of using it mind you, but dunking on it. It had alarmingly flimsy construction in an era where even Sony had figured out how to make a controller feel durable and weighty, it had a deeply awkward button layout that often saw my hands brushing the trackpad by accident, the soft d-pad still stands as the worst d-pad I've ever used, and on the whole the controller felt as though I was playing with a prop someone designed for an interior decoration simulator. It wasn't the Ouya controller, but it was still pretty deplorable.

The second Steam Controller? Well now this may be the best controller I've ever used, and I've had the privilege of owning an Xbox Elite controller in the past.

Ergonomics

Valve's official screenshots of the Steam Controller 2 aren't very flattering, and because of this I had a number of basic ergonomic woes before it arrived on my doorstep:

1. The controller would indeed be too big to comfortably hold for long periods of time.

2. Like the first one, the trackpads' proximity to the sticks would result in numerous accidental brushes.

3. The trackpads occupying the bottom half of the controller would, like the 360 chat pad before them, be an absolute nightmare for comfort.

4. Rear buttons being located on the grips would, again, be prone to thousands of accidental inputs.

5. Lastly, the more curved grips compared to its contemporaries would give me an RSI after long sessions.

Fortunately for all of us, I can confirm that none of those woes ever bled out into the real world.

Despite the unflattering promotional pictures and the trackpads at the bottom, the Steam Controller 2 isn't much larger than an Xbox Series or Switch Pro controller. The trackpads are indeed close to the sticks, but the grips are designed in such a way that your thumb is typically hovering over the trackpads when touching the sticks, so there's significantly less accidental brushes compared to the Steam Controller 1 or even the Steam Deck that acts as a basis for the design.

Also, despite my woes regarding comfort, the controller is pretty snug and sits nicely in my hands. I have a tendency to get cramp in my wrists while using the Switch Pro controllers due to my impulse to really, really grip those, but the Steam Controller 2 grips fit well enough that I can do longhaul sessions without self-inflicting an RSI. Those rear buttons aren't much of a nuisance either, as they do require a dedicated push compared to the more sensitive face buttons and they honestly act as a nice little crevice for my longer fingers to rest upon.

The Puck

I've seen a substantial amount of discussion online about the actual controller, but the star of the show for me is the puck.

For the sake of ensuring we're all on the same page: The included puck is a small (just slightly shorter than my thumb, and a little wider) wireless device that also doubles as a charging station and connects to your preferred device via USB-C. The Steam Controller can connect to it wirelessly and even charge off of it by connecting magnetically.

It is, and I don't say this lightly, an absolute game changer and massive boost to my quality life.

On a simple level of usability it allows me to drop what I'm doing, slap the controller onto the puck, and go tend to something. The controller's battery life is excellent on its own - I have went two entire days without charging it at present and it's still fine - but for the sake of preserving battery life, it's nice that distractions don't chunk through my finite stockpile of AA batteries. My life during the day sees a lot of interruptions to either go to the store, make food, watch like a hawk for deliveries or whatever. The puck allows these to be relatively painless.

It's worth noting that, unlike most standard USB wireless receivers, the puck connects via USB-C and thus can be moved around and adjusted to the best position, which sounds minor but in practice allows to really, really cut down on latency.

My actual favourite part of the puck is that, unlike other controllers which have to briefly flicker off and on when connecting or disconnecting, the Steam Controller 2 stays turned on when clicking it onto the puck, which is an absolute and profound blessing if you play games that, say, throw massive temper tantrums when a controller is disconnected mid-session.

Actually Using The Goddamn Thing

It's easy to get lost in a technical or ergonomic overview, but the real best part of the Steam Controller 2 is that it just feels good to use, man. It's eminently customizable and constructed extremely well.

I play a lot of driving games which naturally benefit from precise motions, so I'm happy to report that the thumbsticks are fortunately receptive to the kinds of small nudges and gliding motions that keep you alive in games like Snowrunner or Truck Simulator. As a result, it's also exceptional for any fighting game where motion inputs are a requirement. I have dyspraxia so even simple quarter or half circles are a problem for me; not the case with this one, I'm happy to say.

That isn't to say the rest of the controller is bad, mind you. It has wonderfully clacky face buttons that have enough resistance to require a capital-p Press but aren't actually solid or sticky. The bumpers and triggers are likewise springy and the triggers at the back are, like the thumbsticks, incredibly receptive to more sensitive inputs. Obviously a boon for driving games or anything where you maybe don't want to go full throttle, but it also makes Medal of Honor: Airborne markedly more playable on PC.

I will say that, while nearly everything else is perfect, the d-pad sorta leaves a lot to be desired. It's perfectly functional and much better than the d-pad preceeding it but it feels weirdly lackluster compared to the Xbox Series d-pad or even the Dualsense one. It's not much of a dealbreaker, but this slight imperfection sticks out harder than normal because everything else is just markedly superior to the competition.

Now, I personally don't use it much, but for testing purposes I did enable gyro aiming on Granblue Fantasy Relink, Helldivers 2 and Angels Fall First, and found it pretty competent. Like the equivalent feature on the Switch, it takes some getting used to but is much, much more precise than thumbstick aiming and even beats out the trackpads. I'd recommend maybe turning off the otherwise excellent rumble feature though, it sometimes added a bit of micro-stammer to my aim that, while not a problem for me, would probably be a pain in a PvP game or anything sincerely hard.

Something that often goes unnoted even by diehard shooters of the Steam Controller 2 is the actual Steam button, which (when used on the titular program, anyway) allows access to every single comfortable shortcut that the Steam Deck enjoys. So, even before you get into fiddling with the trackpads and rear buttons, it's trivial to take Steam screenshots, zoom in, force close a game, display the onscreen keyboard or switch to mouse mode - even if you haven't bound mouse input via Steam Input - at will. Very minor thing, but power users will get a lot from it. There's a second button that opens the Steam overlay on demand, too.

It's Kinda Like Linux, But As A Controller

I was going to slam the discussion about trackpads, rear buttons and Steam Input into the last segment, but in the process of taking a break and scouring the associated subreddit I had a eureka moment.

The Steam Controller 2 is, like Linux, an incredibly powerful toolkit that, unlike many other controllers, isn't as immediately compelling or versatile out of the box. Linux can do a lot of things, smooth out a lot of problems you have with Windows, but it is an OS primarily designed for people who're willing to make an OS theirs rather than merely wait for security updates. While it is much, much easier to get Linux up and running now than it was in the days of sidelining Ubuntu and fiddling with an already-antiquated guide, it's still an OS that only spits out what you put into it.

Steam Controller? It's no different.

Out of the box it's immediately usable as a controller, but to really get mileage out of it, you're gonna have to tinker. And, luckily for both of us, Valve have left the entire toolkit on the desk.

Steam Input is an incredibly versatile piece of software and it comes bundled with Steam regardless of shape or size. Even without the Steam Controller it has done genuine wonders for making PC games playable no matter what controller you're rocking and as an accessibility tool it's maybe Valve's greatest contribution to the game, both for physical accessibility and financial; the days of needing to keep an Xbox controller around just to play GTA with your boys/gals/pals/Miqo'te are over.

With the Steam Controller it almost feels like cheating. The 'controller support' tab on every Steam page becomes irrelevant. Steam Input allows the mapping of any button to basically any mouse or keyboard function, and while the button economy of a regular controller makes this a relatively niche function, in practice the Steam Controller offers two extra thumbsticks (or d-pads) and four extra buttons.

But this isn't something I can communicate by just gesturing vaguely at potential use cases, so let's talk about some practical ones:

• The input to tag in another character for a combo attack in Dragonsword Awakening is LB and RB, which can be bound as a dual input to a single button, which is especially useful for action-heavy characters like Reina whose attack economy functionally demand your inputs be focused on the right side of the controller.

• While playing either of the Truck Sim games, I can bind mouse movements to trackpad inputs and mouse clicks to a trackpad long press, which helps mitigate the fact that navigating the menus on controller is honestly kinda annoying.

• When playing the Batman Arkham games or their million derivatives, clumsy dipshits like myself can bind the various double inputs to the back buttons, which stops from losing out on a combo or high score because you mistakenly tried to command grab an enemy who instantly counters those.

• If a game has no controller support whatsoever, it's still nonetheless possible to bind the controller to keyboard and mouse inputs. I played a substantial amount of Pillars of Eternity by binding the face buttons to various menu functions (journal, map, inventory) and then turning the trackpads into the mouse.

• Should you find yourself playing an older PC port where the controller support is clearly hitting the wall that is "not enough buttons", you can bypass this by setting up radial menus which will appear on screen and act as a ring of inputs. This is pretty effective in Snowrunner, which has a lot of functions needed for optimal play and I hear it works out great in ARMA too. It's also ideal for emulators, as you can indeed bind the maintenance functions like window size/screenshot/logging/audio to the radial menu.

Those trackpads are, overall, the biggest surprise for me. I expected them to be a gimmick that I trotted out for more niche titles, but they can be configured to a surprising degree of precision and I often find myself exiting a game after a few sessions to set them up for more optimal use. Still, I don't see people who primarily play games that were slightly or heavily consolized to have much use for them. Great in shooters, though.

The only real downside to the more advanced functions is that, if you play a game where the UI drastically changes between Mouse/Keyboard mode and Controller mode, the constant shifts can get annoying fast. Despite using Diablo 2 to warm up the controller when I got it, I didn't list it as a positive example here because the eternally shifting UI got on my nerves so I eventually caved and went back to the default profile.

Closing Notes

It's a good controller, man.