On May 4th, the new Valve Steam Controller became available.
Ordering was a bit harder than I thought, but it seems Valve was overwhelmed by the demand. In fact, it seems to have sold out the first batch within two hours.
The problems showed themselves to me as being unable to conclude the purchase, as the credit card verification never popped up.
After that initial hiccup, everything else went smoothly. The controller arrived two weeks later at my doorstep.
What's in the box?
The box looks very good. I think Valve aims straight for a premium experience.
The cardboard box feels very sturdy and nice to open.
The box contains the controller, the puck and an USB-A to USB-C cable for
connecting the puck or the controller to a PC.
The puck is a magnetic loading adapter for the controller. I've grown quite
fond of such loading adapters even if they are again proprietary connectors
that might get lost.
When connecting the controller via the puck to a PC, both get immediately a
firmware upgrade via Steam. The process is
convenient enough and I also don't have the fear that Valve might lock me out
of features by upgrading the firmware.
Look and Feel
The controller feels very good in my hands. It is matte black, although time
will tell how much the coating degenerates when handled with sweaty hands.
Compatibility
When Steam is not present on a device, the controller presents itself as a
trackpad with scroll wheel. The right trackpad controls the mouse pointer while
the left trackpad acts as scroll wheel. The right triggers act as left/right
mouse button. The D-pad acts as cursor keys. This makes the controller not too
bad when operating a device that does not have immediate gamepad support.
The controller can connect via USB directly, via the puck (which, again,
connects via USB), or via Bluetooth. You can switch between the connection
modes when switching the controller on by holding R1-A (for puck mode)
or R1-B for Bluetooth mode.
Pixel 9 / GrapheneOS
The Steam Controller connects easily via Bluetooth and shows up as a mouse
(touchpad) + gamepad. The right touchpad controls the Android mouse pointer
in a good way. The haptic feedback the trackpads give when moving the mouse
pointer is not annoying.
Linux PC / Steam
The Steam Controller connects via the puck, which connects via the USB cable.
It is immediately recognized by Steam and just works. The middle button
("Steam button") launches Steam in Big Picture mode, turning the experience
into a console-like experience.
Linux PC / Tablet
The tablet has no Steam client installed, but the controller "works" there
through the puck without needing any fiddling or installing. It is only
recognized as a mouse. The KDE settings menu does not recognize the game
controller. Installing the steam-devices Debian package immediately
lets the controller get recognized, but no inputs are working. Most likely
some udev rules need to be added to properly read the controller inputs,
but I'll be patient and wait until the Debian maintainers address this.
Windows PC / Steam
The Steam Controller connects via the puck, which connects via the USB cable.
It is immediately recognized by Steam and just works. The middle button
("Steam button")
launches Steam in Big Picture mode, turning the experience into a
console-like experience.
Connecting via Bluetooth also works without problems.
Steamdeck
The Steam Controller connects via the puck, which connects via the USB cable.
It is immediately recognized by Steam and just works, but weirdly enough, it
wanted to do another firmware upgrade, twice. Otherwise, the components are
quite similar to the components used on the Steamdeck. Using the controller
in desktop mode as mouse replacement
also feels better than using the sameish trackpads on the Steamdeck itself. The
L5 button acts there as opener for the start menu, which
is a nice shortcut.
Games
While I'm leaning more towards keyboard+mouse , some games lend themselves towards
being played with a gamepad.
GTA Vice City
In my quick test, I played GTA Vice City, and using the right trackpad as mouse
worked passably. I think for a good experience, I will have to sift through the
Steam controller profiles to find one that replicates the keyboard+mouse setup
well enough.
Silksong
Playing Silksong with the controller also feels good. The controller feels
better than the Steamdeck, as the bottom finger buttons R/L 4 and R/L 5
lie closer to where my fingers expect them, and obviously the controller is
lighter than the Steamdeck. Playing with the Steamdeck detached
makes me realize that maybe having a dock for the Steamdeck would be interesting.
It's a really hard sokoban-style puzzle game about grilling sausages, with very little handholding. It does not tell any story but simply drops you into the puzzles without any explanation. On the flip side, the levels are well thought through and build on each other.
It seems to sell for €30, but I got it for 5€ in a sale, which is quite worth the money.
I struggled with the first "world", averaging maybe one or two levels a day with light play. The second world introduces three new mechanics, which make for complex puzzles again.
Unfortunately, the biggest level in the second world introduces three further mechanics and in addition also is very long and tedious, which put me off the game. I watched the solution on Youtube, and maybe I will revisit the game but that level introduces too many new mechanics without a way to play around with them, and in a setting where each of the new mechanics must be executed flawlessly in a 60+ move sequence.
A surprisingly complex tower defense. It has the appeal of the
GemCraft series, but
the mechanics are different. You build your defense towers along a path on
hexagonal terrain and at the same time build up the economy of your village
to provide for more resources to build more towers. The first games you play
are spent on unlocking all the buildings in some kind of meta-game. Once you
have unlocked all the buildings, there is a change to the whole game dynamic
as now you can chase beating the game to level 30, when all hex tiles are
exhausted. After beating level 30, there is the chase of high-scores by getting
your economy and defense good enough to survive wave after wave.
The game could be better, as the first 10 to 15 rounds of a game are mainly about kickstarting your economy, and that slog gets somewhat repetitive. Instead of having to play through these rounds, the game could start you in round 8 (or whatever) with ample resources instead. Otherwise, there is lots of strategy involved combining the right kinds of towers to find synergies. There is the bad luck of drawing bad tiles, but that usually isn't too punishing.
If you like tower defense games, this one is certainly one of the best in the last 5 years.
Tainted Grail - The Fall of Avalon
The game is a quite good RPG. It borrows heavily from Skyrim, Gothic, Morrowind and a bit of the Witcher and Elden Ring, but the mix is quite good.
You start as somebody possessed by King Artus, who wants to regain dominion over Avalon. The island has been taken over by the Red Blight, and the Knights of Kamelot are reigning from afar, not necessarily well. It is a grimdark setting but manages to be not entirely bleak.
Graphics
I'm playing this on an old(ish) PC with an Nvidia RTX 1080, with graphics at 1080p and "low" setting. The graphics are still OK. The world feels very handcrafted, and for example some of the ruins feel hand-placed but without much transition from the landscape to the ruin blocks. It strongly reminds me of Gothic in that regard. The general idea of the landscape reminds me of Elden Ring, except that the landscape is more gray and not in the glorious colors of Elden Ring.
World
The world is compressed, but still feels believable (for a fantasy RPG open world world). It is not littered with Ubisoft-style
fetch quests and collectibles, and soulless question marks with nothing to explore there. There are some side things to do,
like collecting cooking recipes, collecting ingredients for magic potions, some mild crafting, but it is all for making you a
better fighter, or keeping you alive. The crafting feels very close to Skyrim.
The characters inhabiting the world are grimdark, mostly, but there are also some weird characters and even mild attempts
at comedy. They are not as present as Jaskier in The Witcher, but not having everybody be within the grimdark framework
makes for good entertainment.
Gameplay
The game loop consists of exploring the world, mildly guided by quests, and then selling the loot at merchants, and maybe
crafting new stuff. The skills / leveling are taken from Morrowind, where doing any activity improves your ability in it. So,
cooking a meal slightly improves your general cooking ability. Running around a lot improves your running ability. And
conjuring monsters improves your general magic ability.
The fighting feels very much like Skyrim, having bow and arrows, magic and close combat. The fighting forces you
to switch weapons more often than Skyrim did, but that adds to the variety.
Story
There are various factions and various side quests that are well-written. There is a lot of (English) voiced dialogue,
which can get tedious at times, but on the other hand, it is spoken well and the voices feel in-character. Even the
side quests have a lot of spoken dialogue and I haven't found a quest without talking yet.
Conclusion
Overall, the game is interesting and touches the right buttons for me. It's
enjoyable to just go through the scenery, finding new caves to explore or
citizens to speak with. I am currently in the first act of the game and already
am overpowered (summoner magicians usually are), but that's fine.
A classic Metroidvania, doing fights and exploring a vast area. They have a really interesting mix of music and bugs as a theme, where the music becomes more and more central throughout the progress of the story.
It's not easy at the start, but it is not super hard either. The difficulty ramps up a lot.
My main gripe is that there is no downwards attack - I kept on jumping / hitting on enemies below me, Super Mario style. That was, until I discovered that Attack+Down actually does a downwards attack.
The first three levels / maps were fairly easy. I'm now close to the second act, but each boss fight needs some training/repetitions to figure out the rhythm of the boss.
Played on:
- PS4
- Windows (Controller really recommended)
Using a Steam Controller with GoG Silksong required launching the game from Steam.
- Steam Deck (Windows GoG version via Heroic)
Getting the Steam Deck controller to work with the Linux version of Silksong failed with the same symptoms as on Windows. Launching the Windows version through Steam -> Heroic -> Silksong worked and also made the controller buttons work. Weirdly enough, this is the version I like most. Both the PS4 version as well as the Windows+Controller version felt not as tight as the Steam Deck