Are you curious about the upcoming Steam Controller? Hesitant to pick it up, or are you already sitting on your five separate preorders?
Chances are likely you’re in the former camp. If that’s the case, you will want to see this video.
This YouTuber demoed the controller’s flexibility in a really impressive way. Using Kerbal Space Station, he demonstrated how to use different key bindings to accomplish the different tasks needed to accomplish in the game.
Based on how it looks alone, the Steam Controller does at least a fair job of duplicating what can be done with a traditional controller, and with a mouse and keyboard. You won’t feel the need to inch over to a keyboard, since the contextual keyboard is easy enough to bring out. There isn’t any function in the game that seemingly can’t be assigned into the controller somehow.
However, it’s not all perfect. At some points, the mouse pointer veers offscreen. Typing may seem intuitive, but it can’t be easier than, say, writing messages on a Wii U GamePad.
However, the seemingly biggest problem is the idea of the key bindings themselves. The Steam Controller is potentially demanding fans learn way too many different control schemes. Worse, that can just expand exponentially with each bespoke configuration for each game, and of course some games like Kerbal have multiple game modes that increase those configurations even more. Could it be possible all this work to duplicate a mouse and keyboard setup on a controller isn’t even worth it?
What do you think of the Steam Controller, and this potential issue with key bindings? Watch the Kerbal video above so you can decide for yourself. Feel free to share your thoughts with us on this in the comments below.
