Steam Link and Steam Controller

If you haven't guessed from my other posts, I'm a big fan of computer games and video games, back from the days of the Atari 2600 on one side, and my friend's PC with the "turbo" button that raised the clock speed from 8 to 14 MHz (as memory serves) on the other.  However, for all their similarities, they've always been separate categories to me, what with one side's performance leapfrogging the others over the years, and the spaces they've been designed to occupy (living room and office) have been fairly well separated as well.  Certainly, they've grown closer over the years, first with things like laptops, and then with common digital interfaces, but they're each still pretty much their own thing... that is, possibly, until now, with this pair of devices.

Steam Link

The dream for many a computer gamer over the years has been to be able to set aside the desk, table or wherever they usually use their computer, for the comforts of a den or living room.  To date, the best answers for that would be a laptop (where you sacrifice screen size and possibly get burned in uncomfortable places by the heat they produce), or connecting a PC directly to your TV (which has aesthetic issues, including fan noise, plus the need to connect input devices to the PC reliably, no small feat with some wireless keyboards/mice).  Now, the Steam Link provides another inexpensive ($50) option, in the form of a small box you connect to your TV, with three USB inputs for whatever devices you want to hook up to it.  Using your PC's Steam client, it then connects to your PC over your network, letting you see and control the games you run on your PC at your TV, while your PC's fans howl in another room entirely, if you so desire.

That's not to say this is a perfect solution, by any means... no matter how fast your network, there is still a very small element of lag involved.  That lag wasn't noticeable to me in most games, but in some "twitch" titles, it's very noticeable... for example, when I played Rocket League, it threw my timing off enough that I had more problems than usual connecting with the ball on anything other than a driving-straight-at-it course.  On the other hand, things like Borderlands 2 worked quite well, once I turned off hardware stream encoding (apparently, there's an issue with AMD hardware drivers at the moment)... it might be worth trying higher-speed games once hardware encoding is working reliably again, but, as of this writing, that's the real limitation.

So, for this device, if you want to play your computer games on your TV, but don't want a PC cluttering up your living room, this is an excellent choice, especially at the price.

Steam Controller

Of course, whether you've got a PC hooked up to your TV, or you're using a Steam Link, you're still, by default, stuck with wrangling a keyboard and mouse (or trackpad or whatever) on your couch, and maybe a game controller as well, depending on the kind of games you like to play.  Compared to the spartan simplicity of a game console's controller, that's a mess of hardware to have to handle (and keep clear of the snacks/beverage of your choice,  in most cases).  The Steam Controller is an attempt to answer that problem.

The good thing about the Steam Controller, and its greatest weakness, is that it's designed to be reprogrammable, giving it a wide range of things it can do, without doing all of them particularly well.  In support of that goal, they replaced the d-pad and right analog stick with large touchpads (the left one with d-pad "grooves" for a little tactile feedback), and added grip controls and gyroscope functionality.  To use a tool analogy, if the standard XBox/PlayStation controllers were screwdrivers, the Steam Controller would be a Leatherman multitool... you can use it to turn that bolt or screw, but you'll never get the stability and torque you would get out of a basic screwdriver.  On the other hand, try using that screwdriver to cut, hold, file, saw, or open a can, and the Leatherman will outshine it handily.

So, enough analogy, here's what I found, playing briefly through a few types of games.  As far as emulating a game controller goes, it's mediocre at best.  Mapping a touchpad to act as a right analog stick is possible, but in anything that requires limited motion of that stick (think aiming your weapon in your favorite first-person shooter), it's pretty useless, due to no useful feedback as to how far off-center you are (and in what direction) beyond what the game shows you.  On the other hand, games like twin-stick shooters where you're using the stick at full travel could benefit, with a bit of practice, because the larger diameter of the touchpad makes for the potential for better resolution/aiming using the outer edge of the pad.  Then there's the d-pad emulation on the left touchpad... at least as shipped, the "click" feature of the pad is just too stiff to work well with the d-pad mapping, so using that in a fighting game is pretty well right out.  I actually found the left analog stick to work fairly well for my limited needs there... and I believe somebody could probably get pretty good setting up a "no-click" d-pad on that touchpad, but it would take a lot of practice that your average casual player wouldn't even attempt.

Outside of any "standard" controller setup, though, that's where this controller really starts to shine.  Sometimes, what you can do is limited by the game you're playing... in Skyrim, for example, you have to choose explicitly between game controller and keyboard/mouse input, and the right analog stick is near-useless for that, so you have to settle for keyboard movement controls mapped to your left analog stick if you want the precision/control of a "trackball" control on the right touchpad (which works surprisingly well, thanks to the haptic feedback clicks the controller gives you).  On the other hand, Borderlands 2 will happily let you run a left analog stick from a controller with a trackball-touchpad for aiming, giving you the best of both worlds (the only issue with which is that the game gives you prompts based on the last kind of control it sensed you using, but as long as you know the buttons to use for OK, Cancel, etc., it doesn't much matter what the game calls them at the moment).

Then, of course, there's all those games you couldn't play with a controller at all before, with mouse/keyboard controls involved.  I understand there may be some games that don't fare as well as with a "regular" mouse (real-time strategy games come to mind), but some of that may just come down to familiarity with the controller... I can't say, since I don't play that sort of game much.  But slower and turn-based games with mouse controls aren't any issue, from what I've seen... and, if you've got a game with more controls than you can/want to map to buttons on the controller, there is also a virtual keyboard available that uses the trackpads for input which, while not as good as a "real" keyboard, is quite sufficient for limited use.

My verdict, then... as another $50 toy, if you're looking to play games on your TV that aren't optimized for a "real" game controller, this is a pretty good choice, as long as you don't mind fiddling with different controller configurations.  If you don't want to deal with the fiddling, wait a few months... between community-shared configurations (I've even done a few myself) and "official" configurations put out by game developers (saw one from Firaxis for Civilization V last night, for example), the cream should rise to the top for most semi-popular games by then.  Of course, the real fun will be to see what new games support, now that this option exists... but don't let wondering about the future stop you from enjoying the now.

That took a while

I just put out the final version of my previous post... I expected that to take a month, maybe two, but certainly not the better part of four months to complete.  Apart from the regular suspects of "life in general", I specifically blame the Humble Bundle, which is a wonderful way to get games you have a passing interest in on the very cheap (and oh yeah, support charity while you're at it).  No, I'm not going to blog about all of those games I got... in fact, I may learn my lesson here and not do another "Steam sale booty" post in the future, and restrict myself to blogging about games that really grab my attention (for example, Rocket League is some good, stupid fun, if I haven't mentioned it before... multiplayer online rocket-car soccer!).

Not that I'll run out of things to post about... I expect to get my Steam Link and controller here in the next couple of days, which should help boost my PC game-time somewhat (cats in laps and keyboards/trackballs just don't work together all that well).