Team Meat’s programmer Tommy Refenes has hung out with Valve’s unique controller playing games like Super Meat Boy and Spelunky, and has written up a lengthy blog detailing his impressions of the recent device.

You can look at the entire blog here where Refenes begins by explaining how picky he’s about his controllers. He refused to play PlayStation 3 games until Sony was capable of release the DualShock 3, which released about two years after the launch of the console.

Refenes spent most of his time with the controller playing Super Meat Boy, a game he’s obviously very acquainted with. He designed all input and player control for the sport, so it gave him a great understanding of the Steam Controller’s interaction with a game.

Refenes addresses probably the most immediate concerns that appeared when Valve revealed the controller yesterday, which was the presence of touchpads rather than control sticks and buttons. Refenes says the four buttons surrounding the touchscreen in the course of controller aren’t placed with the intention of getting used for gameplay, but rather menu and back functions. In regard to using a touchpad as opposed to a button Refenes says, “Valve has tried to rectify this by having some adjustable haptic feedback fire once you press among the circle pads. Throughout my play session the haptic feedback helped with the issue, but wasn’t enough to unravel it.”

Refenes says that he does miss having tactile touchable buttons at the right touchpad, and he offered some feedback to Valve that it’d consider placing cardinal feelable nubs at the pad. It is a change which may still have the opportunity of being implemented.

Overall, Refenes’ feedback is positive, but based purely on familiarity, he says he’ll probably still choose the Xbox 360 controller for PC gaming. Refenes said, “If tomorrow all game controllers were wiped off the earth and your best option was the Steam Controller, I don’t think this may be a foul thing.” Be sure you investigate cross-check Refenes full blog here.

For more of our own impressions of the Steam Controller, head here.

[Source: Tommy Refenes]

Our Take
Refenes has offered some fantastic feedback here, especially for taking part in a platformer. It’s especially great to listen to from the point of view of a programmer who clearly values the standard of his input devices. Personally, i will type of see how games like shooters and and games that require precision mouse-clicking may benefit from a touchpad, but i used to be curious how twitchy games like platformers would translate. It feels like it’s better than i could have expected, but not perfect.