14 DAY TRIAL // One of Super Meat Boy's developers, Tommy Refenes, tested Valve's new Steam Controller and came away pretty impressed, although he stressed that some improvements were still necessary in order to make it the best gamepad out there.
Valve surprised quite a lot of gamers from around the world last week, when it confirmed the Steam Controller, a revolutionary type of gamepad with all sorts of new technologies, such as trackpads instead of analog sticks, or haptic feedback.
Before showing off the new controller, Valve invited certain developers to try it out, including Team Meat's Tommy Refenes who shared his thoughts on his own Tumblr.
Refenes first said that he was quite picky in terms of controllers and controls, as he won't even play titles if they don't feel good. As such, he had very high expectations of the new device, particularly because of its twin touch pads.
"The big problem with touch pads/ touch screens is you never know when you are actually over a button or pressing it. Valve has tried to rectify this by having some adjustable haptic feedback fire when you press one of the circle pads. Throughout my play session the haptic feedback helped with the problem, but wasn’t enough to solve it."
In order to solve this issue, Refenes confirmed that Valve's engineers had thought of putting small nubs on the touch pads so that players can figure out where a button might be but, for now, the idea hasn't been implemented.
"The nubs I mentioned above would have solidified the platforming experience better, but again, those might get thrown in as they approach final hardware," he added.
Refenes tried out both Super Meat Boy and Spelunky, two really intensive puzzle platformers, and they both worked fine with the new Steam Controller, prompting him to say that the new device was a "great start, needs some improvements, but I could play any game I wanted with it just fine."
The Steam Controller will debut next year alongside the new Steam Machines computers.