Valve demos Steam Controller with Portal 2, Civ 5 in video

You already know how we think the Steam Controller will work with your favorite genres. Now Valve has posted a video which shows how the adaptable gamepad handles four very different games: Portal 2, Civilization 5, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Papers, Please.


The dual trackpads can emulate a mouse or serve as a sort of D-pad-joystick hybrid, depending on which works best in any given game. The pads and all the buttons can be customized to represent keyboard and mouse commands, and Valve plans on providing recommended layouts for popular games which don't support the controller natively.

The hardware's still in beta, and it doesn't look any less strange, but it clearly works--what do you think of Valve's first step in shaking up the rigid world of video game inputs?

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.