Recent reviews by Dash Lambda

My full review ended up being too long for the Steam store, so I guess that's going up on Reddit or something. Here's the summary:

The Orange Box was the first 'game' I ever bought with my own money back in 2007, and Half-Life has been one of my favorite series ever since. I'm one of those people that was still arguing over whether or not Half-Life 3 would come right up to the announcement of Alyx, and after that announcement I felt like I was going crazy. I still might be, but let's assume I'm not.

Overall, this is the best VR game I’ve ever played. It does some things better than others and some things worse, but the complete package is just head and shoulders above anything that came before it, as far as what I’ve tried.

Like the rest of the series, this is not a Half-Life game that Valve decided to make VR exclusive. This is a VR game, intended to bring out and demonstrate the very best the technology currently has to offer, which Valve enlisted the Half-Life name and world to give form.

They didn’t make this game to hit revenue targets: It is a purely single-player, story-based, campaign shooter, with a suite of modding tools coming shortly after release. There is no recurring revenue stream, there are no leaderboards, no battle royale, no manipulative player engagement tactics, and no compromises for consoles. This game is a brand new, bleeding-edge relic of what many consider a golden age. VR or not, Combine or not, these are the games that get me excited.

[discussion of specific good and bad things is too long]

Everything taken together, this is an incredible game. It has its fair share of rough spots, but it’s impossible for something like this not to. The refinement and attention to detail it unlike anything we’ve ever gotten in a VR game prior (including Valve’s own demos), and everything about this game marks both a stark change and a return to form for Valve at the same time. This is what VR has been needing, and this is just the beginning. I look forward to everything that will follow, from Valve, from the community, and even from other companies and projects that will hopefully latch onto the ball that this game set rolling.

I've sunk a lot of hours into this game and I think I'll continue to.
They keep adding to it, sometimes improving it, sometimes screwing up, usually correcting their mistakes. The game is just constantly growing and getting better.

This game basically improves upon the original Half-Life in every way, and that's impressive. I can't wait to see what they did with Xen.

This is, in my opinion, the best gamepad available right now. It's not quite as good as a mouse and keyboard, but it's close-and it definitely beats out regular controllers in terms of precision, comfort, and versatility.

As compared to an Xbox One controller...

Pros:
-Heavily configurable and versatile.
-Far more precise.
-More comfortable (At least to me...)
-Better build quality (From what I can tell...)

Cons:
-Steep learning curve.
-A lot more work required to configure it (For now...)

And to address a few concerns I've been reading a lot...

-The build quality is very good. People have been saying that it's light and flimsy and shoddily built, but I have no idea where that's coming from. The only thing I've noticed is that the seem appears sharper than normal, but it hasn't bothered me.

-It is quite comfortable. I've heard quite a lot of people saying that it's so uncomfortable that they have to stop using after an hour, but I've played with it for more than 5 hours at a time with no problem. If it's uncomfortable for you, I'm pretty sure you're holding it wrong.

-It's very precise. Nearly every review out there says that it isn't quite as good as a regular controller for FPS games, which is weird, because my experience is exactly the opposite. I'm fairly certain that those conclusions are due to the fact that most people are used to regular controllers. As someone who was only used to a mouse and keyboard, I found the steam controller far superior for FPS and TPS games

-It's true that there's an occasional software glitch, but those are very quickly being weeded out. This controller is a very different product for Valve and a radically different concept for controllers, so you should expect bugs in the software- And you should also expect them to be actively repaired.

That being said, this is still pretty early. There are a lot of features that it doesn't have that I (and a lot of other people) would like to see soon, like multiple mode shifts, more expansive control over haptics, more options for the motion controls, access to the on-screen keyboard while in desktop, and even a rechargeable battery (Though there are two contacts under the back cover...)

So, overall, it's a great controller as it is with a lot of promises for future improvement. I'd pick it over any other controller (M/K excluded) any day.