Gadgetory

hey how's it going guys this is Dave TD and about a month ago I made a video on the Alienware steam machine but it's kind of like an overview of the product it wasn't the review or anything it was kind of like a first look at what the Alienware steam machine was but I've had it for a month now I've been playing it pretty frequently like basically every evening or weekend that I have a chance to and I want to share with you guys my experiences with this device after having for a month so I thought I'd make a video here it is now the defining feature of the steam machine is the controller there's a lot of hype when the control is being developed but initial reviews of the controller were pretty mixed now after using it for a month I actually think it's a really good controller it takes time to get used to it so if you're coming from a ps4 or an Xbox controller everything about the steam controller feels wrong and it just feels unresponsive but it's really just a matter of getting used to it my favorite thing about it is the haptic feedback on it there's a mechanism in here that feels really cool and it gives a unique character to the steam controller it's kind of hard to describe in words but basically if you move your thumb around really quickly it vibrates quickly and if you move around slowly it vibrates slowly so the feedback feels really deliberate and it just makes the controller feel really responsive when you're used to it the four button inputs like the ABXY buttons those took a little bit longer to get used to at first I was really frequently hitting the wrong buttons but after the second week I got used to it and it's no longer an issue but if you try it at first and your immediate thought is like wow these buttons are poorly placed they're a little different but you will get used to them over time as for how well it controls games it depends entirely on the game itself so even after a month of playing shooters on this thing I never got comfortable with it I would do way better on a mouse and keyboard than the steam controller so a game like Team Fortress 2 it's an awesome game with the mouse and keyboard and if you play the sniper with the controller it's still playable especially when you suck like I do and you just camp but certain classes like the engineer I just found it really hard to play it because instead of having the wrench and the weapons on jaquise you have to cycle through them and it's just really difficult for me to get used to the controller and the same thing goes with MOBAs like - its playable like way more playable than you might imagine with a controller but gameplay still feels really crippled and just as a courtesy I played a lot of bot matches for the first week just to get used to the controller and then I started playing some unranked matches with random players and it was just a show like everyone I played with was a raging on me and I'm pretty bad at dota 2 to begin with but using the controller just took it to the next level it doesn't matter how comfortable you get with controller I think movas were designed for Madison keyboard other games like adventure games or platformers or puzzle games those play really well so this is mark of the ninja and it's a game that I've always liked but I just found it really difficult to play with the keyboard so I never got far in it but playing on the steam controller was really cool and the whole game felt nice I think platformers in general are going to play really nicely on the steam controller because the directional controls are good and the inputs are just going to feel really snappy and then there's portal or portal 2 rather and if you don't know what it is portal is a game that's kind of like a puzzle game that you play in first-person and despite having like the first-person controls like a shooter it plays really well I think it actually plays almost as nicely as a keyboard and mouse so basically as long as your game doesn't need really snappy movements or directional controls the controller is great but if you do need really quick d-pad movements and you might have a bad time the selection of steamos games is pretty good and if you want to you can stream non steamos games from your PC or Mac so this game is called Bastion and I could have played this on steamos but it's actually one of the few games I have that run on Mac and it's trained really nicely from a MacBook Pro without any problems now obviously it runs at the performance of the host computer so you need a decent computer to do this but yeah the tech works pretty well the single-player experience is pretty solid like the controller isn't ideal for certain games but the performance of the machine itself was always surprisingly good like it's just a very fluid game experience at 1080p even with the core i3 now I also did some multiplayer gaming with some friends they didn't want to be on camera so I don't have footage but playing the split-screen Awesomenauts it's something I've never done before and when you play with your friends in front of a TV it's a really fun experience there aren't a ton of games that have this kind of single screen multiplayer thing but there's some really good ones out there ok some closing thoughts I think the big question is whether or not it's worth it to get the Alienware steam machine and to answer that question I have to bring up the sister product so Alienware makes something called the ELN where alpha which is very similar in specs and price to the steam machine except there's two differences one it's got an Xbox controller instead of the steam controller and secondly it's running Windows instead of steam OS so the first reaction that I had was why would anyone get this over this over the alpha like the steam machine is just a more constricted version the alpha has more potential you can use it as like a secondary PC you can play more games on it because it's not just restricted to steam OS games so why would people get the steam machine over the alpha and after using both of them pretty extensively I can say one thing it all boils down to simplicity traditionally consoles are like very simple you go up to your TV turn on your console and within seconds you're playing your game at least with like Sega Genesis nowadays is a little bit slower but in general very simple with the Alpha you're running a second layer software that you come to deal with before you can play your games which is Windows and for most people I mean most people that will be watching my youtube channel that's not a big deal because you understand your computer pretty well you just boot up your thing deal with Windows before you deal with steam and that's fine but there's a lot of people that just want a very simple steam experience they want to be able to play steam games just like that and that's what this thing offers if you already have like a PC that has like steam machine you have a big Steam library I would definitely not get the Alpha because it's basically like a gimped version of your computer this thing however gives you a very unique experience it's not like a completely different gaming experience but it's like a very different feel from just your computer in front of the TV it's a real it's like a console it's like a steam console and I think they did a really good job with that but if you're looking for like a customizable gaming experience with like you know better frame rates and all that jazz go with the alpha or go with your PC but if you're looking for something simple and just straight-up boot up and go go with the steam machine it's pretty cool device that's the end of this review hope you guys liked it thumbs if you did subs if you loved it it's been nice I'll see you guys next time you