PC gamer obviously.

I decided to replace my XBOX One controller because the material over the thumbsticks has stripped away, leaving them bare and slippery, and the triggers get stuck in the down position. Hence, title. I’m cataloging my thoughts. inb4 I’m a whiny loser. You don’t have to read any of this! But these are honest, frustrated at time, thoughts, and they may help others deciding on a controller. Here we go.

DualSense

It feels like this controller has the most potential, and yet it’s kind of a nightmare on PC. First of all, the lack of support. Steam tries its best on its own, but sometimes gets it really wrong. For instance, RDR2 and AC6 worked basically out of the box (caveat coming later), but Hades was all wonky - the button mappings were all shifted around.

Ok, well in comes DS4Windows to the rescue right? Well, at first it didn’t recognize my controller, despite it having recognized a previous DualSense controller I was borrowing. I updated the software and then it started working. So not a huge deal, but this is a case in point - you’re relying on 3rd party software to work. Now, DS4Windows is great software, no doubt about it, but it’s not perfect, and adds an extra chink in the chain.

There’s other 3rd party software called DualSenseX. It’s pretty cool in a way, it emulates XBOX input, which solves some issues, but there’s still that caveat I mentioned earlier…

Finally, you can run the controller wired to your PC. As I’m a living room gamer, this pretty much sucks, and I’d need to buy an exceptionally long cord to do it for real. Annoyingly, every time I plug it in, Windows decides, oh, the DualSense speaker should be the default output! So all sound gets routed through there. I can reselect my TV speakers but I don’t know how to change the annoying default behavior. But*,* wired is how you get the most support for your DualSense. Not only is 3rd party software not needed, but the haptics come alive. Haptics is a big selling point of this controller, and on PC you need to be wired to experience them (on the handful of games that support them). And this is the issue I’ve been dancing around…

…see, wired gives the best haptics experience. Using DS4Windows is second best. You don’t get the immersive haptics, but you get a good, standard rumble. However, without DS4Windows, the rumble becomes ridiculous. It’s set to full blast all the time. Every little rumble is full blast. This is how I first experienced the controller. I remember comparing it to the 8bitdo’s smooth, subtle rumble, and thought the DualSense rumble was more like an angry hornet’s nest. It’s really not pleasant in most situations. You can tell it feels off, uncalibrated. There’s a reason games trigger different rumble levels. With DS4 it seems to be a steady rumble level as well, just toned down a notch, set somewhere in the middle. So still not responsive, but at least it’s not angry bees. Wired is hands down the best way to use this controller.

Another point: my god are the start and select buttons horrible. My fingers can barely find them. This becomes really annoying in a game like RDR2, where I’m constantly pulling up the map with a long press of the start button. It’s stupidly hard to find compared to on the XBOX or the 8bitdo controllers. The DS4 had the same problem.

One last point: turning it off is annoying. You have to sit there for a good 10 seconds with your finger on the button for it to turn off. And turning it off is super important because the battery life on these things is really not great. Compare that to what, 6 seconds on the Xbox controller? I don’t even know, because I turn mine off by opening up the battery back, and fidgeting a battery in and out, and closing it back up. I do that in about 3 seconds.

8bitdo Ultimate

The ergonomics aren’t great for my hand. The near right angels of the hand holds compared to other brands doesn’t seem to work for me. And it’s quite uncomfortable to use all shoulder buttons at a time, which is basically a requirement in AC6 (though granted there aren’t many other games where this would be a problem).

Also, if I don’t like using all 4 shoulder buttons at once, maybe that’s where the back paddles come to the rescue, right? Wrong. The 8bitdo software where you can map those buttons is buggy and gross. The UI literally doesn’t fit onto my screen. I messed with Windows resolution scaling which made it better but still not perfect. I could maybe adjust display resolution settings and tinker more to get it all to appear, but it’s ridiculous to have to do that to use a basic piece of software. It’s literally game breaking - I can’t remap the back paddles because the UI cuts off. Also, there was some weird messaging, like “quit this software to keep using this controller when done” ok? But after unplugging, I couldn’t load up the user profile I just created. You could chalk it up to user error, but I’m pretty tech savvy, and after the whole rest of the experience of trying to use their software, I feel it’s not up to snuff, and not a great experience. Controllers should be pretty plug and play. Heck, it was easier to hack the Windows registry to change keyboard keys around than it was to use this software.

Also, stick drift! That’s right. One huge selling point of this controller is the lack of stick drift due to the magnet tech. Well, turns out magnets need electricity, and every time your battery gets low, the stick drift goes off the charts. To me this is a huge defect; this is way more disruptive than getting stick drift after several years of play.

XBOX Series

Honestly it’s similar enough to the XBOX One that I figured I’d like it the best. And yet, I really dislike it, mainly because it’s basically the same controller except for the next issue:

ALL of these controllers are so rough! Who decided that gamers wanted to feel like they’re gripping sandpaper for hours on end? The DualSense is the smoothest, coming close to the XBOX One controller, but still rough compared to the DS4.

Well, that’s about it for now. I can’t say at all which I’d like to be my daily driver. TBH, my old XBOX One controller with the bare thumbsticks may be my favorite. If it ain’t broke… and it’s still superior, why fix it?