Portal 2 Steam Deck controls - not great :(

[Patrick]

Okay, so I just got my Steam deck. I tried Portal, loved it. Tried Aperture Desk Job, it was great (and specifically made for Steam Deck). But I tried Portal 2 and it was not as great.

First of all, the controls in Portal 2 moved from Portal 1, meaning you have to press completely different keys to do stuff. Including core keys. Like for example the triggers to place portals now use and ping, and the portal ones moved down. Everything else moved as well.

In Portal, you could look around either via the right joystick, the trackpad, or by tilting the Deck while pressing look. In Portal 2, you can only do the first one. You can't look around any other way. Which makes precise positioning very difficult if not impossible. And it's not like they're using them for something else, they just .... do nothing.

Also, the keys are pretty arbitrary and weird. And a lot of them are repeated. Many things, even obscure things like crouching or zooming, have two or more ways to do them. Using items (using is important, but still) has FIVE different ways to do it. Do we really need FIVE different ways to use items? "Well, what's the problem with this?" It comes at the cost of keys we need. I tried out the splitscreen. I pressed every button and there was no option to switch to the other player. I looked at the options and nothing there either. It seemed there was no option to switch.

Also, it came at the cost of having keys consistent. Using and pinging were both functionality already done elsewhere, so why couldn't we have had those for placing portals like Portal 1 does?

And the trackpads do nothing. Moving them around doesn't do anything even though it looked around in Portal 1, and clicking them will either use item or pause the game, both of which were duplicated with other functionalities.

It looks like the core of this problem is the use key:
* The keys changed to have more use keys
* Trackpads were removed to have use keys
* We can't look how we want because of the use key

Valve, please:
* Make the keys be consistent
* Have all keys and let us look how we want
* Don't add unnecessary keys at the cost of removing important ones

Also please lower portal 2 to playable rating given these ratings:
* "Some functionality is not accessible when using the default controller configuration, requiring use of the touchscreen or virtual keyboard, or a community configuration"
* "This game sometimes shows mouse, keyboard, or non-Steam-Deck controller icons"

[Clone303]

you know you self can chance all the keys right?

[TurboHog]

Just.... change the controller layout, my friend.

[SIR1U5]

Originally posted by TurboHog:

Just.... change the controller layout, my friend.

Instead of this as lots having issues with this,

Elaborate ?

Change the layout how? As OP said, game has mapped the same press to various inputs on the controller

[invision2212]

i played through this game a few times on steam deck and never had an issue with it

[RSebire]

Portal 3 when?

[TheKrapfcat]

unless you are willing to use only games that support controllers and use the default gamepad layout, a lot of PC games will have either no controller support or an afterthought, and while there is a WASD layout it's more suited for an FPS than anything else.
my suggestion is to try and experiment a bit with Steam input, it's very easy to learn the basic and it allows you to pretty much do whatever you want, like your problem with having the portal buttons swapped, it would probably take less than a minute to fix

[Patrick]

Originally posted by SIR1U5:

Originally posted by TurboHog:

Just.... change the controller layout, my friend.

Instead of this as lots having issues with this,

Elaborate ?

Change the layout how? As OP said, game has mapped the same press to various inputs on the controller

Well, you *can* change what buttons do what in the Steam Deck settings, but that doesn't really change the point-- the default settings should be good, or at least consistent, out of the box. After all, this is a Valve game on Valve hardware. Shouldn't they set a good example?