Probably the single most-argued argument in all of gaming is the silly, ill-formed rivalry between the console gamepad and the PC mouse and keyboard. It’s a bogus distinction to make, like asking whether spreadsheets are better than graphs — they are different ways of doing similar things. Still, there is one undeniable downside of the keyboard and mouse, and that is that you have to use a keyboard and mouse, regardless of where you want to play. With the touchpads-instead-of-analog-sticks Steam Controller, has Valve successfully bridged the gap between the precision of a mouse and the comfort of a controller? Well, it depends who you ask.

In its latest video, Valve shows the Steam Controller in action for the first very time so we can start to see how its features might actually come together. The demonstration, which is promised to be the first of several about the controller, features gameplay from Portal 2, Civilization 5, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and an indie game called Papers, Please. These represent a nice cross-section of different control schemes, from the twitchy FPS controls of Counter-Strike to the Windows-like mouse pointing of Civilization, and the controller seems to do at least fairly well with all of them. The video shows minimal lag and a good variety of input options, but it focused primarily on the trackpads. The programmable buttons at the center of the controller went unaddressed, and in fact never displayed anything at all.

View the whole video below to see for yourself.

As we already knew, the Steam Controller allows each of the touchpads to be configured separately; this means that one can act like a joystick and calculate player input as the thumb’s distance from the center, while the other acts like a trackpad and follows absolute finger position only. Each has its uses in different games — for instance most Civilization players will likely want to set up both sides as simple trackpads, one for panning the camera and one for moving the mouse. On the other hand, console shooter fans can use simulated double-joysticks for running and aiming in the style of Halo.

It’s the PC shooter fans who are (predictably) the most skeptical about the controller’s ability to provide a good enough experience. Watching both Portal and Counter-Strike, many gamers noted that large view swings like a 180-degree turn could only be achieved with multiple swipes of the thumb. Though Valve will unquestionably allow players to adjust the sensitivity of the pads, one wonders why the controller’s first video wouldn’t show such precision if it were possible. Could the pad be too small to allow accurate aiming over a full 360 degrees in just a single swipe of the thumb? To some, that question is all-important in deciding whether this could ever potentially threaten the mouse for PC shooters.

The controller is still a long way out from release, however, and the fine-tuning that will define its last few months of development will surely change its functionality quite a bit. Particularly, pointer acceleration could play a prominent role in taming twitchy FPS games — that is, changing the sensitivity depending on the speed and size of the swipe. This would allow both large and minute adjustments, but it does take some getting used to. And if there’s one thing PC shooter fans don’t want to do, it’s adjust to anything different.

The inclusion of Papers, Please was interesting, since it highlights the biggest strength of Steam Machines in general: indie games. The PC is the most open platform for developers of small, simple-to-control games, while consoles are the most accessible way for players to consume them. Combining the two was supposed to be the Ouya’s job, but with that disaster quickly fading in the rear-view it’s the catalog of Steam and the fidelity of the Steam Controller that look like they could combine to realize that goal. Even if the pads are too cumbersome for the top 5% of shooter players, that still leaves any number of players hungry for a living room solution.

Now read: Steam Box: Valve abuses its gamer goodwill to bet big on a bad idea