Do you like Steam Deck the best?
A reader is excited about Valves Steam Deck, who explain the many games and parts that he has access to on the move.
I have lived through a love of portable game consoles for nearly 20 years. Because of the desire to play my game with the Commodore 64 in the 80s, I am late to the party with handhelds. As much as I love shiny new gadgets, I was never interested in the stripped down experiences that the Game Boy and their ilk seemed to offer. When I finally fell in love with a PSP, I was delighted.
No, I’ve been hooked. That the ability to play games such as Grand Theft Auto: City Stories, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Star Wars: Battlefront anywhere that I pleased was a revelation.
However, I’ve never fully understood the underlying cause of a handheld console holding a big stake in my heart. Like many gamers, I shoot for the best, 5K on huge screens, 60fps, Dolby Atmos surround sound, SSDs, and the best graphics. Why? It’s the only way to the immersion, because I tell myself. But relying on a handheld belies this all. While the immersion on a screen, that has the darkness, is different but equally intense.
I had a few DS consoles (which, as I don’t do, weren’t so much use of them), the PS Vita (which was a painful well of unfulfilled promise) and the Switch. And the Switch was the first thing that let me see a lot of real consoles on the go. It was not interested in a first-party line-up (other than Zelda: Breath Of The Wild), and on promise of a future success, especially to Skyrim, The Witcher, and L.A. Noire; and on promise that the Switch is getting in and doing that promise, albeit in a muddy, somewhat slow manner, and ultimately with the confines of a limited library.
Since the summer 20, 21 years ago, Valve opened its reservation for the Steam Deck. The idea was that it wouldn’t be just a console on the go, but a fully-fledged PC. I was happy to put down my 4 reservation. I’ll see what the review turned out when it finally got out of place.
Those reviews were very interesting. I felt very excited and spent five months waiting for the unit to be delivered. My gaming life sank a little.
It is a heavy device. I thought the switch was pretty big, but that’s what’s quite an investment. It is safe to hold for extended periods of time, and the controls are very well designed. The two trackpads are impressive, and the fact that it has analog triggers made me excited to get the first chance of using a portable for a good driving game. The screen is very sharp. It doesn’t look like it’s OLED, it’s also bright and crisp. When I was watching gaming, my fingers slipped off the analog sticks. Eventually, I bought a five-minute telegram in order to make things a lot bigger.
I got used to playing the new toy, so I had several scary moments. It didn’t look like the face button was on at first (I don’t know why but the face buttons didn’t work when I tried to play my first game, Valves Aperture Desk Job, a fun introduction to the Steam Deck) and I accidentally stuck a memory card inside the slot. But all of these problems were fixed quickly. However, they remind me that I used a very old device, so I should adjust my expectations (and frustrations) accordingly.
As a first step towards receiving the Steam Deck, I built up my Steam library. Previously, the games I bought on Steam were either unavailable or suitable for the PlayStation or Xbox. Thus I went on a spending spree and bought the games that I loved and would like to revisit on a handheld. I purchased a lot of furniture. The game consists of Fallout 4 and Fallout: New Vegas, Batman: Arkham Games, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes, Deus Ex: Human Evolution and Mankind Divided, DiRT 2,2 and GTA 5, and Middle-earth: Shadow Of War.
The kicker is that I bought these in the same way that I didn’t buy one other new AAA console. Between Steam and the Fanatical and Humble Bundle, it’s a treat for a console gamer to discover the amazing deals on offer for PC gamers.
I thought I should also have at least a few more new titles. So I pumped up the F1 22 arcture and Spider-Man remastered.
Once I began to put up the games and proceeded to play from the comfort of the sofa, a constant grin turned around me. I was surprised to find so many fun that I was having, and my wife wondered wholeheartedly why I had a strange expression on my face. Metal Gear is in a cafe. Those who were sick of a fall are woken up. F1 22 wherever I liked it.
There was then an emulation. I installed a few of my old games: the first and second versions, The Elder Scrolls (4: Oblivion), The PlayStation 3, The Solid: Peace Walker, Resistance: Fall Of Man, Dragon Age Origins, Final Fantasy Tactics: War of The Lions. This process can in fact be a bit unpredictable, but for me, it’s more enjoyable than for me, and with its endless gush of nostalgia, it has an enormous value.
And the controls? They just worked. It is unlikely that gaming games are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to emulation on the steam deck. If you enjoy a gaming platform, then if it turns out that you’ll probably like to play. Man can believe it.
Should we play in a remote setting? Covered. I set up the Steam Deck and then stream a few games from my PlayStation 5 and Steam library; and Microsoft have introduced the device into the platform, providing a means for Xbox cloud games. It’s also not far-fetched to imagine that Microsoft could also make their full Xbox service available for Steam Deck in the future, considering that Phil Spencers is concerned with a service rather than a console, Xbox as a service, and not as a console.
With a tip from a GC reader a few years ago, I introduced rockstar and origin launchers with ease, using simple guides online; so my Steam deck has a copy of Mass Effect Legendary Edition that I listened free on and downloaded free.
Steam deck available now, sort of (pic: valve)
Emboldened by my success with console games, I decided to go for a bit and try some mouse-driven strategy games. I didn’t play with the trackpad, so I didn’t know how used they were to be. I installed XCOM 2 and Civilization 6. So, the Steam deck sailed to the ground again with flying colours. The Steam deck has many options, the control-wise (including a gyroscope and four rear or rear assignable buttons) and a very active community that does not have a chance of finding a solution.
And, of course, games and any other style have plenty of very tiny text, so Valve have developed a handy zoom tool that is also very easy to use, and it is one of many very useful and easy-to-use shortcuts (including a virtual keyboard, for example) that ensures that playing is effective fun.
This type of supply and understanding explains the concept of Valves’s approach to the Steamdeck since the launch in February. Their progress was improved and updated with gusto. They are obviously listening to the customer and often rolling out new features. It’s also worth it to mention that their game verification system is very conservative. Even though many of the games I listed above are considered a deck, quite a few are tagged as Playable or Unsupported by Valve, but that has not stopped me and countless other users from enjoying them all with surprising ease.
The magic that allows the Steam deck to make that happen is almost impossible to overstate. It works on Steam, which uses Arch Linux as a base. Most games on Steam (and anywhere else in the PC world) are made for Windows. Valve, together with Codeweavers, have developed Proton, a compatibility layer that allows Windows to play on Linux. I find performance astonishing as a software engineer. The newly released games like Spider-Man or F1 22 play perfectly on a Linux device held with hands.
Despite this, there is a less positive side, a inevitable bump. PC games have to run with a multitude of hardware, with a wide variety of drivers, and are therefore complex beasts. A recent patch to GTA 5 caused a lot of problems with its Steam Deck version. The other week, F1 22 disappeared from the Steam Deck after the update 1.09. A few things exist, in the Windows game world, robbing Peter to pay Paul, if something has been broken or a lot of fun.
PC gamers’ often accustomed to these frustrations as long as they do, but in the future, they’re not exposed to them much more. The good news is that Valve is constantly listening and, given the large, increasing Steam Deck userbase, we will have to imagine that the software houses are too. Insomniac, which issued its most recent patch notes for the PC version of Spider-Man, explicitly mentioned the patch corrections for the Steam Deck. As the userbase grows, the support will follow.
The new miracle toy has a big problem, however, so fast it’s battery life. Taking a bus to play Spider-Man is useless. My computer, as well as many other Steam Deck owners, usually runs at 40 m/s at peak capacity and eats a bit less power. While the tweaks and the settings are tuned down a bit, I expect less than two hours on the go from Spider-Man.
In return, a 30,000 mAh battery makes that juice much longer, so I can eat only three times the time I want to, so it is worth noting that in less intensive games, it’s better still if they’re not able to give that juice a long time. Batman: Arkham City, for example, can let me beat up bad guys for more than double its web-slinging counterpart, and if youre just happy tootling and likes of Stardew Valley, then you’ll probably be a long time away.
Truth is, yet I rarely stand the battery issue, because I spend 90 % of my time with the water plugged in. I play it in almost every room in the house (yeah, I’m that guy). Now I’ve started to use the thorny habit to play every night in bed. Then, the fire has been rationed since the Steam Deck has a night mode so that there is no sleep disruption issue. With Valve havent provided any mode to prevent me from shooting characters in the head or driving cars at over 200mph, however, I opt for gentler games that I wouldn’t have tried otherwise. Dear Esther and What Remains Of Edith Finch are the slower paced title that I will allow myself after hours.
One of the biggest problems with the purchase of Steam Deck is how much it has revitalized my love for games that I have already played. Yes, I make every effort to make use of new titles. But it does take perseverance to turn down a few hours in the worlds of Fallout, Batman, Elder Scrolls, or Deus Ex for a paltry few. I am fascinated by the sheer breadth of what has currently been offered by people every day. I installed a 1TB Micro SD card on 256GB deck, and I already have too much to play.
(On that note, it is worth mentioning that I’m completely happy that I opted for the 256GB version. I’m grateful to learn that the read times are not high on the external drive and it’s proved true after study. I would like a professional user of my Steam Deck to tell what was stored locally and what was stored on the card, and if I wanted to, I could always run a game on the SSD that would benefit from the slightly quicker loading time. Swapping cards is, thankfully, an easy option.
Since I haven’t yet explained that, the Steam Deck is my favourite part in the story. In the past few weeks I felt like the best Christmas has come early and no signs of passing as soon as I think. Since I had a passion for portable gaming for two decades, the X Factor has grown to become the Steam Deck.
A new level of immersion that I’ve always enjoyed using handheld equipment has been elevated to a slicker level, as I now have to carry there far more than a huge scale and depth of games. Valve truly made magic happen, and now that’s just the beginning.
By reader Stevie Barrett (Stevie Barrett gamertag/stevie_buzz PSN ID/steviebuzz Steam ID)
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