Current Events > God damn the Steam Deck is good

(+) Yeah! (+)

Got mine the other day.

I overall like PC gaming but I do tend to find it a bit fiddly at times. Especially as someone who wants to just use a controller and jump right into a game. So I was overall expecting the Steam Deck to be similar. The thing that surprised me the most about it was how easy this thing is to use. The Steam OS is great. Loading up Decky and the plug-ins was super easy. The process of Emudeck was so incredibly simple it feels like an official integration after the initial set-up.

But most of all playing games on it is just great! It's a lot of fun trying out some old games and seeing how they look and perform. Played a few hours of GTAIV and it looks and runs great. Honestly had an easier time getting it to run here compared to my PC. Halo 2 Anniversary looks amazing. Even emulated my original Xbox favorite Deathrow and it ran incredibly well. Hitman 3 looked great on it and ran at a solid 40fps on medium which was rather surprising to me.

It's like the ultimate legacy console. Basically an all rounder handheld that can play almost anything and do a good job doing it.

I was expecting to jump between my home PC and Steam Deck but when it comes to stuff that basically runs well anyway it's probably easier to just get a dock. Especially for older games and indies.

I have a 1TB internal SSD on the way and I think I'm gonna split the partition to also run Windows on it for the Game Pass games. Just incredible the pure versatility this has. I wish all consoles were like this.

Weird ad

Hey big spender you. Wanna buy me one? You big man.

I gave mine to my brother lol

Its awesome.

Crimsoness posted...

I gave mine to my brother lol

didn't u just get it

ToasterStrudeI posted...

Hey big spender you. Wanna buy me one? You big man.

Heh I sold my old ass PSP and OG Switch model to fund the purchase

i have 4.5 TB on my steam deck lol. 1 TB internal, 3 1 TB SD cards, and 512gb.
I have a rather large steam library so I have a lot of the stuff on the go on demand, it's quite nice. And most of one of the cards is just dedicated to roms

Can you play the thing on the TV yet? I honestly dont have the patience for PC gaming, and my comfy furniture and nice TV are in another room anyway.

rexcrk posted...

Can you play the thing on the TV yet? I honestly dont have the patience for PC gaming, and my comfy furniture and nice TV are in another room anyway.

Seems pretty good now but I haven't tried it for myself outside of the one time I used it on my monitor with a cheap adapter. Didn't use it for gaming though.

rexcrk posted...

Can you play the thing on the TV yet? I honestly dont have the patience for PC gaming, and my comfy furniture and nice TV are in another room anyway.

you can get a cheap USB C dock that has an HDMI port and plug it in. simple as that

Akagami_Shanks posted...

didn't u just get it

I didn't like screwing around with Steamos

Crimsoness posted...

I didn't like screwing around with Steamos

well that was fast.. idk what you mean by screwing around though you just download games from steam and play >_>

Yeah I was surprised at how easy SteamOS was. Even gives you a heads up if there's anything like not being able to use the controller to get into the game.

Linux has come a long way. I'd be totally fine installing SteamOS on my desktop now. Biggest downside is lack of Game Pass.

Haven't had to deal with anything other than the Rockstar launcher yet though. I know EA and Ubisoft can be annoying.

yeah you have to play online for the ea launcher, i think ubi lets you bypass it. I installed stuff directly from my ubisoft launcher and it let me play them offline

Punished_Blinx posted...

Yeah I was surprised at how easy SteamOS was. Even gives you a heads up if there's anything like not being able to use the controller to get into the game.

Linux has come a long way. I'd be totally fine installing SteamOS on my desktop now. Biggest downside is lack of Game Pass.

Haven't had to deal with anything other than the Rockstar launcher yet though. I know EA and Ubisoft can be annoying.

Gabe is huge supporter of making gaming on Linux-based OS an easy and simple process.

I'm guessing EA games are better on Windows then? A bit of a shame.

Seems like GOG and Epic seem to fine with the Heroic Launcher? Haven't bothered with that yet.

lutris is probably better, i couldn't really get heroic working but go ahead and try. you can get EA games on steam deck but you just have to be online because of their stupid DRM.

It's pretty damn great. I love mines. It's pricey, but worth it imo.

What issues does it have other than the battery life? I want to get one but I'm not sure if I should just get a new PC instead.

Revelation34 posted...

What issues does it have other than the battery life? I want to get one but I'm not sure if I should just get a new PC instead.

battery life is short if you play it at full blast(you can lower its max wattage but playing AAA games at full power will get you like an hour and a half of battery life)
i wouldn't really say it has issues otherwise. Be mindful of which model you get as if you only get a 64gb internal you will be heavily limited on what you download as it stores shader caches internally, so even if you get a 1TB micro SD you will still be limited. The good news is its easy enough to upgrade and I think buying a 1TB internal SSD and replacing it yourself is cheaper than buying a 256 GB

episodes over

Akagami_Shanks posted...

battery life is short if you play it at full blast(you can lower its max wattage but playing AAA games at full power will get you like an hour and a half of battery life)
i wouldn't really say it has issues otherwise. Be mindful of which model you get as if you only get a 64gb internal you will be heavily limited on what you download as it stores shader caches internally, so even if you get a 1TB micro SD you will still be limited. The good news is its easy enough to upgrade and I think buying a 1TB internal SSD and replacing it yourself is cheaper than buying a 256 GB

If I get it I'm only getting the expensive one. So it's $700 vs $1200-2000 PC.

Revelation34 posted...

If I get it I'm only getting the expensive one. So it's $700 vs $1200-2000 PC.

why only the expensive one?

Akagami_Shanks posted...

why only the expensive one?

It has the best specs and the most storage space.

Seems cool for emulating and some modern games, but also in a year or two it'll barely be able to run modern games if not at all. I wouldn't drop more than $250 on it because of that.

If they'd just shrink it down, holy shit. It'd be perfect if it was the Vita's size.

Revelation34 posted...

It has the best specs and the most storage space.

if you're talking about the anti glare screen, it's not worth paying much extra. You can just upgrade the 64gb EMMC to a 1tb 2230 SSD for maybe slightly more expensive than the 256gb model if you know how to work a screwdriver, which i assume you do if you're considering getting a PC instead

Akagami_Shanks posted...

if you're talking about the anti glare screen, it's not worth paying much extra. You can just upgrade the 64gb EMMC to a 1tb 2230 SSD for maybe slightly more expensive than the 256gb model if you know how to work a screwdriver, which i assume you do if you're considering getting a PC instead

Nah I don't have those kind of skills. I would fuck something up somewhere if I was building my own.

I've found mine to be awesome for PS4 era and down stuff. If a game is too demanding, I'll run moonlight on my main PC and have a near seemless experience. I've been playing RDR2 on my living room TV maxed at 1440p recently and it's been a hoot.

Sucks valve hates half the world and wont release or support it anywhere

They'd probably love to but they don't want to fuck up royally on what could be their next multi billion dollar investment. Hopefully they'll expand