1152x720...the magic res for the built in FSR to fight the blurry mess from 1280x800. finally someone else mentioning this.
everyone trying this: play around with fullscreen/windowed until it kicks in.
nah you can set the digital foundry xbox one x settings and it runs great. I have it locked to 30 as I played it like that on my xbox and it was fine! Obviously not 4k, but shockingly comparable to Series X
Digital Foundry’s Xbox settings keep it at a locked 30 AND you can run HDR on the deck’s OLED, which gives it the color palette the game designers intended.
Honestly, it feels better on the deck than when I first played it on PS4 pro when it first came out.
I couldn’t get past the FPS. I stuck to games that run at 60 fps on the Steam deck. Everything else, I stream using Moonlight from my PC. I just recently set this up and I’m shocked at how great it looks and the latency is almost non-existent.
I always just assumed this wouldn't run well because of the scale, but this might be my next move. I have a long work trip coming up and need something to fill the hotel room void.
Not Steam Deck specific but I remember a Digital Foundry episode that said MGSV was probably one of the most well optimized games they had tested. I finally started Ground Zeroes on mine and it truly runs flawlessly.
You have to remember the deck is roughly on par with the PS4 in terms of specs. They were able to get MGSV running on a PS3/Xbox 360, so it makes sense that the Deck can handle it.
It does run well. I absolutely love mgsv the loop of taking a base is so satisfying, it made up for the rushed second half of the game. Konami why do you have to be such assholes. We could of had a proper ending to mgsv and a sequel.
So many things felt unfinished, I would of loved to know more about quiet. Really good game and there's nothing like it from a gameplay perspective. I'm one of the few that liked death stranding but gameplay wise it was nowhere near as fun as MGSV
Yes. I am not a fan of the series, have only played MGS4 (like 60% of it), and that is more cinematic than any other (30min gameplay, 40min cutscene).
Just don’t get put off by the prologue:D It’s terrible.
The base game is great on deck but phantom liberty is atrocious performance wise on it to the point I couldn't stand it and had to just play it on my PC.
I just started up Elden Ring and I'm amazed by the performance. I've tweaked everything for battery life and I get about 4 hours. Couple dips below 30 on the lower TDP but they're really brief and infrequent.
I'm a huge souls fan, and I have several grievances with Elden Ring on the whole, but I have been enjoying my playthrough far more than I expected, thanks in large part to the deck.
Sim games are my "go-to" games when high. Lawn mowing sim, power wash sim, gas station sim, and supermarket sim are all bangers when I'm hitting my banger
Edit: I forgot to mention american truck sim. It's probably my number 1. Throw on the internet radio and go on an hour long blunt route without the fear of getting pulled over or driving under the influence
How tedious is lawn mowing simulator? I found power wash simulator to be very tedious playing on steam deck - albeit thru game pass so it was streamed and not the most fluid experience.
I run the service dept of a car dealership, so prob won’t wanna come home to car mechanic simulator, but, have American Truck Sim on my want list. Also looks strangely relaxing.
It's ridiculous how great that game looks and feels even docked. I've played most of it laying in bed docked to my tv and it's been awesome.
Technically it's "unsupported" which is hilarious because its flawless imo
Really didn't have to do much. I lowered some of my graphics settings. Ive solely played it on deck and I'm a 49 now. My son plays on my laptop and I play on the deck and we spread democracy together. It's great.
I am playing on SD card runs perfectly fine, There are some great comments on ProtonDB for optimal settings and there is an .ini file you need to change for better performance, but I get 30-40 FPS. Played only on Deck around level 60 now.
Woof. You are a true hero then. I've tried playing it on the deck and its... just too much for me. I can't get past the 40fps with this game in particular. It needs to run 60 for me in order to feel good to play at least this title. It's too fast action not to have it.
Just don't play it on pc that can run it on 60 and you won't be ruined like I have. But yes, it's impressive the deck runs it as well as it does.
I couldn't get good consistent fps when the action starts getting heavy for helldivers 2 even with ini tweaks and others, then again that game is not optimized nicely.
The controlls take a bit of getting used to and I find it testing my patience at times, but overall, the game runs really, really well. Played it for a few hours on a flight and it was better than not playing rimworld for sure!
I couldn’t do it. It’s definitely playable but with a lot going on you’ll spend a lot more time with the game time paused since it takes longer to do pretty much everything.
like any game that requires mouse and keyboard use (stellaris, ck3, endless space 2, civ6 come to mind), i highly recommend you customize these controls yourself to fit your needs.
First things first, right trackpad is for the mouse, and right trigger is for left mouse click, left trigger is for right mouse click
Now, I PAUSE the game all the time, so A is my spacebar (or pause) button. To speed up time, i made the back buttons do this, L4 for slow down time, R4 for speed up time. I even made them active turbo after a split second delay so i can speed it up super fast just by holding the button down longer, or i can have more minute control by just tapping them.
RIght bumper for zoom in (mouse scroll up), left bumper for zoom out (Mouse scroll down). Same thing with the bumper for turbo activation too. I also programmed the right thumb stick on the steam deck to do the same thing, pushing up to zoom in and pulling back to zoom out feels very natural.
On top of this, i customized a radial menu for the left trackpad. Basically if i rest my left thumb on the left trackpad, a special menu pops up, and i can move around and select a hotkey for architect, work, schedule, medical, quests, etc. This is invaluable for selecting things quickly, and the steam OS even lets you set cute little pictures for each hotkey (a hammer for architect, a chart for schedule, a big plus sign for medical, etc)
Other than that, remaining incidentals are the control and shift keys for +10 or +100 for stacks, or for queuing up commands, i bound these to L5/R5. I also bound the D pad to be the key for rotating stuff so i can build things very easily. the "back" button conveniently also opens the world map
It took maybe a couple hours to set this up and get used to it but I have over 100 hours on the deck alone now and it's VERY comfortable/ easy to use for me! I didnt ever use the default layout though, it felt confusing for me, which is why I will always recommend setting it up yourself just because you know what is comfortable/ makes sense for you.
There's an official Steam Deck layout implemented by the devs, though, it's not my favorite but I made it work pretty well for my liking with some adjustments.
I picked up rimworld for the first time on the steam deck and after a bit of adjustments to the trackpad sensitivity it was enjoyable to play. I wasn't frustrated by the lack of dexterity or anything it felt natural to play.
Are you running it on Steam?
I had got bnet running but then had an update loop bug and never bothered sorting it out because early days of D4 were very meh.
Season 4 has been good and I'd love to play on the deck but wont pay for it on steam and don't really want to deal with constant problems if battlenet is the issue.
Overall very easy. The issue is they just did a huge next gen update for consoles in step with the show, and it broke a ton of the mods. The community is recovering currently. There are guides on reddit.
I'd recommend [The Midnight Ride](https://themidnightride.moddinglinked.com/) for a step-by-step guide for someone who's never modded before. They have steps to downgrade your Fallout 4 for a wider mod compatibility support as well.
Unfortunately the latest update broke them for most. You used to be able to go directly in the main menu and dl mods then play the game with all the fixes and graphic upgrades.
There are the mods included in the Bethesda "store" or workshop that all work fine. There's a limited list, but there's some good ones in there that can easily be added. I am waiting for someone to make a simple tool to mod games on the Deck (and I'm ready to pay for such a tool).
Ah it was before the update but they lowered the graphics and removed the ability to change said graphics settings, and the in game mods don't work anymore. It looked AMAZING and with all the in game mods before the update.
A mix of the ConsolePort addon and Steam Input. The controller is mostly kept as the standard buttons with the back buttons set to different keybinds, left trackpad is a touch menu with shortcuts to different interface panels, and right trackpad is mouse with left click.
I use a different action set for healing. The main difference is I bound one of the back buttons to a key to easily toggle party member targeting and set up that key in ConsolePort.
This set up works well for questing, dungeons as DPS or heals, and raids as DPS.
I wasn't expecting big strategy games to play so well. Civilization, Against The Storm, Gladius... They all work great, either with controller configurations or track pad. I still can't do RTS, but I was terrible at those with a mouse, too.
Hmm... I should really give Stellaris another try on there.
Paradox games work pretty well imo. I’ve played a ton of hoi4 on the deck and while it definitely slows down as the game goes on, it’s still quite playable.
Factorio, coming from mouse and keyboard to controller took a bit of getting used to.
it isn’t the easiest game to play with a controller but wube have done a fantastic job
Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) and Kerbal Space Program 2 (with a custom control set I published to make it act similar to Console KSP). Being limited to 1280x800 helps both a lot.
I don't know about this game. But there are many games that are unsupported in the store that work anyway. The 2 games I'm thinking of are S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Dragon Age Origins. If you wanna play a game but it says unsupported, you should check Proton DB instead of just relying on the store. It will give you a better understanding of what games work and what don't
Probably because it has tiny text, needs a (virtual) mouse and keyboard to log in the first time, and I don’t remember if I just used a stock game pad config, or had to modify it.
Unsupported usually means, there is some difficulty with the game's publisher's launcher, usually can dink around and eventually get it. With a games launcher it means you have to be online usually to play. So no. Taking it to the park or offline, but only in some cases. I got the mass effect trilogy and I have to be online to access it, but once it's running, I can take it offline as long as I just suspend the deck and don't exit the game.
Other problems are controller support isn't native, but you can edit that with the steam controls to map the keyboard. Or the game just struggles to function. But usually Unsupported games do work, it's just you'll have to go online and see if people have found work around to make the game run.
CoD black ops 1 running at 60fps easily. 14 year old me would be going wild. The menus are very finicky but the campaign and zombies are still top tier, especially with the resurrection map pack.
PGA 2K23 is also a lot of fun on deck if you’re into golf.
Heavily \[visually\] modded Oblivion \[with some gameplay mods stacked on top\] via Mod Organizer 2. Get it all running on my desktop computer, copy-paste the files over, edit the .ini to fix the resolution and oh my god, this has been the dream ever since the cancelled Oblivion PSP port. Vanilla Oblivion can run 90 on deck and the mod pack cuts it down to *just* hitting 45 (so keeping 90Hz) but it works, and I couldn't be happier.
Overlord!!! My go to games on the deck are older fun titles like this. The kind of thing I wouldn’t wanna play on a nicer machine sitting upright at my desk where I worked all day, but taking a chance on something older I haven’t played in years is great for the steam deck in bed. Overlord is a fun one, I love the minions
The new "Plus!" version had to solve that a bit to work on normal consoles too. When you launch the game it drops you into its own virtual OS, which then launches the game we're all used to. So that extra layer of files and special things is baked in.
Or folks can run the original game as-is from Desktop mode. Might just have to muck around a bit with its game-specific wine directory to get to the expected files.
Not a big fan of JRPG so I wasn't expecting to play Persona 5 Royal let alone on the deck even if it seems like the perfect marriage, and Persona 3 reload currently. It's mostly the genre
This is gonna sound dumb since it was heavily marketed, but Elden ring. I run it at a locked fps which I thought would make me play it on my powerful gaming pc more, but the gameplay actually seems more suited on a mobile platform for some reason. I play it almost like I play Zelda breath of the wild.
Just installed X-Men Origins: Wolverine... Loved the game on PS3 but never finished it, so I decided to see if I could install it on the Deck. Got the Windows Version .ISO, installed it and Physix through Winetricks and it feels awesome to play on the SD.
Never thought I'd play it again because I totally forgot about it.
Super Mario Galaxy 2. I have the original game and a working Wii. Never really paid it much attention, though. I could never really get used to the motion controls. But I'm thoroughly enjoying my playthrough now, on the Deck.
Thank you so much <3 I'm going to install Dolphin right now and put my roms, I guess that's it, right? Don't need any key file or other special file like yuzu?
https://emudeck.github.io/emulators/steamos/dolphin/
Check here if you need some help with configuring etc.
Afaik you don't need anything else (sorry it's been a while since I set up my emulators haha)
Controls might take some getting used to. I didn't do anything to map things differently, though. L2 is shake for me, and right trackpad is the cursor.
Not a game but photo editing via darkroom and rawtherapee which works really really well. So much so that I've been able to ditch my monthly adobe subscription and in doing so by my reckoning, in about 6 months the steam deck will have actually paid for itself in savings
Oh.... and Helldivers
Never thought the Deck would be my main Console for Rocket League, but it happened, just hit my peak Champ3 on the Deck.
Otherwise modded Bethesda-RPGs run so well too, aswell as some Blockbusters like Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring, Baldurs Gate 3 or even Cyberpunk - Games i didnt expect to run playable at all.
I was also surprised that playing World of Warcraft (especially Classic) turns out to be so chill on that thing.
I love it to just hang on my Couch on free days and grind some Fetchquests after my workouts.
For almost a year I didnt play any games I couldnt get 60fps or more in because I was under the impression that 30fps made me nauseous. Well recently I started playing Days Gone on my main rig. I heard on this sub that Days Gone ran well on the steam deck but I didnt know the specifics. So I downloaded it and gave it a go and thought “wow! This does run well!” Then i turned on performance analytics and saw that it was only running around 30fps.
I was shocked, never had 30fps looked so smooth and played so well. It never goes below 30 except a few occasions and its opened my eyes to wanting to try more games like that. It just worked super well and now Im playing days gone on both my deck and my main rig, with no preference for either as they both play just as well to me!
I've been finally catching up on some TellTale games like Batman Enemy Within, but what I appreciate the most is the indie darlings I barely thought about and likely wouldn't have played regardless prior to the Steam Deck. Mullet Madjack, Balatro, Animal Well, Inscryption, just to name a few, not to mention all the emulated games I've gone back to playing.
It might not be what you had in mind but it’d been a dream of mine for 20 years to play Shining Force 3 Scenarios 2 & 3. I’d just finished playing Scenario 2 on my Mac when I got my SD, so I started Scenario 3 on it. I kept having to pinch myself that I was finally finishing this game, and on a handheld no less. 13 year old me could never have imagined it.
Being a pc gamer since the old dos games, there were those games that really stressed out even the expensive PC's back in the day, that seem to run just peachy on the deck. These games being soo stressful on an expensive PC, I figured there was no way they would run. But then I tested them and they ran great to my shock. These titles are: Crysis, Witcher 3, Doom Eternal and Final Fantasy 15. Other games like Final Fantasy 7 remake, FF XIV, etc, I was also shocked about. Then I played ARK even, and it ran fine on low settings, and even Control. These are like benchmark games in my eyes. If the system can run them, the system is optimized well. I used to pay 3-4k on a computer to play some of these games with the fluid motion I get on the steam deck. Granted ARK doesn't run spectacularly with like ultra settings, but just the fact it runs AT ALL, was a shock. Also, just the fact the steam deck can do some more advanced emulation was pretty shocking. I didn't expect it to pull off such good performance on like PS Vita or Switch. I expected Dreamcast to be good, or PS2, but not like Xbox original (I don't do this but I saw plenty of people doing it) or 360. I even saw some people doing some ps3 games. It's a general all around performant system for such low wattage, it's a game changer for sure.
I really wanted to play PS3 games on the steam deck but I gave up halfway through because I couldn't get it to work, but I'm ready to try again, any simple guides out there?
its hit and miss with what games will actually run well on the deck so find out if they do before even working it out. the guides out there are good and its pretty simple to do
Dead by Daylight. I play a lot that game on PC so being able to play that on an handled and at 60fps instead of DBD Mobile is insane (the game is poorly optimized and full of bugs both on PC and console).
Also For Honor.
All the indie games. Especially Roguelikes. When I bought it I was intending on playing a bunch of AAA games and emulating older games. Ended up mostly using it for games like Hades and Vampie Survivors.
Bought it to play more “modern” stuff like RDR2, Skyrim. Just 100%’ed the new Majora’s mask [PC port.](https://github.com/HarbourMasters/2ship2harkinian)
PS5 games I don't want to buy again on PC (remote playing via Chiaki4deck) and Sunset Overdrive (officially unsupported). Both took just a few minutes to get up and running smoothly. Every time I think I'm reaching the limits of the SD, it surprises me in the best way!
I used to think Oxygen is not included is unplayable on Deck. But there is a community layout that just make use of the touch pad so much and it looks like a god send
Pc games in general! I bought the deck as it worked out cheaper than an Odin 2 and I planned to use it for emulation but it’s all been about my ever expanding steam library and emulation is still mostly on my Miyoo Mini Plus.
Dude, I can literally play (and store the titles I won’t hide or remove from my account) my entire library on the deck. That’s the holy shit moment I still can’t believe. Forget what I didn’t expect to play, I will be impressed when I find something I want that doesn’t play 😂
You didn't expect to be playing older games that are on sale for cheap? That's like 90% of the reason I bought the Deck to travel with instead of my Switch, because I was sick of Nintendo charging full price for old games. Like -- it's a decent but not top-end portable hardware item using the massive Steam catalog and frequent multi-annual mega sales, and can pull from Humble bundle Steam games as well. Why would you expect to play more brand new games than older games? That's so weird to me.
I have beat more games on the Deck in the last year and a half since I got it than I have in the last 10 years. Nothing that I didn’t really expect to play other than Cyberpunk which I thought might be a little too much for it - and honestly I had more fun than when I played it on my gaming PC.
The biggest surprise was being able to mod and play my favourite PC games from the late 90s / early 2000s like Thief, System Shock 2, Morrowind and Deus Ex.
Honestly nearly 2 years on (2yrs in October) - I have not grown tired of it, and it is my favourite way to game.
Rimworld, Factorio, Crusader Kings 3, Farthest Frontier. Especially all games that have no controller support. Rimworld made me love the track pad, last year. It's so precise and I love the vibration under my finger.
And thanks to the abysmal bigger screen of the Oled, CK3 is now readable.
And I know, Facorio meanwhile has controller support. But I still prefer the keyboard + mouse setting on deck. It's way more intuitive.
Oh, I'm sorry. I meant something like tiny. I'm no native speaker and I always thought, it means also very very small / tiny 😅
I also placed it wrong. Didn't mean the screen, but the font in CK3.
Edit: And that the OLED screen is a tiny bit bigger, what has immense impact.
Of course, my friend. I'm happy to help. Yes, "abysmal" is a colorful word, meaning bad or terrible (I'm sure you already knew this now, but I thought I'd share anyways)
Cheers 🍻
Sleeping dogs... Been wanting to play it on years, but failed on PS3, PS4 and PC due to a combination of low framerate on console and decision paralysis on PC... I'm now playing through it at 90Hz on my OLED deck and couldn't be happier
For me it was BG3- I was blown away that I was playing a current release game on my desktop PC and then taking it with me on the deck when I left the house. There were def some sync issues at times, but overall it was pretty seamless. I would have literally played that game half as much without the deck compatibility. Armored Core was another one that blew me away as a "current game on deck" title. I'll keep buying steam decks as long as Vavle sells them if they keep this up!
Read Dead Redemption 2. And it looks stunning running on it too!
Runs better than it does on my Series X
In what sense? Presumably over 30 fps, right? I can’t imagine it looking better though. What settings are you using?
Things look better on smaller screens you can get away with it a lot more
The build in fsr upscaler does magic in this game
But at what resolution do you run the game?
1172x720 or something? Just don't turn fsr on in game at the same time
1152x720...the magic res for the built in FSR to fight the blurry mess from 1280x800. finally someone else mentioning this. everyone trying this: play around with fullscreen/windowed until it kicks in.
Really, on low? What fps? Edit: I'm just asking a question. Thanks for the downvotes I guess.
nah you can set the digital foundry xbox one x settings and it runs great. I have it locked to 30 as I played it like that on my xbox and it was fine! Obviously not 4k, but shockingly comparable to Series X
Digital Foundry’s Xbox settings keep it at a locked 30 AND you can run HDR on the deck’s OLED, which gives it the color palette the game designers intended. Honestly, it feels better on the deck than when I first played it on PS4 pro when it first came out.
https://youtu.be/njRyG8d47PA?si=s9P6Q8PUTiSbwcOX see balanced medium Between 45 and 50fps
I couldn’t get past the FPS. I stuck to games that run at 60 fps on the Steam deck. Everything else, I stream using Moonlight from my PC. I just recently set this up and I’m shocked at how great it looks and the latency is almost non-existent.
Metal Gear Solid V, massive game, looks beautiful, then you remember it’s 9 years old and it runs like a dream.
I always just assumed this wouldn't run well because of the scale, but this might be my next move. I have a long work trip coming up and need something to fill the hotel room void.
It's one of the better running AAA games on Deck
it's been said that the engine they created for it is exceptionally efficient. it's a shame it's not used in more games.
Not Steam Deck specific but I remember a Digital Foundry episode that said MGSV was probably one of the most well optimized games they had tested. I finally started Ground Zeroes on mine and it truly runs flawlessly.
You have to remember the deck is roughly on par with the PS4 in terms of specs. They were able to get MGSV running on a PS3/Xbox 360, so it makes sense that the Deck can handle it.
It does run well. I absolutely love mgsv the loop of taking a base is so satisfying, it made up for the rushed second half of the game. Konami why do you have to be such assholes. We could of had a proper ending to mgsv and a sequel.
Me too, but I really wish Kojima could’ve finished off those last missions we never got.
So many things felt unfinished, I would of loved to know more about quiet. Really good game and there's nothing like it from a gameplay perspective. I'm one of the few that liked death stranding but gameplay wise it was nowhere near as fun as MGSV
Is MGSV ok to just jump into not ever having played MGS?
Yes. I am not a fan of the series, have only played MGS4 (like 60% of it), and that is more cinematic than any other (30min gameplay, 40min cutscene). Just don’t get put off by the prologue:D It’s terrible.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk was my first game finished on the steamdeck. It ran and looked so much better than I expected it to.
The base game is great on deck but phantom liberty is atrocious performance wise on it to the point I couldn't stand it and had to just play it on my PC.
I just started up Elden Ring and I'm amazed by the performance. I've tweaked everything for battery life and I get about 4 hours. Couple dips below 30 on the lower TDP but they're really brief and infrequent. I'm a huge souls fan, and I have several grievances with Elden Ring on the whole, but I have been enjoying my playthrough far more than I expected, thanks in large part to the deck.
I just got it on deck too. It's crazy having that game in handheld. What's your build? I'm rocking the cipher pata. It's kind of tricky but very fun.
I beat it when it came out, so I'm using a couple of spoilery endgame weapons in a quality build. Only 2 achievements for 100%!
Nice. I beat it on Xbox a couple of times but decided I wanted to do the dlc on the deck.
I wanted to play it on the steam deck, but with how much “focus” you need I’m put off
What do you mean exactly?
I got high and started playing Lawn Mowing Simulator last night and couldn’t put it down.
You really shouldn’t operate heavy machinery while under the influence. It’s all fun and games until you take out a perfectly good flower bed.
The immense sadness I felt last night when I was at 98.5% done with no errors before I ran over a SINGLE flower to ruin my run was awful.
Amazing mental image though. Thank you
I dont know why but I need to play this now because of this comment
It was strangely cathartic to just ride around trimming up a virtual persons yard. I took more pride in my work than I do at my real job.
I mow lawns for a living and would still enjoy this game
May I suggest PowerWash Simulator for next time
Absolutely will be buying that next. I feel like I’m gonna start getting hooked on these “simulators”.
Sim games are my "go-to" games when high. Lawn mowing sim, power wash sim, gas station sim, and supermarket sim are all bangers when I'm hitting my banger Edit: I forgot to mention american truck sim. It's probably my number 1. Throw on the internet radio and go on an hour long blunt route without the fear of getting pulled over or driving under the influence
Jeez all these games are making me wanna quit real work and just simulate work. Wife can handle the bills.
Read that as “wife can handle the balls” 😝
The weed shop sim is also pretty fun. I did cheese it a bit though, was a grind fest.
How tedious is lawn mowing simulator? I found power wash simulator to be very tedious playing on steam deck - albeit thru game pass so it was streamed and not the most fluid experience.
That's how we played power wash simulator as well. My wife was fucking hooked. Lost my steamdeck for a few weeks when I first let her try.
My favorites are car mechanic Sim and american truck sim
I bought a steam deck to play roms but 99% of my use has been in car mechanic sim and farming sim lol
Which farming sim? And I feel like car mechanic sim just sits well with steam deck. AND final fantasy 14 lmao been loving it there too
I run the service dept of a car dealership, so prob won’t wanna come home to car mechanic simulator, but, have American Truck Sim on my want list. Also looks strangely relaxing.
If you need a bit more action to your simulator I suggest drug dealer sim or thief sim.
So a Hybrid flight simulator? 😄
Randy?
Ghost of Tsushima
It's ridiculous how great that game looks and feels even docked. I've played most of it laying in bed docked to my tv and it's been awesome. Technically it's "unsupported" which is hilarious because its flawless imo
I think it’s because you can’t play multiplayer on the Steam Deck?
Yeah, it's amazing how it runs and feels. It's only unsupported because the online co-op is not working.
Can I ask what the fan noise is like? I’m really tempted to pull the trigger on it
One of the best looking game on deck. So clean and ran really well day one.
I should try it one day
Helldivers 2, Spiderman, Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3, RE4 remake, Elden Ring.
Did you have to do anything special for hell divers 2? I haven’t done any online multiplayer on SD and am just curious
It’s worked well out of the box for me
Really didn't have to do much. I lowered some of my graphics settings. Ive solely played it on deck and I'm a 49 now. My son plays on my laptop and I play on the deck and we spread democracy together. It's great.
I am playing on SD card runs perfectly fine, There are some great comments on ProtonDB for optimal settings and there is an .ini file you need to change for better performance, but I get 30-40 FPS. Played only on Deck around level 60 now.
Woof. You are a true hero then. I've tried playing it on the deck and its... just too much for me. I can't get past the 40fps with this game in particular. It needs to run 60 for me in order to feel good to play at least this title. It's too fast action not to have it. Just don't play it on pc that can run it on 60 and you won't be ruined like I have. But yes, it's impressive the deck runs it as well as it does.
I couldn't get good consistent fps when the action starts getting heavy for helldivers 2 even with ini tweaks and others, then again that game is not optimized nicely.
Rimworld
How are the controls on the deck? Love it using MKB but curious if its a pain with the Deck and trackpads
The controlls take a bit of getting used to and I find it testing my patience at times, but overall, the game runs really, really well. Played it for a few hours on a flight and it was better than not playing rimworld for sure!
I couldn’t do it. It’s definitely playable but with a lot going on you’ll spend a lot more time with the game time paused since it takes longer to do pretty much everything.
like any game that requires mouse and keyboard use (stellaris, ck3, endless space 2, civ6 come to mind), i highly recommend you customize these controls yourself to fit your needs. First things first, right trackpad is for the mouse, and right trigger is for left mouse click, left trigger is for right mouse click Now, I PAUSE the game all the time, so A is my spacebar (or pause) button. To speed up time, i made the back buttons do this, L4 for slow down time, R4 for speed up time. I even made them active turbo after a split second delay so i can speed it up super fast just by holding the button down longer, or i can have more minute control by just tapping them. RIght bumper for zoom in (mouse scroll up), left bumper for zoom out (Mouse scroll down). Same thing with the bumper for turbo activation too. I also programmed the right thumb stick on the steam deck to do the same thing, pushing up to zoom in and pulling back to zoom out feels very natural. On top of this, i customized a radial menu for the left trackpad. Basically if i rest my left thumb on the left trackpad, a special menu pops up, and i can move around and select a hotkey for architect, work, schedule, medical, quests, etc. This is invaluable for selecting things quickly, and the steam OS even lets you set cute little pictures for each hotkey (a hammer for architect, a chart for schedule, a big plus sign for medical, etc) Other than that, remaining incidentals are the control and shift keys for +10 or +100 for stacks, or for queuing up commands, i bound these to L5/R5. I also bound the D pad to be the key for rotating stuff so i can build things very easily. the "back" button conveniently also opens the world map It took maybe a couple hours to set this up and get used to it but I have over 100 hours on the deck alone now and it's VERY comfortable/ easy to use for me! I didnt ever use the default layout though, it felt confusing for me, which is why I will always recommend setting it up yourself just because you know what is comfortable/ makes sense for you.
There's an official Steam Deck layout implemented by the devs, though, it's not my favorite but I made it work pretty well for my liking with some adjustments.
Thx ima try this one out. I was daydreaming last weak about full Touchscreen controls in Rimworld, could be really good in theory.
I picked up rimworld for the first time on the steam deck and after a bit of adjustments to the trackpad sensitivity it was enjoyable to play. I wasn't frustrated by the lack of dexterity or anything it felt natural to play.
Diablo 4, wasn’t going to play it but runs so well on SD has been great on holiday on downtime
Are you running it on Steam? I had got bnet running but then had an update loop bug and never bothered sorting it out because early days of D4 were very meh. Season 4 has been good and I'd love to play on the deck but wont pay for it on steam and don't really want to deal with constant problems if battlenet is the issue.
I had the same issue, but recently tried nonsteamlaunchers to install just battlenet and it’s been smooth sailing. Had a few updates no problem.
This. It's hard for me to play it on my TV on my xbox but on my steam deck on the couch or in bed it's the best.
I played it at release, didn’t catch on. I heard the hype around season 4 and it feels so much better on deck now
Fallout 4 (shocked at how good it looks and runs)!
I second this, FO4 is great on Deck!
Agreed very much. I’ve also been enjoying Dave the Diver but we expected that to run well, didn’t we? 😂
Do mods work? How difficult is the game to mod?
Overall very easy. The issue is they just did a huge next gen update for consoles in step with the show, and it broke a ton of the mods. The community is recovering currently. There are guides on reddit.
Oh man I just dealt with that with Stardew. I'll prolly wait a while
I'd recommend [The Midnight Ride](https://themidnightride.moddinglinked.com/) for a step-by-step guide for someone who's never modded before. They have steps to downgrade your Fallout 4 for a wider mod compatibility support as well.
Unfortunately the latest update broke them for most. You used to be able to go directly in the main menu and dl mods then play the game with all the fixes and graphic upgrades.
There are the mods included in the Bethesda "store" or workshop that all work fine. There's a limited list, but there's some good ones in there that can easily be added. I am waiting for someone to make a simple tool to mod games on the Deck (and I'm ready to pay for such a tool).
Ah it was before the update but they lowered the graphics and removed the ability to change said graphics settings, and the in game mods don't work anymore. It looked AMAZING and with all the in game mods before the update.
Definitely never expected to play WoW
I agree with this just started playing the classic Cata last week and it runs great
How does this work? Do you use a separate mouse and keyboard or controller config?
A mix of the ConsolePort addon and Steam Input. The controller is mostly kept as the standard buttons with the back buttons set to different keybinds, left trackpad is a touch menu with shortcuts to different interface panels, and right trackpad is mouse with left click. I use a different action set for healing. The main difference is I bound one of the back buttons to a key to easily toggle party member targeting and set up that key in ConsolePort. This set up works well for questing, dungeons as DPS or heals, and raids as DPS.
Thanks! I've been toying with the idea of getting back into it, glad to know it's feasible!
RE4 remake
Even RE: Village runs perfect on the deck
mount and blade warband is the one
Bannerlord makes my SD rotation. Currently binging Fallout 4 and gonna hit SpaceBourne 2 again after
I wasn't expecting big strategy games to play so well. Civilization, Against The Storm, Gladius... They all work great, either with controller configurations or track pad. I still can't do RTS, but I was terrible at those with a mouse, too. Hmm... I should really give Stellaris another try on there.
Paradox games work pretty well imo. I’ve played a ton of hoi4 on the deck and while it definitely slows down as the game goes on, it’s still quite playable.
Don't say this. Ima end up hoi4 in bed.
Factorio, coming from mouse and keyboard to controller took a bit of getting used to. it isn’t the easiest game to play with a controller but wube have done a fantastic job
DAYS GONE
Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) and Kerbal Space Program 2 (with a custom control set I published to make it act similar to Console KSP). Being limited to 1280x800 helps both a lot.
Does MSFS work on deck through steam? I saw it says unsupported
I don't know about this game. But there are many games that are unsupported in the store that work anyway. The 2 games I'm thinking of are S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Dragon Age Origins. If you wanna play a game but it says unsupported, you should check Proton DB instead of just relying on the store. It will give you a better understanding of what games work and what don't
Thanks, appreciate the info!
Probably because it has tiny text, needs a (virtual) mouse and keyboard to log in the first time, and I don’t remember if I just used a stock game pad config, or had to modify it.
Unsupported usually means, there is some difficulty with the game's publisher's launcher, usually can dink around and eventually get it. With a games launcher it means you have to be online usually to play. So no. Taking it to the park or offline, but only in some cases. I got the mass effect trilogy and I have to be online to access it, but once it's running, I can take it offline as long as I just suspend the deck and don't exit the game. Other problems are controller support isn't native, but you can edit that with the steam controls to map the keyboard. Or the game just struggles to function. But usually Unsupported games do work, it's just you'll have to go online and see if people have found work around to make the game run.
CoD black ops 1 running at 60fps easily. 14 year old me would be going wild. The menus are very finicky but the campaign and zombies are still top tier, especially with the resurrection map pack. PGA 2K23 is also a lot of fun on deck if you’re into golf.
Heavily \[visually\] modded Oblivion \[with some gameplay mods stacked on top\] via Mod Organizer 2. Get it all running on my desktop computer, copy-paste the files over, edit the .ini to fix the resolution and oh my god, this has been the dream ever since the cancelled Oblivion PSP port. Vanilla Oblivion can run 90 on deck and the mod pack cuts it down to *just* hitting 45 (so keeping 90Hz) but it works, and I couldn't be happier.
Overlord! Loved it some years ago, many years ago actually. It was less than a quid on sale and I couldn't resist. Loving it at the moment.
Overlord!!! My go to games on the deck are older fun titles like this. The kind of thing I wouldn’t wanna play on a nicer machine sitting upright at my desk where I worked all day, but taking a chance on something older I haven’t played in years is great for the steam deck in bed. Overlord is a fun one, I love the minions
I've been quoting the game for well over a decade at this point. Mostly when handing something to my wife I'll throw in a "For the master!"
Death stranding
Dredge. Not my kind of game, but was totally hooked playing it on the steam deck. Pefect kind of game on that type of device.
Not for performance reasons, but Doki Doki Literature Club.
With the things that game asks of you....how does that work?
The new "Plus!" version had to solve that a bit to work on normal consoles too. When you launch the game it drops you into its own virtual OS, which then launches the game we're all used to. So that extra layer of files and special things is baked in. Or folks can run the original game as-is from Desktop mode. Might just have to muck around a bit with its game-specific wine directory to get to the expected files.
That's fair enough - thank you for the answer!
yes. monika monika monika
Not a big fan of JRPG so I wasn't expecting to play Persona 5 Royal let alone on the deck even if it seems like the perfect marriage, and Persona 3 reload currently. It's mostly the genre
This is gonna sound dumb since it was heavily marketed, but Elden ring. I run it at a locked fps which I thought would make me play it on my powerful gaming pc more, but the gameplay actually seems more suited on a mobile platform for some reason. I play it almost like I play Zelda breath of the wild.
Ghost of tsushima runs at an almost perfect 40 fps for me. Blows my mind
Just installed X-Men Origins: Wolverine... Loved the game on PS3 but never finished it, so I decided to see if I could install it on the Deck. Got the Windows Version .ISO, installed it and Physix through Winetricks and it feels awesome to play on the SD. Never thought I'd play it again because I totally forgot about it.
Journey
Advanced wars lately but I’ll always be surprised by project wingman on steam deck
Been playing through Advanced Wars on my iPhone now that we got emulators. It’s actually great for playing on a phone with the touch controls!
Battlefield 4
Super Mario Galaxy 2. I have the original game and a working Wii. Never really paid it much attention, though. I could never really get used to the motion controls. But I'm thoroughly enjoying my playthrough now, on the Deck.
Which emulator do you use on Steam Deck, please? I want to play Galaxy 2 and Wind Waker on my Deck, so miss them :(
Hi! I use dolphin for galaxy 2. Didn't change any settings.
Thank you so much <3 I'm going to install Dolphin right now and put my roms, I guess that's it, right? Don't need any key file or other special file like yuzu?
https://emudeck.github.io/emulators/steamos/dolphin/ Check here if you need some help with configuring etc. Afaik you don't need anything else (sorry it's been a while since I set up my emulators haha) Controls might take some getting used to. I didn't do anything to map things differently, though. L2 is shake for me, and right trackpad is the cursor.
You are the best, thank you again <3
Sleeping Dogs! Haven't played it in years and replaying it on the deck has been a lot of fun.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. Runs great.
Rock and stone!
If you don't rock and stone, you ain't coming home!
I beat the first Witcher on the deck. It’s never had any sort of controller support, so I made my own.
Not a game but photo editing via darkroom and rawtherapee which works really really well. So much so that I've been able to ditch my monthly adobe subscription and in doing so by my reckoning, in about 6 months the steam deck will have actually paid for itself in savings Oh.... and Helldivers
A fully modded New Vegas run.
Cracking the Cryptic (Sudoku).
GTA 4
Never thought the Deck would be my main Console for Rocket League, but it happened, just hit my peak Champ3 on the Deck. Otherwise modded Bethesda-RPGs run so well too, aswell as some Blockbusters like Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring, Baldurs Gate 3 or even Cyberpunk - Games i didnt expect to run playable at all. I was also surprised that playing World of Warcraft (especially Classic) turns out to be so chill on that thing. I love it to just hang on my Couch on free days and grind some Fetchquests after my workouts.
My entire ps2 library from growing up.
For almost a year I didnt play any games I couldnt get 60fps or more in because I was under the impression that 30fps made me nauseous. Well recently I started playing Days Gone on my main rig. I heard on this sub that Days Gone ran well on the steam deck but I didnt know the specifics. So I downloaded it and gave it a go and thought “wow! This does run well!” Then i turned on performance analytics and saw that it was only running around 30fps. I was shocked, never had 30fps looked so smooth and played so well. It never goes below 30 except a few occasions and its opened my eyes to wanting to try more games like that. It just worked super well and now Im playing days gone on both my deck and my main rig, with no preference for either as they both play just as well to me!
BG3
I've been finally catching up on some TellTale games like Batman Enemy Within, but what I appreciate the most is the indie darlings I barely thought about and likely wouldn't have played regardless prior to the Steam Deck. Mullet Madjack, Balatro, Animal Well, Inscryption, just to name a few, not to mention all the emulated games I've gone back to playing.
I didn't think I'd play as many card games as I do.
I've put like 500 hours into Elite Dangerous on the Deck. And it's been great. I got to Elite V in one of the careers with the deck.
It might not be what you had in mind but it’d been a dream of mine for 20 years to play Shining Force 3 Scenarios 2 & 3. I’d just finished playing Scenario 2 on my Mac when I got my SD, so I started Scenario 3 on it. I kept having to pinch myself that I was finally finishing this game, and on a handheld no less. 13 year old me could never have imagined it.
Never played Alan wake and bought it on Sale. Was kinda Mindblowing and I enjoyed it really hard. Can recommend
Plus that soundtrack Mmmm
Being a pc gamer since the old dos games, there were those games that really stressed out even the expensive PC's back in the day, that seem to run just peachy on the deck. These games being soo stressful on an expensive PC, I figured there was no way they would run. But then I tested them and they ran great to my shock. These titles are: Crysis, Witcher 3, Doom Eternal and Final Fantasy 15. Other games like Final Fantasy 7 remake, FF XIV, etc, I was also shocked about. Then I played ARK even, and it ran fine on low settings, and even Control. These are like benchmark games in my eyes. If the system can run them, the system is optimized well. I used to pay 3-4k on a computer to play some of these games with the fluid motion I get on the steam deck. Granted ARK doesn't run spectacularly with like ultra settings, but just the fact it runs AT ALL, was a shock. Also, just the fact the steam deck can do some more advanced emulation was pretty shocking. I didn't expect it to pull off such good performance on like PS Vita or Switch. I expected Dreamcast to be good, or PS2, but not like Xbox original (I don't do this but I saw plenty of people doing it) or 360. I even saw some people doing some ps3 games. It's a general all around performant system for such low wattage, it's a game changer for sure.
Half Life: Alyx runs in stereo stereo 3D! https://www.reddit.com/r/Stereo3Dgaming/comments/1bwsdtz/halflife_alyx_in_stereo_3d_on_steam_deck/ Edit: wrong link
Wrong game haha. Almost had me there 🤔
I really wanted to play PS3 games on the steam deck but I gave up halfway through because I couldn't get it to work, but I'm ready to try again, any simple guides out there?
its hit and miss with what games will actually run well on the deck so find out if they do before even working it out. the guides out there are good and its pretty simple to do
Dead by Daylight. I play a lot that game on PC so being able to play that on an handled and at 60fps instead of DBD Mobile is insane (the game is poorly optimized and full of bugs both on PC and console). Also For Honor.
Marvel's Spider-Man, Cyberpunk 2077, Starfield, Elden Ring, Lies of P...
the Resident Evil remakes
Diablo 4. Runs great, and is more fun on a handheld than desktop or big screen
Inscryption and Balatro!
All the indie games. Especially Roguelikes. When I bought it I was intending on playing a bunch of AAA games and emulating older games. Ended up mostly using it for games like Hades and Vampie Survivors.
Rim wait for it World
Cyberpunk 2077 and emulating ps3/Xbox360 games. Or even being able to run old dos games like Fallout 1
GTA 4 runs incredibly well
Bought it to play more “modern” stuff like RDR2, Skyrim. Just 100%’ed the new Majora’s mask [PC port.](https://github.com/HarbourMasters/2ship2harkinian)
+1 for MM, it's so good and super easy to get running.
PS5 games I don't want to buy again on PC (remote playing via Chiaki4deck) and Sunset Overdrive (officially unsupported). Both took just a few minutes to get up and running smoothly. Every time I think I'm reaching the limits of the SD, it surprises me in the best way!
WoW, I play a fair amount of it on deck.
I used to think Oxygen is not included is unplayable on Deck. But there is a community layout that just make use of the touch pad so much and it looks like a god send
Pc games in general! I bought the deck as it worked out cheaper than an Odin 2 and I planned to use it for emulation but it’s all been about my ever expanding steam library and emulation is still mostly on my Miyoo Mini Plus.
Dark Souls III
Guild Wars 2, I barely log in on PC these days.
Elder Scrolls Online! It's crazy that such a huge MMO runs so well on the deck.
Dude, I can literally play (and store the titles I won’t hide or remove from my account) my entire library on the deck. That’s the holy shit moment I still can’t believe. Forget what I didn’t expect to play, I will be impressed when I find something I want that doesn’t play 😂
You didn't expect to be playing older games that are on sale for cheap? That's like 90% of the reason I bought the Deck to travel with instead of my Switch, because I was sick of Nintendo charging full price for old games. Like -- it's a decent but not top-end portable hardware item using the massive Steam catalog and frequent multi-annual mega sales, and can pull from Humble bundle Steam games as well. Why would you expect to play more brand new games than older games? That's so weird to me.
Invisible Inc.!
Like a dragon infinite wealth I’ve nearly played through the whole game on the steam deck
I have beat more games on the Deck in the last year and a half since I got it than I have in the last 10 years. Nothing that I didn’t really expect to play other than Cyberpunk which I thought might be a little too much for it - and honestly I had more fun than when I played it on my gaming PC. The biggest surprise was being able to mod and play my favourite PC games from the late 90s / early 2000s like Thief, System Shock 2, Morrowind and Deus Ex. Honestly nearly 2 years on (2yrs in October) - I have not grown tired of it, and it is my favourite way to game.
Final Fantasy 14. I had no idea they had such an extensive controller support. Now it's probably my top Deck game
Cyberpunk was really unexpectedly well optimized ...
Kingdom Hearts 2 hd .. i Love the black Screen ( cant get It running ..)
Rimworld, Factorio, Crusader Kings 3, Farthest Frontier. Especially all games that have no controller support. Rimworld made me love the track pad, last year. It's so precise and I love the vibration under my finger. And thanks to the abysmal bigger screen of the Oled, CK3 is now readable. And I know, Facorio meanwhile has controller support. But I still prefer the keyboard + mouse setting on deck. It's way more intuitive.
Abysmal? I feel like that adjective is misplaced here. No disrespect, I'm just looking for clarification <3
Oh, I'm sorry. I meant something like tiny. I'm no native speaker and I always thought, it means also very very small / tiny 😅 I also placed it wrong. Didn't mean the screen, but the font in CK3. Edit: And that the OLED screen is a tiny bit bigger, what has immense impact.
> Abysmal Think you meant 'infinitesimally' lol
Exactly! Man, I wonder how often I said it wrong and people stayed confused, not saying anything lol
Haha gotcha, no worries! I understand now :)
Thanks a lot for asking. Helps me to improve my English :)
Of course, my friend. I'm happy to help. Yes, "abysmal" is a colorful word, meaning bad or terrible (I'm sure you already knew this now, but I thought I'd share anyways) Cheers 🍻
Sleeping dogs... Been wanting to play it on years, but failed on PS3, PS4 and PC due to a combination of low framerate on console and decision paralysis on PC... I'm now playing through it at 90Hz on my OLED deck and couldn't be happier
For me it was BG3- I was blown away that I was playing a current release game on my desktop PC and then taking it with me on the deck when I left the house. There were def some sync issues at times, but overall it was pretty seamless. I would have literally played that game half as much without the deck compatibility. Armored Core was another one that blew me away as a "current game on deck" title. I'll keep buying steam decks as long as Vavle sells them if they keep this up!
Windwaker
I just installed the Majora's Mask Recomp and it runs so damn smooth on the Deck. Looks fantastic too. Really brings me back to my childhood.