Valve introduces Steam Deck

[ShitLurker]

On Emulation and battery life, probably to nobody's surprise, Switch emulation devours it, no matter how "simple" the game may look. It's not much of an issue for me since I don't take it out of the house, but if you are keen on emulating switch, it eats though it. You can lower some of the power metrics and that extends life though. Lower gen stuff consumes a lot less though. I played a good bit of AC2 on the PS2 and don't remember noticing it going down particularly fast and emulating PSX I'd say I can get from full battery like 3-4 hours without fiddling with settings.

On steam run games I honestly haven't played many for long, I don't file Pizza Tower, Inscryption, Atelier:Rorona or Visual Novels as much to get metrics on battery life, but you can drop to 40fps-20fps depending on the game and that gives you a big hike to battery life. Will be starting Trails into Reverie once it's out and will be the first "demanding" game I expect to play on the deck.

 

[Epoch]

Haven't checked if the Steam Deck automatically upscale the resolution of games when playing docked in a different session on my big screen, but some of my screenshots seem to imply as such.

Deck has FSR 1.0 built in, not sure if it automatically gets enabled when you plug into a TV (I've only been using mine handheld). When you use it in game mode it moves the display to the external source but keeps 720p for performance, I think you can override this in the game settings, but you can change upscaling method in the quick menu. Desktop mode allows actual resolution, but performance takes a hit.

 

[Stasi]

Don't have many steam games so I tend to add gog backups or cracked games to my deck. For some reason there have been a few games that won't run through steam or heroic no matter what I do but work perfectly through lutris without any tweaking.

If anyone has had trouble running non steam games maybe try adding it in lutris, which also has an option to add a steam shortcut so the game shows up in steam gaming mode.

 

[Inafune Fanfiction]

On Emulation and battery life, probably to nobody's surprise, Switch emulation devours it, no matter how "simple" the game may look. It's not much of an issue for me since I don't take it out of the house, but if you are keen on emulating switch, it eats though it. You can lower some of the power metrics and that extends life though. Lower gen stuff consumes a lot less though. I played a good bit of AC2 on the PS2 and don't remember noticing it going down particularly fast and emulating PSX I'd say I can get from full battery like 3-4 hours without fiddling with settings.

On steam run games I honestly haven't played many for long, I don't file Pizza Tower, Inscryption, Atelier:Rorona or Visual Novels as much to get metrics on battery life, but you can drop to 40fps-20fps depending on the game and that gives you a big hike to battery life. Will be starting Trails into Reverie once it's out and will be the first "demanding" game I expect to play on the deck.

Still torn on getting a steam deck because there really isn't anything it can do that a PC with a controller of your choice can do better.

 

[zyclonPD]

Still torn on getting a steam deck because there really isn't anything it can do that a PC with a controller of your choice can do better.

Its really about the portability. Its just easy to pack up in a case and take with you than a gaming laptop. If you don't have a use case for taking your computer with you then just use a regular computer.

 

[Waifu Denier]

Still torn on getting a steam deck because there really isn't anything it can do that a PC with a controller of your choice can do better.

If you don't need to play away from your desk or already have a powerful portable system, there isn't a point to getting a Deck. Otherwise, considering its specs for $400, $360 when it went on sale, there isn't really any competition offering the same value at that price point.

 

[ShitLurker]

Still torn on getting a steam deck because there really isn't anything it can do that a PC with a controller of your choice can do better.

What others have told you, if portability is not a factor for you, stick with your current setup. In my case I enjoy being able to go to the sofa and passively socialize in other spaces while I can keep gaming. Also recently got the deck (which is a bit wonky) but it's a comfortable way to play steam stuff on the main TV without having to bother with steam link setups or bringing a laptop.

But if you have your gaming area and are more than happy sticking there, yeah, it adds zero to you.

 

[Stasi]

Still torn on getting a steam deck because there really isn't anything it can do that a PC with a controller of your choice can do better.

What others have said, if you are happy with your set up then probably no point in getting one. I like the portability and pick up and play nature, not for traveling anywhere but around the house.

It's easy to play for a bit on the sofa while you are waiting for something and want to kill 20 minutes. Also I work from home most of the time and the last thing I want to do is game in the same space I just sat in for 8 hours so I tend to grab the deck and sit/lie down somewhere else away from my main PC. Since getting it I've spent more time gaming on deck than my PC by a long shot.

 

[Haunted Dishwasher]

I travel between two places every now and then, so I caved in and bought the Steam Deck 512GB version and the Dock off Summer Sale. On most games I tried it performed on par with my current PC, even better on some games (LET IT DIE on par, a lot of <2015 games played on 60FPS constant, DRG ran bit worse, F76 ran better).

I like Proton as I was able to run few old games without a hitch (HoMM 3 and Gothic - both games I just took entire folders from my PC and pasted them to my Steam Deck) as well as newer games (Dave The Diver, currently my favorite to play on Steam Deck), feels great out of the box. The Dock with keyboard and mouse allows me to use the Steam Deck as a portable PC which is way more useful than >10 year old laptop I had previously and takes roughly the same space. Battery usually lasts me 2-3 hours of gameplay but that's something that can be fixed with a decent powerbank

Steam Input is an amazing tool too, just like Proton, that beats most of paid programs (like reWASD), with two touchpads, four extra back buttons and the STEAM button integration to have a keyboard popup or mouse controls on the fly allows me to play more complicated games on Steam Deck and due to the distance from my face to the screen the small font or windows aren't as bad as it would be on Big Picture & playing via Steam Controller - which I have as well but I feel like trying to play PC games not designed for gamepads due to lack of mouse is not as much as a problem of controls as it is of UI being stupidly tiny and having to either scoot closer to the TV or squint to see what the fuck 7px font is saying in i.e. Stellaris.

As much as an advantage ROG Ally gets in hardware specs, I feel like ultimately it is beaten down by the bloated Windows that it has (which somehow some sites point out as an upside - I shouldn't be surprised by brain damaged gamejourno) and battery life doesn't seem too well - 40 minutes on AAA title while Steam Deck gets at least 1.5h. Not to mention that ROG Ally is supposed to have nearly five times the ampere hours of battery storage of Steam Deck yet ultimately lasts much shorter.

I might be a Valve fanboy, but I feel like Valve is one of the few 'industry good guys' as it is genuinely trying to push the industry in terms of software and hardware - Steam Big Picture being the mode for 'console experience' with controllers, easy streaming to TV via Steam Link, Steam Controller including extra controls and touch pads and Steam Input, Proton allowing greater accessibility to Windows games without the bloat, Valve Index being the state-of-the-art VR hardware etc. and now the Steam Deck is showing people that a design of a modular portable console is possible and it has its place in the gaming world. There are already planned aftermarket parts for the Steam Deck (like higher resolution screen) which keeps me hopeful that it will only grow over time.

 

[Stasi]

Quick tip in case anyone else has the same thing happen. Some GameCube games on dolphin have an issue where the screen will flicker and randomly change aspect ratio. This is caused by the default setting in dolphin, the aspect ratio is set to auto which seems to fuck with some games.

You need to open dolphin in desktop mode and change the setting from auto to either 4:3 or 16:9.

 

[anustart76]

Quick tip in case anyone else has the same thing happen. Some GameCube games on dolphin have an issue where the screen will flicker and randomly change aspect ratio. This is caused by the default setting in dolphin, the aspect ratio is set to auto which seems to fuck with some games.

You need to open dolphin in desktop mode and change the setting from auto to either 4:3 or 16:9.

It's better to set the mode in the game's specific ini, that way you don't have to mess with the setting every time you play a different game.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Has anybody played the remaster for Radical Dreamers on Steam Deck? Is the audio supposed to be crackling dogshit quality, or is that an issue with this port?

 

[Waifu Denier]

Has anybody played the remaster for Radical Dreamers on Steam Deck? Is the audio supposed to be crackling dogshit quality, or is that an issue with this port?

The Chrono Cross "remaster"? I wouldn't be surprised if the audio was dogshit, given all the other issues with the port. It's not even a port, they are using an emulation layer, which was part of why performance was so bad.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

The Chrono Cross "remaster"? I wouldn't be surprised if the audio was dogshit, given all the other issues with the port. It's not even a port, they are using an emulation layer, which was part of why performance was so bad.

Yeah, but specifically the SNES game bundled with it, Radical Dreamers. I restarted it and now the audio seems mostly fine. It's a fucking embarrassment they can't even get an SNES ROM to function properly.

 

[ShitLurker]

Yeah, but specifically the SNES game bundled with it, Radical Dreamers. I restarted it and now the audio seems mostly fine. It's a fucking embarrassment they can't even get an SNES ROM to function properly.

Modern gaming in a nutshell... so many of these rereleases just seem to play better emulated for other platforms. I'll eventually play Tales of Symphonia, but from everything I've heard and read, the best way by far is the Gamecube version, so fuck paying for the Steam version then.

 

[The Ghost of Kviv]

Yeah, but specifically the SNES game bundled with it, Radical Dreamers. I restarted it and now the audio seems mostly fine. It's a fucking embarrassment they can't even get an SNES ROM to function properly.

Some remakes/ports still have the audio tied to the refresh rate, so setting it to 30/60 can fix the stutter.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Some remakes/ports still have the audio tied to the refresh rate, so setting it to 30/60 can fix the stutter.

That's good to know, I'll keep it in mind when I run into any issues again.

 

[King Vidiot]

Valve is now selling certified refurbished Steam Decks for around 20% cheaper than the new ones and they have the same warranty as buying new. They are close to the same price as the "refurbished" ones sold by GameStop, but with a warranty I would actually trust. I always assume anything described as refurbished by a 3rd party is the same as used.

 

[Belvedere]

We have officially entered the stage were on-the-go PC gaming is moving away from the laptops into the handheld PCs format;

Introducing the (leaked) Lenovo Legion Go:

Spoiler: Front View

Spoiler: Detachable Controller

Spoiler: Kickstand

At this point we can expect more big name PC hardware manufacturers to present their versions of this type of hardware moving forward,

Now if MS were to finally wake up and create a native "Handheld Mode" for Windows 11 then using these devices would not be such a pain in the ass while using that OS.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

We have officially entered the stage were on-the-go PC gaming is moving away from the laptops into the handheld PCs format;

Introducing the (leaked) Lenovo Legion Go:

Spoiler: Front View

View attachment 5279437

Spoiler: Detachable Controller

View attachment 5279438

Spoiler: Kickstand

View attachment 5279439

At this point we can expect more big name PC hardware manufacturers to present their versions of this type of hardware moving forward,

Now if MS were to finally wake up and create a native "Handheld Mode" for Windows 11 then using these devices would not be such a pain in the ass while using that OS.

Looks cool but none of these ever fix the issues that valve did. The thing will still cost 800 and run on windows. Also doesn't help that they can't do much to help battery life.