- Joined
- Apr 30, 2023
I got my OLED Steam Deck on Monday. If anyone wants to read a nobody's impression I have two spoilers.
I used to be very into PC gaming 10 years ago, usually PC-connected-to-a-TV-via-HDMI style. I lost interest for a variety of reasons, mainly though I found 3DS to be less friction with games that were more fun, and I was getting into old games on real consoles which took attention away from modern slop. I have been waiting for handheld PCs to be good enough (perf & battery & quality control) since appx 2015 partially as a result of my 3DS experiences.
Sometime in the interim I got very into the frictionless mode switching of Switch to the point where I have an autist-level PSP go setup to have the same experience with PS1 games on a CRT and PSP games on a modern TV across two PSP gos and two docks, along with a nice Game Boy Player setup. Other platforms I accept being in one mode or another due to the options available to get there not being great.
I should point out I am not interested in running emulators on handhelds -- it was novel on PSP back in 2006 but idgaf anymore. Emulators are fine technology in the right context but generally I have all the old consoles and appreciate the finest experience possible for each one, almost always on a CRT. PS1 on PSP is a notable exception to this because the result at 240p output on a CRT is fantastic, and the deep integration with Sony's legacy platforms means even saves can transfer over easily from a real PS1 memory card to a PSP.
So for the Steam Deck my goal is to find something which can give me PC games in a model where I get relatively frictionless switching from one mode to another. I thought the original release was close, but the lackluster battery life was a deal breaker.
Sometime in the interim I got very into the frictionless mode switching of Switch to the point where I have an autist-level PSP go setup to have the same experience with PS1 games on a CRT and PSP games on a modern TV across two PSP gos and two docks, along with a nice Game Boy Player setup. Other platforms I accept being in one mode or another due to the options available to get there not being great.
I should point out I am not interested in running emulators on handhelds -- it was novel on PSP back in 2006 but idgaf anymore. Emulators are fine technology in the right context but generally I have all the old consoles and appreciate the finest experience possible for each one, almost always on a CRT. PS1 on PSP is a notable exception to this because the result at 240p output on a CRT is fantastic, and the deep integration with Sony's legacy platforms means even saves can transfer over easily from a real PS1 memory card to a PSP.
So for the Steam Deck my goal is to find something which can give me PC games in a model where I get relatively frictionless switching from one mode to another. I thought the original release was close, but the lackluster battery life was a deal breaker.
The first impression and big takeaway is that Valve has successfully consolized their PC gaming platform. You can just install & play and, as long as you stay within the limitations, it'll be a very smooth experience. That's great and honestly makes playing the library that I have on Steam a lot easier. The battery life I'm seeing so far seem at a minimum acceptable with minimal tweaking.
The big negative is that outside the limitations, and especially outside "their PC gaming platform" it's a pretty rough experience. I have an expectation that I should be able to run non-steam games very easily but you need to dump down to a Linux Desktop to set that up. What? OK someone spent an inordinate amount of time making sure the controls for Linux Desktop were basically flawless in handheld, but really? I couldn't have a file-picker inside the steam UI?
And while the results with Proton exceeds all sense, way beyond where anyone would have expected it to be a few short years ago, there are still a LOT of games which are not fully compatible. Like a VN I tried to run where the text isn't visible. And no I don't consider "it works mostly but the audio fucks up sometimes" to be anywhere near good enough. It really needs to be near 100%; tinkering to set things up sucks, and often the tinkering doesn't even get results.
There are some things early on that didn't work and are pretty basic expectations of mine. After installing games I figured I'm next to a TV so I'll run on that first. But none of my USB-C to HDMI adapters would work. Nothing would make them work in isolation. Eventually I tried plugging the system into a USB-C to displayport monitor setup and then afterward it started working over HDMI. What?
OK TV out works finally, let's connect an Xbox Series X controller. It... won't connect? It takes updating the controller on an Xbox One X to then get the syncing to work. Huh?
This is pretty shit, they should be able to fix these issues, but it's been ~2 years you'd think they'd have that worked out. Another basic item they should have worked out is that when I switch to TV mode the controller defaults to a virtual "Controller Port 2" and I have to manually move it up every time. Why? I'm connected to a screen just assume the internal controls are off or at least lowest-priority.
Games will default to 1280x800. Makes sense? But when you're connected to a TV you get a 16:10 image pillarboxed in a 16:9 frame, often with a 16:9 image in turn letterboxed in the 1280x800 frame. Fun. So I need to make sure I manually change every game to run at 1280x720. You'd think it would just res-switch?
Have I met my goal? Much as I would like to have 100% compatibility and use for example the Xbox PC app, this is probably the best option if you want to have a consolized PC experience. It's very slick, the sleep mode seems good or at least 1000x more reliable than using a Windows sleep function in-game, and what's here I'm willing to muddle through the above issues to be able to have a much broader library of games to do the same frictionless mode switching I'm accustomed to on Switch and PSPgo.
And yes the OLED screen is very nice.
The big negative is that outside the limitations, and especially outside "their PC gaming platform" it's a pretty rough experience. I have an expectation that I should be able to run non-steam games very easily but you need to dump down to a Linux Desktop to set that up. What? OK someone spent an inordinate amount of time making sure the controls for Linux Desktop were basically flawless in handheld, but really? I couldn't have a file-picker inside the steam UI?
And while the results with Proton exceeds all sense, way beyond where anyone would have expected it to be a few short years ago, there are still a LOT of games which are not fully compatible. Like a VN I tried to run where the text isn't visible. And no I don't consider "it works mostly but the audio fucks up sometimes" to be anywhere near good enough. It really needs to be near 100%; tinkering to set things up sucks, and often the tinkering doesn't even get results.
There are some things early on that didn't work and are pretty basic expectations of mine. After installing games I figured I'm next to a TV so I'll run on that first. But none of my USB-C to HDMI adapters would work. Nothing would make them work in isolation. Eventually I tried plugging the system into a USB-C to displayport monitor setup and then afterward it started working over HDMI. What?
OK TV out works finally, let's connect an Xbox Series X controller. It... won't connect? It takes updating the controller on an Xbox One X to then get the syncing to work. Huh?
This is pretty shit, they should be able to fix these issues, but it's been ~2 years you'd think they'd have that worked out. Another basic item they should have worked out is that when I switch to TV mode the controller defaults to a virtual "Controller Port 2" and I have to manually move it up every time. Why? I'm connected to a screen just assume the internal controls are off or at least lowest-priority.
Games will default to 1280x800. Makes sense? But when you're connected to a TV you get a 16:10 image pillarboxed in a 16:9 frame, often with a 16:9 image in turn letterboxed in the 1280x800 frame. Fun. So I need to make sure I manually change every game to run at 1280x720. You'd think it would just res-switch?
Have I met my goal? Much as I would like to have 100% compatibility and use for example the Xbox PC app, this is probably the best option if you want to have a consolized PC experience. It's very slick, the sleep mode seems good or at least 1000x more reliable than using a Windows sleep function in-game, and what's here I'm willing to muddle through the above issues to be able to have a much broader library of games to do the same frictionless mode switching I'm accustomed to on Switch and PSPgo.
And yes the OLED screen is very nice.
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