![]() ![]() ![]() Trying to play Pillars of Eternity on the Deck, for example, was frustrating right from the start, as it requires you to use the tiny right trackpad as a small, imprecise mouse pointer. That Verified label just means a game will run on the Deck, however, and says nothing about the quality of the overall experience. There are a few real surprises on the Verified list right now, like a couple of niche indie projects getting Verified before big AAA games like the 2020 Resident Evil 3 remake, but it’s apparently all down to consumer interest. According to him, the currently Verified games are those which were being played by the people who initially reserved a Steam Deck, and which were of particular interest to the overall Steam community. I did ask a designer at Valve about why these particular games ended up being among the first to be tested on the Deck. At launch, roughly 300 games have been labeled as fully Verified, with roughly as many listed as Playable but flawed in some way. Right now, Valve is working its way through the Steam game library as part of its Deck Verified program, and will gradually label every title on Steam, all 100,000 of them or so, with icons indicating their relative compatibility with the Deck. ![]() This was always going to be the Deck’s overall Achilles’ heel. ![]() The same can go for any game with a zoomed-out or overhead camera. I’d already tried The Ascent on the Deck last year, which still runs just fine, but it’s designed with such a zoomed-out omniscient perspective that the Deck’s screen makes it look like you’re playing it through a rain-streaked window pane. Hades, for example, was tricky the combat worked fine, but I had to lean in towards the Deck to make out finer details like icons or items.Īlong the same lines, Doom Eternal ran like a dream, but much of its onscreen text was difficult to read. The biggest issue I had with the Deck, in fact, is simply that many PC games aren’t meant to be played on a 7-inch screen. (GeekWire Photo / Thomas Wilde) Verified but incompatible Middle: the “version 2,” standard-model Switch. I put the unit through its paces with a few games from my backlog like Hades and Hollow Knight, and it felt comfortable and responsive over the course of several hours of play. If you’re used to playing something like a Switch in its portable mode, or even on a medium-size tablet, the Deck is bigger but of comparable weight. The hardware is, admittedly, crowded, and you’re going to want to rework some keybindings sooner or later, but it all works better than I expected it would. The action takes place on a 7-inch touchscreen built into the center of the Deck. You can play those games directly on the Deck with its two analog sticks, four face buttons, four assignable buttons on the unit’s grips, two analog triggers, two “bumpers,” and two 32.5mm square trackpads with haptic feedback. Your Deck treats your Steam games as if they’re all part of what the Steam desktop client calls a Dynamic Collection, with a big suite of custom filters that let you organize and sort your games by playtime, achievement completion, file size, and so on. To get games on your Deck, you download them wirelessly from your library on the Steam storefront. In my tests using the 256GB edition, I was able to run Doom Eternal, one of the most demanding games in my Steam library, at 60 FPS without any issues, on a portable device. TLDR: the Deck is very powerful for its price. “If you’re looking to break into PC gaming for an incredibly low introductory price, however, the Steam Deck might be the single best deal that anyone’s ever offered.” Each Deck features 16 GB of RAM, a custom AMD processor with a Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz CPU, and a 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz GPU. The 512GB model also has special anti-glare etched glass on its front screen, but the three types of Deck are otherwise identical. All three models also feature a slot for a microSD card for expanded storage, which is mandatory for the cheapest brand of Deck and a solid quality-of-life bonus for the 512GB. (Valve Image)Īt launch, the Steam Deck comes in three models with three different internal hard drives: a 64GB eMMC ($399), a faster 256GB NVMe SSD ($529), or a top-line 512GB NVMe SSD ($649). The tale of the tape As with everything else at Valve, the Steam Deck went through a lot of prototypes before it settled on the current model. Its real value is in its low cost, which can open the world of PC gaming up to a whole new audience. If you’re a diehard PC player, this isn’t going to replace your desktop or even your laptop, but the Deck brings a lot of interesting utility to the table. ![]()
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