[Discussion] What games have you been playing on your deck? - September 2024

careful just like how violent video games will make you a stone cold killer addicted to violence eventually the addiction to speed will consume you until you become a lawless street racer straight out of midnight club. I have seen it happen over and over again to friends, eventually consequences always catch up with them... and they always end up losing their car in pink slip races to some new guy to the street racing scene who is shooting up the ranks improbably quickly and even has the eye of the coolest-most-badass street racer's hot ex (who also street races)... it is a damn shame .

Tbh the physics makes crashes pretty fun. I do a lot of driving for my job and try to be a responsible, careful driver. So it's nice to fire up the steam deck sometimes and drive like a complete wanker!

If at first you crash and burn.... well I mean it is Beam Ng so doesnt that mean you are actually playing the game right?

Yes! I'm also playing Disco Elysium right now and it's amazing.

Disco elysium has been one of the best games for me in 2024. Absolutely stunning game.

i havent tried it but you arent alone in feeling like it has staying power as a roguelike, people talk about it really highly even after long amounts of play time in my experience.

Yeah I don't necessarily disagree with the idea of making file paths case sensitive (i.e. usr/Folder/ is a different directory than usr/folder and same for files), but it is definitely a big mind fuck coming from an operating system where things aren't really case sensitive in that way.

Nice! Yeah I will do my own research when/if I decide to play them again on deck. Thank you for the heads up.

There are instructions for both games on reddit and they even give tips for Linux. Important on Linux is that the directory is set to case insensitive. Otherwise you will have problems because files from several mods are duplicated.

So sadly I have Kotor via Gog so I don't have access to the steam store.

I believe if you have a steam copy the restored content mod is available via the workshop

I've been too lazy to install it via nexus or elsewhere

Is it pretty feasible to install kotor 2 restored content mod? I vaguely remember it being available on steam workshop.

AND Mars 2120

Playing Rounded right now, definitely have my eye on Peglin

I keep getting lost! But then I find secrets I walked by and vacuums I can pet so it's worth it. But the colours can be really difficult. I find I use the flashlight quite a bit while exploring. I've been playing half on the OLED steam deck and the other half on my PC(standard LED) and the colours seem better on the steam deck.

I'm gonna pick up Selaco again at some point, but my experience with it so far has been just okay. I'm particularly annoyed at the color schemes and the dark areas combining with the low resolution to make enemies really hard to see. Sometimes I'm low health and sneaking around to avoid being seen, and I look down a dark hallway, see nothing at all, and then bullets start flying at me and I don't see the enemies themselves until they come closer.

Yeah I got the bundle a couple weeks ago and couldn't put them down. Def keepers!

Awesome!! I see its on sale today too! I'll pick it up! Thanks for the rec

Just played **Limbo** and **Inside** back to back and they're such amazing games holy eff. And perfect for the deck.

Honestly non at all. I even took a video once with my phone of my steam deck screen next to the pc monitor and the frames were perfectly in sync.

The input feels native and i have zero latency with that.

I remember years ago it indeed wasn't that good. But nowadays its so perfect!

I even play competitive counter strike that way.

The stats show around 1ms. And that is network and decoding combined.

As long as you are at home, its indistinguishable from directly plugging in a mouse+keyboard and monitor.

Not OP, but that's one part of it. You can turn down graphics, and games will still look fine on the small screen, but some games just need some extra power.

I haven't played RDR2 but something like Returnal runs okayish on the Deck, but runs great on my PC. If I want good framerates on the Deck, I need to turn everything down, and it's acceptable on the go, but at home I could run it at 60 fps easy with better graphics if I stream it.

Yeah i like it that i can play the game on the highest quality and it makes the steam deck less hot and the battery last waaaaay longer :)

I also have it connected to my tv a lot so i can play pc games in 4k on the couch.

I also tend to switch between the steam deck and pc multiple times in a day, so having everything on one system is really nice.

Games like vampire survivor, emulators, bind of isaac, olders games etc, i play on the steam deck directly. But having immediate access to my xbox games pass library is also really nice ^^

Can you say why you do that? It's it because you can play with better quality settings because you offload the work to your pc?

Any (especially input) lag? When I was using steam stream about 5 years ago any quick reaction based game was a no go die to the input lag between my well specxed pc and crappy laptop.

Ultimately the theft of the ruling class from the average artist and person in general is so staggeringly big that who gives honestly gives a shit anymore? Support game devs you like when you can by buying their games from stores that pay well to the developers and artists.... but f&$@ big game companies, they dont need your money, they aren't going to give a meaningful amount of it to the artists and or programmers doing the actual labor anyways so *shrugs*.

When Nintendo comes after people for emulating (especially old) games they aren't protecting anything other than the ownership class who wants to continue to charge rent for absolutely every aspect of our lives whether they rightfully or ethically own the things they are charging rent for or not.

Hell yeah, fuck Nintendo, don't let them take away your right to emulate the games you paid for (hell, I don't mind if you emulate games you didn't pay for, Nintendo is a massive scumbag company, it's totally fine to pirate their stuff)

Slay the Spire is really nice for limited mobility. Turn based, point and click based. I like to play with one hand while I'm eating with the other.

I finally got around to installing OpenMW - it looks much better! Thanks again

Wow, thanks, I'll try this!

You should definitely use OpenMW instead of vanilla, it's not a mod but is instead a full engine rewrite. It runs natively on linux, has better performance, and a whole lot of other benefits:

• Native support for macOS, Linux, and Windows

• Improved physics and AI

• Distant terrain

• Save/Load dialogs organized by character

• Quality of life UI improvements, such as being able to search for spells

• Multiple quicksaves

• World map adjusts automatically to fit new landmass from mods such as Tamriel Rebuilt

• Support for up to 2147483646 loaded mods (up from 255 in the original Morrowind engine)

• Since it was made from scratch, virtually no engine bugs from the original Morrowind

• And much more

You can install it from the Discover store in desktop mode and then add it to steam, or alternatively you can use a tool like Protonup-qt (also in the discover store) to install Luxtorpeda, which is a tool for automatically launching supported games with rewritten engines. Once Luxtorpeda is installed you can open Morrowind steam properties in game mode, and check the "force specific compatibility tool" box and select to run the game with Luxtorpeda. After that it will automatically run the game through the OpenMW engine instead.

Thanks for the tips :)

Please post about your experience with modded Morrowind, I might want to try that too!

Sure, I'll try to remember to do that!

I'm using Vanilla, but AFAIK modded would work just as well. The key for playing old, pre-controller games meant for big monitors on the Deck are two features: Stream Input and Native Zoom. I always map one of the back buttons (usually) to Toggle Zoom.

Please post about your experience with modded Morrowind, I might want to try that too!

Morrowind

Using OpenMW or vanilla engine? Any mods? I just ordered a Deck and Morrowind is at the top of my list of games to install.

I haven't played Rise, but the Monster Hunter series is pretty grindy in general

I haven't played world, so unfortunately I can't make a comparison. There's definitely grinding to do though, hopefully someone who has played both can comment about it.

It does look like a nice deck game. I only ever played World, but I eventually got tired by the endless grind. How is Rise in this regard?

You'll need to set a password for Cryoutilites I think. In desktop mode you can open konsole and run the command `passwd`, then enter your password twice. After that you can just run the Cryoutilites installer.

@Fubarberry Thank you. This seems like it should be useful for my situation 😁 Do I need to go through the process of setting a root/sudo account for this?

That's unfortunate, full system freezes like that are sometimes because you ran out of ram/VRAM. If that was what happened, the SteamOS Beta uses zram which should prevent this once the change makes it to stable. In the meantime you could use something like Cryoutilites to increase your swap file size, which should also prevent crashes like that.

I've been playing a whole lot of Monster Hunter Rise. It runs really good, great performance and battery life (which makes sense considering it was originally a switch game). It's my first real Monster Hunter game and I'm having a great time with it.

Only issues I've encountered: switching between docked and handheld play causes a minor fps drop until I restart the game. The game also has a utterly bizarre bug where if you're playing with a controller designated as the 2nd player controller, any monster roar will drop the fps to 0 for like a minute. Super bizarre, no idea what kind of spaghetti code could cause that.

Edit: for anyone interested, Fanatical has a build your own monster hunter bundle right now that's an incredibly good deal. Can get MH Rise + it's big Sunbreak expansion for $11, previous best deal I had seen was $18 for the two. They also have MH World and a lot of other past MH games.

I recently bought the Cat Quest trilogy. I played the first two on my switch but the third one just came out and Steam did the whole bundle at a discount so I snagged it. Been enjoying replaying the first two before I start on the new one.

Guardians of the Galaxy. FPS is a little sluggish especially first chapter (theres a bug where the whole screen goes black but audio goes through). However, its still fun

Also LIMBO which runs fine on the deck

Octopath 2

Kotor and Kotor 2! They are great on the deck!

I use moonlight to stream my pc to my steam deck. It automatically sets the resolution and refresh rate when i connect. It amazing.

I've been playing red dead redemption 2 and i just finished crime scene cleaner yesterday.

and as always, genshin impact.

In anticipation of the Remake I'm playing Gothic again. First a swordfighter and now as a magician.

Disco Elysium, which plays really well on deck even with very low TDP, great for long lazy days.

For some reason I've played Noita for the past month. Every time I've started to get bored I get a good run and the game dumps something new and interesting on my lap.

I've been addicted to Unrailed recently, it's genuinely a great game that (at least for me) never gets boring. I'm desperately waiting for Unrailed 2. Even the multiplayer works really well on the Steam Deck/Linux in general.

Peglin

Sifu and Selaco

I've just started playing beam ng drive. Looks great so far, but I'm pretty shit at it.

Elden Ring & Resident Evil 6!

Elden Ring:

Man this game is so long but fun. I just can't help myself playing this game everywhere. Somehow getting my ass kicked, and winning a fight or two time to time, kills time so efficiency.

RE6:

Despite it's bad rep, it's a really good game for couch coop on a TV. The performance was great, and just really enjoyable when laughing at bugs & absurd writing with friends.

@Fubarberry

Dome Keeper. A solid 30 hours of fun gameplay. Recommended.

Ghost of Tsushima, Pursuit Force (old PSP game emulated), Driver: Parallel lines, Easy Red 2, Road Redemption, Hotline Miami, Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Witcher 3 and No Man's Sky, with guest appearences of CIV 6

I have been playing a lot of games recently, but I think the one I want to highlight most is a game I have recommended in the past here.

**Beyond All Reason** is a free and open source RTS game inspired by Total Annihilation. It is based on the Spring RTS Engine and collectively BAR represents probably almost two decades of community development over the years and the game is at a really polished fun state at this point with a diverse variety of units and strategies.

The AI is good, it constantly probes your defenses, multiplayer is a blast with active lobbies, you can play PvP or PvE and there are a massive amount of maps. I know I am a weirdo but with gyro on I don't find playing Beyond All Reason difficult at all. Am I going to out APM a mouse and keyboard player? Nope, but that isn't really why I play RTS games anyways, and I can hold my own fine especially with the awesome action que system that BAR expanded on from Total Annihilation.

Honestly, I don't think you are going to find a 3D RTS game with better performance on the Deck for the insane amount of units that get thrown around in a typical BAR match than the Spring RTS Engine/BAR, it is a fairly old 3d RTS engine that by today's standards has extremely low system requirements but at the same time, everything is simulated. When a tank shoots at another tank in the Spring Engine, the tank aims and then launches a projectile... that projectile is modeled as a physical object and it may or may not hit its target. It is VERY impressive that there can be hundreds of units blasting it out on the battlefield in BAR, and the game just keeps chugging along somehow without melting my steam deck.

https://www.beyondallreason.info/

p.s. check out the new BAR trailer, can you believe this game is a free and open source game??!?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K_fSWfOC1w

Hexologic

Mostly only 2 games.

Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers

And the recently released 4th beta for the pokemon fan game Unbreakable Ties (the English release because I'm dumb and don't know Spanish)

Megaman Zero/ZX Collection and Persona 3 Reload

I heard all the controversy about Dustborn and picked up the free demo, it's a decent little Telltale style game.

Was surprised to see that **GTA-V** gives me over 6hrs of play on a charge on the OLED with 45fps/90hz and half-rate shading enabled so played a bunch on that for old times sake. Going to get **RDR2** on sale this week to keep scratching that Rockstar itch.

Finally figured out how to get **Assassin's Creed - Syndicate** running on the deck and this is such a great game, my first in the AC series.

Ryujinx 😁

Solo:

- Break the loop - small indie roguelite with some fun mechanisms

- Cassette Beasts - never played Pokemon before so any comparison would be helpless here. But a nice deck game on the train for sure!

Coop:

- For the King II - loved the first one, they did good with the second one

- Wartales - with 2 other friends, it's our recurring Tuesday game night. Really fun gameplay!

Darkest Dungeon, Black Reliquary, Pillars of Eternity, Cloudpunk, Pathfinder 2, Divinity 2 Original Sin, Slay the Spire, Witcher 1 and 3, Morrowind, Oblivion, Torment, to name just a few...

Alien Isolation has been stressing me out for 30 minutes each evening 😅

The deck is basically my balatro machine. It's great for it.

visions of mana :3

Fallout 4. Recently finished trover saves the universe and super Mario wonder.

I’ve been passing through the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy again. It’s my favorite, and it means quite a lot to me.

Shapez2 works well

So I had shoulder surgery a few weeks ago. I spent a lot of one-handed time on the couch. Played some Shapez 2 with a mouse on the couch via the deck, I played some the Witness (goofily with one hand on my xbox controller), some Slay the Spire, and some Stray

Been nice to have the ability to not sit at my computer when it was too uncomfortable

@Fubarberry I've started playing Cities:Skylines (the original one) again, and downloaded multiple mods from the Steam Workshop. It froze one day and I couldn't fix it in any way than to shut down my Deck. Every upgrades I did to that city were just gone.

Thankfully I managed to improve my public transit by adding more lines, more buses and changing some routes, as well as adding a few more metro stations as infill (sadly I have to redo all the metro lines all the time when I do this).

I play vanilla for now, as I want to make the most out of it without DLCs first. Then I think I will get the snowfall DLC in order to get trams going (as a European I don't understand why are trams, and partly even trolleybuses, hidden under DLCs but metros aren't, as in my country almost all larger cities have trams, yet only the biggest has a metro. But I digress).