My Deck was delayed a couple of days by Fedex but finally arrived on Saturday. I tried out a couple of games, and so far it’s really great.
Elden Ring: I just tried this out for a couple of minutes, but it looks and plays well. The fan did start to run, but thankfully it wasn’t whiny or annoying. However, I could watch the battery meter continuously, but I figure it would be better if I looked into tweaking down some of the graphics settings.
WoW: This wasn’t too difficult to install and appeared to run fine. There’s an addon called ConsolePort which really helps to make the game playable with a controller. For example, the left thumbstick will make your toon walk or run based on how far you push the stick. Mapping abilities to button combos and remembering them will probably take some work, so most likely I’ll just play this with a basic dedicated farming toon.
Anything with official controller support was great, but otherwise trying to play some other games that depended a lot on mouse + keyboard seemed pretty cumbersome. Especially when you had to navigate and click on small buttons. Tooltips, ugh.
One cool discovery I made was that there’s now the possibility that I can now play The Witness and other FPS games because of the Deck’s smaller screen. FPS games have been my bane, with nearly all of them giving me bad motion sickness. I tried the Witness with my PC awhile back, and it made me feel terrible after just a few minutes. Amazingly, I managed to play it on the Deck for over an hour last night and no problems. Woo! Maybe I’ll be able to play some FPS games now!
Make sure to play Aperture Desk Job. Very cool Deck controls demo.
I’m a little bummed that KUF:Heroes seems to be bugged saving. I need to look up a way to unlock the later campaigns.
I bought Noita- I’ve always been interested, and no console port. I have no idea why- the game plays great with the controller setup. Fun little thing, looking forward to digging in.
Debating whether to buy Disco Elysium since it’s on sale for $14. I bought it on Xbox already, but haven’t started. This seems like a good way to play and it’s Deck Verified, meaning folks don’t think the text is too small. Pretty much ditto that for Sir Brante, another text-heavy game I’ve been interested (that weirdly has an Xbox port, but I haven’t bought that). Hmm.
Also, the GP Cloud Gaming thing works flawlessly.at least at home. I can sit in the hammock and play Xbone. Sweet.
The Deck is going to make me rethink my choices in a few years when it’s time to upgrade my PC.
I’ve been a PC guy for my whole life, always trying to get the most bang for my buck, keeping up with the hardware treadmill, but next time, I’m going to see what I can do about playing on the TV, not too close to my face,1080p, 60Hz, far enough that many details aren’t going to matter as much, so a decent APU is enough. And it’s not like I’m still playing Quake II against other people where a pixel would be the difference between hitting with the rail gun or missing…
I just decided to drop the 5 bucks on a reservation on the 256 gb model.
They made it too easy with the pay 5 bucks now, “refundable” later plan. Worse comes to worse if my time is up I can just not buy one and spend that 5 on something else on steam.
I used the in app checker to see what games of my library are compatible. And verified I have 163, as well as 361 that are verified playable.
It covers a lot of games for me I would love to play portable, plus I can use it for emulation etc.
I’ve already used my Deck far more than I ever played the Switch despite owning the latter for years. That speaks to the size of my Steam library mostly. Being able to play all those games on a form factor for the couch or while watching TV with the wife has been great.
Come to think of it, I’ve played my Deck more than my Xbox as well. For a primary PC gamer, it’s just well-suited for what I need.
Something that some people might not give much value to, but is essential for others, I haven’t used it much, but what I did use has worked fine, is the ability to turn it off and then resume your game from where it was.
And still not shipped. After all the “Wow, didn’t expect to get it so quick!” I wasn’t expecting it to still say “preparing to ship” four days after I paid. Oh well, once I have it, I’ll have it. :)
Edit: And of course I got the “shipped” message 2 hours after posting that!
When I had mine, I played it way more than my Xbox, PS5, Switch, PC. It was great playing games everywhere. I gave it to my kid though as she was jonesing for it and I love her more than the Deck.
Will get another one but now I’m playing Dysmantle endlessly on my PS5 and really want to finish that game and Last of Us 2. As long as Dysmantle will take, I’m sure I will get my new Deck reservation before I finish that game.
I did the deck track thing with my pre-order from last weekend, and it says about 120 days until I would get shipping notice. So, it appears it is down to 4 months lead time. The 64 gb model was 90 days, and the 512 was 140ish days.
Success!! I have Steam Deck running perfectly fine with Windows 11 and Steam/Epic/Gamepass/Origin/GoG installed. I just started Telltale Batman on GoG, and Fallguys on Steam works perfectly without any tweaks. Dead Cells and Forza Horizon 4 run fine in Gamepass. I also installed Kena Bridge of Spirits on Epic. Performance is pretty good, and even Steam works slightly better in Windows than it does on SteamOS. Even if you only play games in Steam, and don’t mind paying for Windows 11 license, then installing Win11/Steam is the best way to experience Steam Deck.
Best of all, I didn’t have to run a single tweak, or extra step installing windows, and I never attached mouse/keyboard.
Steam Deck turns instantly on and off (sleep mode) with power button even after just installing windows and with no Steam on the Deck. I have left it off (sleep mode) for almost a day and the battery didn’t go down and it still switched on within a second and at the place, where I left it off. The only extra utility I had to install was SWICD to get Steam Deck controls working outside Steam, and that was also very straightforward.
Most of the online articles on running Steam with Windows have obsolete information. I’ll start a thread in hardware section here about my experience installing Windows.
My brother brought his over last night and it’s a very impressive bit of kit. So, first impressions!
Couldn’t believe how good games like Stray and Wreckfest looked, and how well they ran. I did some tinkering with his settings to hopefully give him more battery life and showed him how powerful the controller options were too (even if the UI/UX is totally different to the desktop version). Sable didn’t like the gyro at all for looking around–Splatoon made me want to try it out. The UI/UX experience overall felt really slick though and being able to just turn off/sleep your system is fantastic.
Tenderfoot Tactics isn’t a verified game but it worked straight out the box which is impressive. The text in-game is very small though so it’s not really viable, even with the magnifier. My brother is currently hooked on the excellent Bad North which I finished on Switch so I know it’s perfect for that kind of form factor. I enabled ‘TV’ mode for him in the options which made the UI scale nicely for the screen size.
I was expecting the Deck to convince me to order one but I think a few things give me pause. Firstly, this thing feels heavy. Like, I think you need to rest it on yourself or something. I couldn’t hold it like the Switch (elevated in front of me) without feeling it in my wrists and forearms. Secondly, the thumbsticks feel like a stretch, even for my long thumbs. This isn’t an issue for me with the Steam Controller’s, whose slightly lower position feels a bit more natural to me. This is something I’d probably get used to. Thirdly, the trackpads feel awkwardly and surprisingly close so I have to curl my thumbs inwards to use them. Contrast that with the SC’s where they’re placed so you’ve got room for extension and contraction of your thumb. I understand with the d-pad there’s only so much face space to arrange all these! Maybe I was naturally holding it too low or high or something? And finally, the back buttons (L4, L5, R4 and R5) have that stiff clicky quality of the SC’s shoulder buttons and they feel awkward to press compared to the SC’s back buttons, which always felt really nice to me.
I’m glad I got to hold it and have a play. Something to continue considering :)
I think you were holding the deck too low, i had to adjust that to make it comfortable. I have very short thumbs though so maybe that makes a difference.
