Steam Deck

Ta

Been playing some No Man’s Sky on this, runs great and it never occurred to me that it would be a perfect game for short play sessions.

Vampire Survivors gets played the most on mine, not really dug into anything outside of steam on it.

I've been spending far too much time faffing about with mine rather than playing anything. I've just been installing stuff just to see if it works then moving on. Days Gone works really well, but I've spent nearly 3 hours on Vampire Survivors instead, apparently!

Xbox Cloud is very, very good once it's set up. Also PrimeHack is just great, I could never get the hang of Metroid Prime controls so a handheld option with "normal" controls means I might actually finish it at last.

I need to play around with the control setups. I still feel like I'm fumbling around when I'm using the trackpads, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Has anyone got Epic Games working on their Deck yet? I'm trying it out now by installing the Windows installer directly on the Desktop side (following this guide: www.rockpapershotgun.com/how-to-install-epic-games-launcher-on-steam-deck). But, there also seem to be various launcher options – Heroic, Lutris, etc.

Anyone else done this? How's it worked out for you?

I installed the EGS by accident from Lutris when I wanted to install a game from my Epic account. Once it was running it was really plain sailing, only thing is that the download management via third party stores isn’t as slick as the native steam version

I also only used the internal ssd for storage. Guessing getting the SD card recognised would take more config, possibly command line desktop Linux stuff

Had mine for nearly a week now so here are my observations.

- It's been a godsend in this hot weather. I've been able to continue playing games without having to turn on my space heater PC and an OLED monitor which alone uses twice the power of the entire Deck setup. Tonight it's been Days Gone, some of the Llamasoft games (no music in Tempest 4k but Moose Life and Polybius run beautifully - remember to set them to full screen for actual 800P res which looks ultra sharp) and Ys 9, which I've run up to the first 'main' dungeon to play through on my way to work tomorrow.
- It helps to be realistic about what you want to show on the screen, and remember that you're mostly going to be GPU limited so dropping rendering resolution is often a low impact way to get performance back - and I found that when out and about it was hard to care when the HUD and text were full resolution. For example, I traded off some resolution scaling to turn up the lighting on Days Gone to 'high' for example, which reintroduced AO and made for a much more solid image at 40FPS. The ability to restrict the screen down to 40hz has been really nice on the Sony AAA ports, but 50's a good choice for faster games too. In general the built in frame limiter's very good but much like with my Gsync monitor, it pays to try combinations with Vsync on and off sometimes. The built in performance monitor is brilliant for checking this, as someone who regularly brings up the same kind of thing with MSI Afterburner on my main PC.
- As someone who got horrible wrist strain from the Wii U gamepad this thing is super easy to hold. Sure, I usually want to brace my elbows against something to take the weight but it's extremely well balanced and the hand grips are basically ideal. Extremely comfortable even for multiple-hour sessions.
- I think the dpad is pretty unsuitable for fighting games but for simple selection it's fine. My big problem is that it's too tall which makes doing a quick move from left to right and up to down require more effort, and pressing diagonals is much harder than it should be. Similarly I'm having a little trouble holding the bumpers for more than a few seconds, but that's only flared up in Ys 9 as you hold LB to run. Rendered moot by the next point though.
- It's made me appreciate both Steam Cloud and Steam Input so much. I've been going back and forth between my big PC and Deck and it's been extremely smooth and most importantly clear when files are updated; doing things on Switch has generally worked but I've never felt confident in it. In terms of controls, the back paddles are excellent, I find them extremely easy to press (especially compared to the Xbox Elite Series 2 I also have) and configuring them and other buttons in the input interface is extremely easy.
- I'm not seeing much point running it past a TDP of 11W. Higher than that, the fans get very loud and looking at stuff online (and my own tests) I don't think you get much benefit going higher. Pulling back to 9W in less challenging games like EDF5 is still giving me better-than-PS4 frame rates at a 3 hour battery life and much less heat dissipation.
- Possibly the most important one - I've spent so much time playing actual Steam games, both current ones and blasts from the past, I've not even bothered with emulation. I totally expected to be messing around with PSP, PS2 and the like by now but I've just been continuing the games I've got on the run from my main machine.

I'm still at the point where if I see it, I want to pick it up and play something on it. The really great thing, and what's exciting for the future, is that this is something that anyone can produce (and Valve seem willing to support, as seen with them helping first Anbernic and now GPD with official SteamOS builds for their handhelds) and as we see APUs get more efficient in the coming years it's only going to get better. Realistically in a year or two we'll have flagship Unreal Engine 5 games which may not scale down to the Deck but I'm confident that the screen and the chip are right in the sweet spot to catch over 90% of what's released this generation, no problem. And with Zen 4 and RDNA3 around the corner, even UE5 doesn't seem a million miles away.

I ordered mine on 20th July 2021 and the predictor is saying the end of August. 256gb (UK).

Cool, thanks both.

I used Emudeck to install various emulators. It makes the process so easy and does a lot of heavy lifting for importing artwork to the Steam client.


www.emudeck.com/

I've only tried Crazy Taxi (solid 60 fps) and Mario Sunshine (solid 30 in gameplay in the little I played, with stutter in the video). I've left everything as stock settings. 

Steam Deeeeeeck! Just got the email for the 512gb one or whatever it is. Ordered 17th July for reference.

Mate of mine got the email for the middle version around the same time and ordered similar time to me so cranking up now!

Anyone here who has one - out of curiousity, with your L1/R1, if you press them down and release pressure a bit, can you re-press them without it actually clicking again/releasing the button much?

I've noticed playing Monster Hunter and sprinting with R1 that I'll often just unsprint even when holding the button and a little testing shows I need to apply a fair bit of pressure or it un-presses.

So what decade should I expect one if I order now (UK)?

Also a Feb 2022 order and the calculator is now estimating 23rd August 2023. I don't think that is accurate, but fully expecting it to not be until next year that I will actually get hold of one.

In two minds whether I will actually bother with it when it comes around. I just bought a laptop and I could imagine a Switch 2 being around sometime next year (although 2024 still seems likely to me). A new Switch will be an instant buy for me. Could be hard to justify getting a Deck as well.