Steam Deck (handheld from Valve) - shipping is 4-8 days from NL to UK

[Strafe]

Erm, well, It limits power usage. The amount of power the deck is drawing from the battery.

 

You’ll likely be fine on Tunic but try it on a more demanding game and watch things tank.

[Siri]

Note that limiting TDP also controls thermals - the fan won't kick up as much.

 

Although saying all that, the chip in this thing does seem to behave most of the time, it's mostly only worth it if you're either hyper sensitive for fan noise, you really need that extra 5 minutes on Cyberpunk to save, or you're playing something that needs all the graphics power and none of the CPU power, and vice-versa (for the latter, you can use the GPU Speed slider together with the TDP slider to get that desired effect).

[Popo]

15 hours ago, Mystacon said:

I really really need to stop buying games and start playing some instead

Absolutely. This is my new creed. 
 

…

 

Anyway, I’ve just bought Hotline Miami (£1.39), Hotline Miami 2 (£2.39), Downwell (65p) and Roadwarden (£6.21) from Fanatical during their lunar new year sale!
 

I promise I don’t have shares in them, but there’s tons of stuff on sale at the moment. Try browsing their ‘under £5’ and ‘under £10’ categories to see what I mean. 

[Stanley]

Roadwarden is that price on Steam as well. Might get that, although I am trying to buy the games I want to play rather than just buy loads. 

[Gotters]

It's so hard as a somebody new to PC gaming to just not hoover up loads of games you've just found for the first time, or recall good things about, and they cost £2.

 

The most dangerous page on Fanatical is the one where you can filter it, add in steam, deck verified & playable, sort by discount descending and it's hard not to come away without buying something. 

[bradigor]

Just get Civ VI and never understand how time works again! 

 

I am doing well so far this year (only got Halo Wars in the same I with credit from trading cards) and actually playing stuff for more then five minutes. 

 

I do still get choice paralysis though, that will never not happen 

[Paulando]

1 hour ago, Gotters said:

It's so hard as a somebody new to PC gaming to just not hoover up loads of games you've just found for the first time, or recall good things about, and they cost £2.

Mate you only live once.

 

The real problem is buying games on sale for £15-£20 a time that you probably won’t like but you heard good things about but you probably won’t get round to playing anyway.

 

Something for 2 quid? Chuck it on one evening then never play it again, and you’ll have had your money’s worth.

[Gotters]

Just now, Paulando said:

Mate you only live once.

 

The real problem is buying games on sale for £15-£20 a time that you probably won’t like but you heard good things about but you probably won’t get round to playing anyway.

 

Something for 2 quid? Chuck it on one evening then never play it again, and you’ll have had your money’s worth.

 

that's exactly my view, you chuck a shit coffee down your neck or a piss weak beer in a bar in minutes and don't think twice about it, anything up to a fiver I'm happy to take a no refund punt on from a code store and not worry about playing it much or refunding it.

 

over that and tend to head towards Steam and I'm quite active in refunding things I only played for 20m and know I don't like. 

[Popo]

Downwell is ace! I can see the DNA of Poinpy clearly, and while that game is fun, there's something much more satisfying about falling down than flinging up, so I'm finding it more addictive.

 

65p!!!

[sbrandon111]

I bought Castlevania Lords of Shadow, and Mirror of Fate HD for about 2 quid each from cdkeys. 

I skipped over them for some reason when they came out and i'm really enjoying it LoS so far. The deck is perfect for this

 

Cant wait to play through Enslaved again too.

[JoeK]

4 hours ago, Stanley said:

Roadwarden is that price on Steam as well. Might get that, although I am trying to buy the games I want to play rather than just buy loads. 

 

Wouldn't Roadwarden be a bit of a strain on the eyes with all the text?

[Popo]

32 minutes ago, JoeK said:

 

Wouldn't Roadwarden be a bit of a strain on the eyes with all the text?

 

I'll let you know. 

 

This might be where the dock comes into its own...

[Stanley]

29 minutes ago, JoeK said:

 

Wouldn't Roadwarden be a bit of a strain on the eyes with all the text?

I haven’t played it but maybe yeah, I might play that one docked as it’s definitely high up my list not having owned a PC before.

[Siri]

40 minutes ago, JoeK said:

 

Wouldn't Roadwarden be a bit of a strain on the eyes with all the text?

 

I didn't really have a problem reading it during the demo, tbh.

[Ry]

Euro Truck Simulator was the first game I bought for my deck but quickly gave up after 15 mins. 

 

I couldn't get a decent frame rate and it was all jaggy as hell. Controls didn't seem great either. 

 

Can anyone share settings so I'm getting 60fps and decent image quality as I really want to get into it. 

[sbrandon111]

13 minutes ago, Ry said:

Euro Truck Simulator was the first game I bought for my deck but quickly gave up after 15 mins. 

 

I couldn't get a decent frame rate and it was all jaggy as hell. Controls didn't seem great either. 

 

Can anyone share settings so I'm getting 60fps and decent image quality as I really want to get into it. 

I use proton experimental and DX11 mode. I've limited my refresh rate to 40 but it's stable at high settings.

[Popo]

Happy to report that the text in Roadwarden is perfectly legible on the Deck screen. 

 

It doesn't seem to like the Stadia controller, which I decided to test at the same time. The controller works fine in SteamOS, and the game works fine with the Deck's own inputs (with the same layout), so buggered if I know why. The game isn't Deck verified, so maybe there's a bit of tweaking required. 

[deerokus]

29 minutes ago, Ry said:

Euro Truck Simulator was the first game I bought for my deck but quickly gave up after 15 mins. 

 

I couldn't get a decent frame rate and it was all jaggy as hell. Controls didn't seem great either. 

 

Can anyone share settings so I'm getting 60fps and decent image quality as I really want to get into it. 

Make sure you force it to use proton. By default it runs the native Linux version which runs badly.

[Ry]

Just now, deerokus said:

Make sure you force it to use proton. By default it runs the native Linux version which runs badly.

 

How do I do that again?

[Zio]

29 minutes ago, Ry said:

 

How do I do that again?

 

Highlight it in Gaming Mode and press the Start/3-lines button. Choose Properties, then go to Compatability. Tick "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" and choose Proton Experimental.

[Gotters]

just found a Decky Loader plug in called Meta Deck which will track your playtime for all non steam games.

 

starts from zero when you install so not pulling this data from the background I'd guess.

 

useful though as I love seeing how much playtime I got on things. 

[Strafe]

19 hours ago, Strafe said:

PS5 console exclusive “Jett The Far Shore” is coming to steam and there’s a demo up on the store which runs on steam deck.

 

Initially I thought it ran quite well which wasn’t surprising given how bland it looked. Then I realised it had defaulted to the lowest graphics setting so put it up and the frame rate tanked. The higher graphics settings still look pretty bland so presumably this is not very optimised because I’m not seeing anything that looks particularly taxing for the hardware. It reminded me of The Pathless which also struggles to hit 60 on much more than minimum despite also not looking particularly taxing.

 

Anyway, it’s from Superbrothers who made the overly pretentious, chin scratching  bollocks sword and sorcery for iOS, which I had to bin because of how smug and self involved the writing was. I’d like to say this isn’t more of the same but it kind of is.

 

They’ve taken a great idea (a mysterious humanoid alien race travels across the stars looking for, I don’t know, a new home or something), twinned it with an incredible soundtrack (M83 fans will enjoy) and then decided to create the most basic game possible around it. They’ve also taken the time to make their own language for said aliens that is spoken very slowly with all the emotion and enthusiasm of a badger ODing on ketamine. There’s no real reason I can think of to create this language, it’s not like the burble burble burble they use in Nintendo games to save on voice casting. It’s got nouns and adjectives and tenses and everything. That’s almost quite cool if it didn’t sound so shit,

 

The thing that annoyed me the greatest was despite hating it most of the way through, the demo ends in an incredibly epic way and I almost wanted to see more but hopefully the soundtrack is streaming somewhere instead.

 

Anyway, enjoy!

They pushed out a circa 2.5gig update for the demo that has made performance worse. I could hit 40 fps on the second lowest quality setting. This now can’t even hold 30, even dropping the resolution down to 720p. The lowest quality setting holds 60 in the ship more or less but drops to 40 in the out of ship bits.

 

I should have known better.

[bradigor]

I've got a code for the PC release with the notice saying the Devs are actively working on Steam Deck performance 

[Stanley]

Is it a decent game, on PS5? 

[Ry]

No matter what I do Euro Truck is a jaggy mess. 

 

Hard to play like that. Have anti aliasing at highest and it still sucks. 

[deerokus]

Increase the scaling to like 200 or 300%. It's a pretty old game built on outdated rendering so you have to do that really. The anti aliasing doesn't do much.

 

 

I think you can assume forspoken won't run on deck... 

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/17/23559302/forspoken-pc-system-requirements-32gb

 

[tejinashi]

Bargain alert! Titanfall 2 is currently £2.49 and marked as "playable" on Deck (probably to do with EA launcher shenanigans.)

 

Anyway, as we all know, the campaign is one of the greatest of all time, and there's no one here that hasn't played it yet, right?

 

Right this way, sir. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1237970/Titanfall_2/

 

 

[Gotters]

reading the discussions on Steam the loader looks an issue on Deck with many reporting they couldn't get it loaded, some saying it was fine. 

 

worth a punt I guess with the refund available

[monkeydog]

23 hours ago, bradigor said:

Just get Civ VI and never understand how time works again! 

 

I'm a little ashamed to say that my Deck time has mostly been a bit of Spider-Man and loads of Civ6.  My aspirations to play a wide range of stuff from my library have been steamrollered.

[Stanley]

12 minutes ago, monkeydog said:

 

I'm a little ashamed to say that my Deck time has mostly been a bit of Spider-Man and loads of Civ6.  My aspirations to play a wide range of stuff from my library have been steamrollered.

This, the realisation of quantity versus time!