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

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

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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.

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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?

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

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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

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

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- Awesome!! I see its on sale today too! I'll pick it up! Thanks for the rec
  
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Octopath 2

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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.

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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?

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- 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.
  
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- 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 ^^
  
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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Peglin

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Playing Rounded right now, definitely have my eye on Peglin

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Ryujinx 😁

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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)

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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...

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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.

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- 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!
  
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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!

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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.

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

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Sifu and Selaco

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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.

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- 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.
  
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Megaman Zero/ZX Collection and Persona 3 Reload

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AND Mars 2120

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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)

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Hexologic

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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

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

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

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Shapez2 works well

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

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visions of mana :3

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

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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

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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.

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@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).

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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.

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

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