The Steam Deck is a handheld PC. Valve has gone above and beyond in bringing a user-friendly, console-like experience to PC gaming with the Deck, but it is still PC gaming. Basically none of the games you’re playing were designed for the Deck specifically, and so the Deck gaming experience is filled with variety, both positive and negative. There are the graphics options you expect from PC ports, but you can also adjust power draw, fix GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) clocks, change your refresh rate, implement framerate caps, customise controls, and so on – all on SteamOS itself. There are also hardware inclusions to consider, namely the trackpads (primarily designed for mimicking mouse controls), rear buttons that can copy any other button, and a gyroscope that turns the whole system into a kind of “air mouse” – some of these aren’t even on all PC handhelds, let alone industry-standard.
This all means that the Steam Deck gaming experience is one filled with variety – in games, controls, and of course, potential issues, such as compatibility.
Steam Deck Compatibility
Games on SteamOS are tested rigorously by Valve with ratings such as:
- Verified (no issues),
- Playable (minor issues),
- Unsupported (major issues)
- Untested (find out for yourself)
However, there are multiple levels of detail here, with some Unsupported titles being perfectly fine experiences, while even some Verified games have little quirks that can be useful to know about when wanting that perfect experience. Given that, I wanted to educate readers on the nuances of the Deck via some of the games I’ve been playing myself.
Hades II (Early Access) on Steam Deck
Just to avoid this article becoming overly negative, and to make clear the fact that most games are fantastic on the Deck, let’s start with a game that has had no issues or oddities whatsoever. Story-heavy roguelike sequel Hades II is still in Early Access at the time of writing, and yet runs its shocking quantity of content on the Deck flawlessly, hitting a locked 90fps while matching the screen’s native 800p resolution (as well as the 16:10 aspect ratio), letting you fully appreciate the artistic beauty of the game’s visuals, as well as the very fast-paced gameplay that really wants a solidly high framerate. Keep this in mind as I discuss Deck games with minor-to-major issues.
Blasphemous on Steam Deck
Blasphemous has almost no issues whatsoever – almost. Perhaps more if you don’t deal well with graphic, pixelated violence. Blasphemous is a rightly-beloved 2D action game, fitting into both the Metroidvania and Souls-like genres by taking such mechanics as circular level design that requires items to fully navigate, and leaving behind resources in spots where you die. On Steam Deck it’s a fantastic experience – the visuals, inspired by religious artwork of centuries past, are artistically glorious yet very light on a technical level, making for a game that doesn’t just run perfectly on Steam Deck but also runs a very long time in terms of battery life. Dropping the TDP (Thermal Design Power) and GPU clocks (both found in the SteamOS per-game Performance Menu) down to 6 watts and 800MHz (megahertz) respectively results in a game that can run on the OLED Deck for something in the region of 8-9 hours, with the LCD model’s smaller battery and less efficient chip still being capable of handling Blasphemous for half a day. The one tiny niggle – which doesn’t even apply on the LCD model – is that the game itself is framerate limited in such a way that trying to play it on the OLED model’s 90Hz screen at the maximum refresh rate results in the framerate dancing around slightly, from around 58-62. This sounds like a bigger issue than it is – the perfect experience requires only an adjustment of the refresh rate to 60Hz, the same Performance menu where the TDP and clocks are adjusted. Blasphemous on Deck isn’t much different from Blasphemous on Switch, but the battery lasts quite a while longer.
Inscryption on Steam Deck
Inscryption is an odd one – a deck-builder game with simple-yet-tactile visuals and a deeply creepy atmosphere. Or at least, that’s where it starts. I have yet to plumb the game’s full depths, but I’ve already seen enough to know that I should stop here. Play it. But should you play it on Deck? Well… Inscryption is a demonstration of what happens when the PC version of a game is designed solely around Keyboard & Mouse controls. From one point of view, it makes the Steam Deck play rather janky. I’ve been using the sticks and trackpads to mimic WASD movement and mouse controls, the triggers to copy the left and right mouse buttons… it’s not perfect and has resulted in some mistakes, but it gets the job done. So we come to the other point of view – that the Deck even being able to take such a game and make it work without dedicated patches is impressive, and that the Community Layout feature where I selected a control scheme created and uploaded by another user is an indispensable feature. But the result is still a touch iffy, and you may prefer to play on an actual KB&M PC, or try out the console version, where the controls were fully redesigned by creator Daniel Mullins as detailed here.
F.E.A.R. on Steam Deck
F.E.A.R. is another case similar to Inscryption – a PC game with only KB&M controls, and no native controller options despite the later release of a console port. But also like Inscryption, it has multiple Community Layouts from dedicated fans that make it eminently playable. It’s especially enhanced by the gyro functionality that allows you to aim with the Steam Deck itself – it’s surprisingly immersive when you’re simultaneously using the Slow-Mo feature. However you’ll need to get used to using the entire Steam Deck for this one – F.E.A.R. has a lot of options and a lot of buttons for things like item selection, reloading and melee combat that’s meant to be mixed with shooting, turning things like the four rear buttons from nice-to-haves into outright necessities. This is a title that’s going to demand some practice and focus to play on the Deck, but the result is rewarding if you can get used to it.
Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro on Steam Deck
I don’t need to tell any of you that Dark Souls III is worth playing. Maybe remind you of it, post-Elden Ring, but I think you all should remember the beautifully decrepit visuals and classic Souls gameplay. How about on Deck? Not only does it make for an excellent handheld title, but it’s also a great demonstration of the value of something I dug into in my last article – the Steam Deck OLED’s 45fps 90hz mode. Dark Souls III is capable of hitting 60fps at certain times on Deck, but as a game built around the 8th generation on consoles, it isn’t going to stick to that at all times, making for a framerate that jitters around and lacks the consistency you really want for a game where you yourself must be consistent. A fixed 45Fps, however, is much more attainable (especially since it eases the load on both the CPU and GPU), and allows you to drive the visual settings higher than you would’ve thought the Deck could handle. This all applies equally to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, another major FromSoftware title sporting roughly equal technology. 45Fps at 90hz is impressively smooth, leaping beyond the choppiness of 30fps just enough to make for an experience that isn’t 60fps… but damned if it doesn’t feel like it.
Dark Forces Remastered on Steam Deck
Dark Forces Remastered, a recent update from Nightdive Studios, is a classic Star Wars FPS from the era where those were called DOOM Clones. A beloved classic worth paying a higher price for, DFR is also a niche oddity on a technical level – in fact, it’s in a way the opposite of the kinds of games I’ve been discussing in this article. DFR is not a game with issues on the Deck – far from it, as it runs flawlessly with full Valve verification. Rather, it has a specific issue in all versions. As covered by John Linneman in his DFR Digital Foundry video, the fundamental game logic and timing are all set to a fixed internal tick rate. The developers at Nightdive could not remove this issue and instead set it to 144Hz. This results in motion judder when playing on consoles or the Steam Deck LCD at 60 or 120fps, and even PCs need a 144Hz monitor to avoid it. But the Steam Deck OLED can fix its refresh rate to 72Hz – precisely half of 144 and thus also removing judder. So, is DFR a good game for Steam Deck? Hell – as long as you have an OLED it’s one of the best ways to play.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax on Steam Deck
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is a great game for enthusiasts of the series – a deep and complex fighter with 2 games’ worth of story and characters combined with an interesting summoning gimmick that separates P4AU from your Street Fighters and Guilty Gears. Unfortunately, it demonstrates a Steam Deck issue that isn’t unique – an inability to play certain cutscenes, replacing them with a simple error screen. This is apparently due to these cutscenes utilising a Windows-exclusive video codec owned by Microsoft – understandably, this is not part of SteamOS and not something Valve could legally include. I attempted to fix it by downloading a community version of Proton, the program that allows SteamOS to play Windows games, and it allowed the cutscenes to play… but also removed cutscene audio, even from the ones that were previously working. Not everything is flawless on Deck, as you can see, and I think it’s good to end this article by reminding you of that. Great device, great software, great support – for all I know the cutscene issue will be fixed by the time you read this! But don’t expect the kind of seamlessness you’ll often get from a console ecosystem. Instead, appreciate the freedom and massive library, and embrace your inner tinkerer.
