I can’t help but feel like Valve has somewhat dropped the ball by not releasing it yet, at least for other handheld manufacturers to use in their own devices. As it is, the Steam Deck is the only handheld PC that I know of that uses linux, and all the companies jumping on the bandwagon with competition are all using windows. It feels to me like Valve’s attempt at making linux the de facto standard handheld OS for gaming devices has slipped away by now, which is really unfortunate.

Of course, the Steam Deck is still the most popular handheld gaming PC (in large part I’m sure due to low cost and the convenience of SteamOS) so it’s not like it has been a failure at getting more gamers on linux, but I’d guess that if they released SteamOS 3 alongside the Steam Deck it would have made a much bigger dent in the market.

Armored Core 3! I was interested in AC6 coming out in a month, so I decided to jump into the older games to get a taste of the series beforehand. AC1 was very clunky and difficult for a newcomer to the series, that’s for sure. After a bit I decided to skip to 3 since I heard it was a good entry point to the series.

I’ve been having so much fun! I spend way more time customizing and tweaking my mech and theory-crafting new builds than I actually spend doing missions. I’ve mostly done arena fights, since they’re less stressful (no ammo or repair costs), but the entire game is great so far.

Now having played this, I’m more excited for Armored Core 6 than I thought I would be, and I cannot WAIT for it to release.