- 0 Posts
- 12 Comments
Yeah. The controls, the fighting. Even with all the patches and community stuff laid on top, it was a bit too uncomfortable to actually play through for me.
The second one was brilliant. And to this day, despite me having almost 200 hours in Witcher 3, the only Witcher game I’ve actually finished. I think second’s format was perfect. 3 is just too open and beautiful, I get lost in wandering around too easily.
Just an anecdote, but I have a much smoother experience playing with the original steam deck than I did on my desktop. I mean the frames aren’t as high, the screen is small and resolution is low, but for whatever backwards reason, it just feels so smooth to look at and play with. I guess you see and feel the graphical artifacts better on a large screen with large resolution, and everything feels so uncanny somehow with high refresh rates and 100+ fps. Can’t really explain it though. Weird stuff.
Just finished the last of us 1 remake and 2 remaster with the deck. It just looks so gorgeous, I ran both with mixed medium-high settings, and it was an amazing experience. Before those I played cyberpunk with some crazy 500+ mods, and it was just excellent to play. Same with Witcher 3, though that’s getting old by now, so less surprising it runs so well.
In fact, I’m yet to play any lightweight games on this thing. Or even indie ones. These graphically intensive games have been such a joy to play, I haven’t even had the time or motivation to attempt anything else. I’m finally getting through my dusty, cobwebbed library, especially these more expensive games, and that’s been almost miraculous! A desktop requires sitting down, dedicated time and focus, but I can bring this thing with me pretty much anywhere and play a checkpoint or two or whatever while on a bus, a train, waiting for an appointment… anything. And it fucking runs all these games I’ve dreaded to play on the gaming rig because it just never felt good because I couldn’t hit ultra settings on everything, and the artifacts just were too noticeable and things weren’t as immersive as I’d have liked.
But this small little thing? So enjoyable, it’s so weird.
This is something I want to yell so loud every time I see anyone underestimating this thing talking about playing less demanding, smaller or older, indie, or otherwise more basic games. Thanks to some black magic I can’t make any sense of, the exact opposite is what you’ll want to do I bet!
I love the thing and use it extensively whenever I can, but it is bulky and hard to fit into bags with other stuff. If there was a way to separate the palm rest bits and have most other things be flat, and thin enough, that’d make a huge difference. But the bulky palm rests attached to the thin body, it just unavoidably wastes some space, and even more if one wants to be safe and use the case.
But it’s not that bad, easily lived with. Doesn’t remove the fact that it could be much better in that regard though.
Still easily more portable than a laptop though! And much more comfortable to use for gaming, if that’s going to be the most common use case for a computer while you travel.
Initially I, too, claimed those, but ultimately I never ended up playing them and often I’d just end up buying them from steam instead. It’s funny how I’m willing to pay for something I can have for free, if it’s convenient and easy. So I didn’t claim them for very long, stopped a long time ago, and still just ignore it if a game I thirst for is available for free.
But that’s also a pretty dark prospect: Because I have my entire extensive library on steam, I’m kind of stuck with them. And while they are not abusing that presently, I’m fairly confident they will someday. And I, along with most everyone playing on pc, will be shit out of luck then.
It’s hard to diversify at this point, when I’m too far gone, and knowing changing or adding services will increase the complexity of using it all and keeping mental track of all the games and where they are.
Ugh.
Are they decent? Or complete, as in it has the entire main story at least in? I’d be very interested. Played fo1 halfway through when I was playing a lot of the infinity engine classics some years ago, it was great, but a lot of fairly simple QoL stuff was needed for me to finish it. I’m now playing the fo3 and new Vegas in the TTW mod (with the Begin Again modlist) and it has been great with all the QoL stuff baked in. Never played fallouts other than the first before now, kind of amazed it took me so long to give the threes a go, seeing as I’ve had them in my steam library for ages…
For whatever it’s worth, I never finished it, as an avid crpg fan. It’s not the hours it takes, it’s the constant feeling that you’ve got so much to do but no real idea where to start, or where to go, or what to do. If it was a world map with clickable places, like the original baldurs gates or even the somewhat intimidating but still much more digestible owlcat’s pathfinders style “railroad” experience, it’d been much nicer. But the free map to roam just makes both decisions harder, and also the seashell collector inside me awaken and suddenly I have to explore each pixel of the map in case I miss something, which is very exhausting on top of the already exhausting freedom.