Also I just tried Fae Tactics which is supposedly supported with an all-green check. But it boots zoomed in to only 1/4th of the screen blown up and I can't see the in-game menu to change the resolution. What are you supposed to do in these situations? I went under properties and changed the resolution but it does nothing.
I'm going to try installing it on my desktop PC and changing the resolution and cloud saving out and then loading the game in deck.
You could also try plugging in or pairing a keyboard and see if you can ALT+ENTER to resize the window. Not sure if that works on Steam OS though? It sounds like that game might need to be run in borderless windowed mode, possibly. I've had that happen with some games on other (Windows) devices before. It's not a Steam Deck-only thing.
Hmm, Deck seems neat enough. I really like the screen. I was expecting much worse given that it's not OLED but it looks really nice and colorful.
Which version did you get? There's a difference between the the lower/mid-tier ones and the 512 GB one.
Performance is a tad slower than I'm used to on a PC. Not sure if it's the hard drive being slower compared to SSDs I use or just a weaker cpu. Load times seem a bit longer in everything.
Ditto on this too. I got the 512 GB model and the load times are pretty good off the SSD. Definitely a bit slower off the micro SD card (for larger games).
Kinda disappointed in the trackpads for mouse. Was hoping it'd be a good mouse-based game portable, but trackpad feels kind of shitty moving the mouse around. Probably why all the PnC adventure games I tried have default template set to joystick controls instead of trackpad mouse. Works ok enough, I've just always preferred mouse controls for adventure games. Then again there are a ton of tweaking options for controls so it's possible with some type of setting the trackpad can feel like a decent mouse.
I think these kinda suck, TBH. Maybe they can be tweaked because they just seem too sensitive. I hate using these for navigation in the desktop mode. Need to see if there's at least a way to change left click to something else besides the right touchpad.
Oh and I tried a tate shmup and it looked GREAT, but the controls on this thing don't seem setup well for tate mode. Couldn't find a comfortable layout to play vertically and move and shoot while holding the system. Kind of a shame since it looks so good. I guess if there's a stand you can put it vertically on in tate mode and use a bluetooth controller it'd work. But that's not very portable.
This is no different than using the Switch like this (unless you have that tate adapter-thing). Worth picking up a little stand regardless, although I don't know what would allow you to have it set vertical- this thing is too big!
If you're looking for a good quality stand and don't care about it being like a dock with USB ports, check out the Genki Portable Kickstand 2 on Amazon. It's made for Switch, but the Steam Deck works with it perfectly. It's made of metal and feels pretty premium, plus it folds up to be pretty thin. It's on sale for $20 right now.
Overall the first few hours make it seem like this is not the plug n' play solution to PC gaming that makes it like a Switch or PSP or console where you just boot stuff and everything is fine. Still seems like each individual game is going to need some tweaking, either in getting it to run, or resolutions, or controls. But still seems a step better than trying to play steam gaming on a tablet/phone using steam link and touch controls. If there's something I actually want to play, I'll spend the 30 mins getting it setup just right.
I don't agree with you on this- I had little trouble getting it up and running and getting right into playing games. I did prep for it beforehand and transferred most of the games I wanted to play over via SSD so I wouldn't have to wait, but have been getting great download speeds. The best thing about the Steam Deck is Steam OS itself- being able to tweak things on the fly at any time is just amazing. The worst thing about it to me is trying to navigate and use the desktop Linux OS. I feel like you NEED a keyboard and mouse available to use it. But once I copied stuff over and downloaded Proton, I was good and have rarely needed to go back into it.
Also the d-pad is kind of ho-hum. I think the ideal system would be modular where you could swap the analog/d-pad/trackpad/buttons around. I wish there were portables that did that. Would much rather have the d-pad where the left trackpad is (and a better d-pad too). Can't see myself playing fighters on this.
The d-pad works great for fighters. Have had no trouble doing moves. That said, much like with any other handheld device, I typically will use a fightpad if I want to be 'serious'. More for the button layout than the d-pad.
Yeah, I googled those unsupported games and found that:
Dragon's Dogma - Works fine except the steam button crashes the game. So just don't ever press that until are ready to exit the game.
Bioshock Infinite - Apparently works fine? No one knows why it's listed as unsupported.
Divinity OS: EE - Native Linux version defaults to 1080p and has no controller support or something which is why it's listed as unplayable. Proton Experimental fixes those but apparently still has a couple of issues. And mods give it trouble, someone said like 10 min load times with mods installed. Sounds like this one is a pass on Deck.
Like Nintex said, don't be afraid to try anything- most games will work just fine. Also with Dragon's Dogma (And any other PC game), if you can quit back to the main menu to exit the game, that should work just fine.
