cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/25800
My 10 most played (and enjoyed) games on the Steam Deck over the last year. What are your favorites?
Here’s the list with basic Performance and overall ratings (No particular order):
*Shadow of Mordor - 8.5
Highly recommend. Great Story, Smooth gameplay with a low skill floor and high skill ceiling, and tons of fun to be had with the Orc Nemesis system. I hear great things about the sequel, but I just had to get this off my backlog because it’s been there since launch. Glad I had this gem to kick off my SD journey. It Runs almost flawlessly with good settings.
*No Man’s Sky - 8.75
(if it’s your thing, incredible) For a colorful space-feels survival game, look no further. Relaxing or challenging depending on what you’re looking for, the game setting are yours to command. Superb exploration mechanics and a dev team that only gets better with age. 100% worth the go.
*The Witcher 2 - 8.0
Oldie but a goodie. Runs locked 45 with high graphics start to finish. Or 60 FPS with some dips. Honestly, I just turned the frame counter off and I stopped noticing. Story is awesome, and for a medieval bang-me simulator, no one does it better. The combat and controls take a little getting used to, but there are some great community layouts (including mine). It’s an often overlooked game that is worth your time, and money — especially because it goes on sale all the time.
*The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - 9.999
Needs no introduction. It’s Morrowind — Nuff said. It runs perfectly with maxed out everything. You can even get all your favorite mods going with a little guile and elbow grease. I’d give it 10 but nothing is perfect, and let’s be honest this game has a lot of jank. It’s really just rated highly because of what a perfect fit it is on Deck. Also, it’s one of my favorite games of all time, so I’m biased. Any complaints about the game I’ve long since come to terms with. The animation is whacky and stiff even for the time, and the character models are bizarre and disproportionate. The textures need updating, but with a few mods, this game is gorgeous, and even without it’s still an absolute masterpiece of story music and voice acting. The RPG mechanics are deep and satisfying. Truly, they don’t make games like this anymore. You’re almost meant to be able to break it using the in game systems, turning you eventually into an omnipotent god. What a great game on the go, and it gets bonus points for the nostalgia feels.
*Elden Ring - 9.25
Graphics 10, Story 10, Gameplay and Controls 10, Sound and music 9 (a little crunchy sometimes and needs some balancing between the music and sound effects. It comes with the volume WAY too over cranked so I recommend having a fiddle to get it where you like it) Performance 8 (It’s a newish Next Gen AAA game. It’s a miracle it runs at all. I just lock it at 45 and turn off the frame counter and don’t notice the dips. It’s had substantial updates since the SDs launch that have really optimized the performance, I’ve only recently noticed some hiccups during a cutscene as the camera cut to different angles. Might have something to do with stream loading) Overall 9.25. Worth the time and money, and the performance issues were minor, few and far between.
*Hogwarts Legacy - 9
WHOA. What a game. So surprised by this. Can’t believe it runs on The Deck. Similar score to Elden Ring. I give it maybe a 9 overall, simply because the main story is kinda Meh. However the side quests and NPCs and world building more than makeup for it. Gameplay is phenomenally great. Flying on a broomstick, check, tight combat, check, exploring Hogwarts fully and unhindered, check. They’ve somehow managed to Souls-Like-ify Harry Potter, and I’m not mad at all. Pick it up and live your best Wizard life.
*Kerbal Space Program - 7.75
Get weird and build some rockets bro. Great building, physics and flight sim, with a silly little green men from space twist. Runs perfectly unless you get a little too carried away with parts, but dude… this game can make even modern PCs chug if you get know how. Fun pick up for the Deck, though the controls needs a touch of love from the community layouts. Have a look there and you won’t go wrong.
*Mass Effect Trilogy - 8.75
It’s Mass Effect, finally in a full trilogy on steam, and all three games run great on deck. This was BioWare at its best, and if you’re missing out on one or all of these games in the series, it’s worth a go in deck. Graphics are great, sounds and music are amazing, gameplay is a great balance of shooting and magic, with fun exploration and incredible story telling. Romance options are a huge feature— for a Space-Age bang-me simulator, this is your best bet. Go romance a tentacle headed alien and save the universe from the Reapers. THREE TIMES. Overall great value.
*Halo Infinite (multiplayer only) - 8.5
I couldn’t be bothered with the campaign, but this was great for my FPS fix. Gyro controls make quick work of the console plebs, and keep toe to toe with the PC master race. If you like Halo, well… it’s Halo. Go forth and SLAY, Spartan!! Graphics are great, performance is great, sound is meh — but who cares it’s Halo, and controls are muah chef’s kiss.
*PREY - 9.25
Yikes. I had never played this game before. What a mind-fuck. Graphics are a insanely good, sound, music, lighting, all perfect for the story telling which is absolutely king in this. Story is literally out of this world. I can say no more —play it yourself. Controls are great for a Bethesda mini-action-RPG. It’s basically Bioshock… in Space. Great fun. Only draw back is that it’s a bit short in my opinion. Still, it’s perfect on the deck, suspend your game anywhere and pick it up in bits and chunks. Would you kindly give it a go on your Steam Deck?
There it is. My top 10… for now.
This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/steamdeck by /u/inspiredtobeinspired on 2023-06-26 12:39:38+00:00.
Nice list. I missed out on Morrowind … maybe it’s time to give it a go.
I can highly recommend it, especially if you also install Luxtorpeda compatibility tool to run it with the OpenMW project; it performs really well and is leagues more stable than the native binary. 😊
Thanks! I’ll save this tip for the chilly months.
How difficult is it to mod on the deck, asked by someone who has never done modding lol.
Ultimately, as difficult (or easy) on the Steam Deck as it would be on a regular desktop.
For games with built-in Steam Workshop support, it’s as easy subscribing to mods and enabling them in-game as it is when playing on a PC, and for games that don’t have that, you can switch to Desktop Mode - which is essentially a regular KDE Linux installation - and do your modding like on a regular PC.
As for the specifics of modding Morrowind, though… with Bethesda games, you can go absolutely hog-wild with mods, or you can just chuck a handful of QoL ones in and call it a day. Last time I’ve extensively modded Morrowind, it’s been couple of years back, and there’s been all sorts of tooling developed - you’ll need to read a bit into how it works nowadays, and how well it operates on Linux
I feel Prey (2017) is criminally underrated. There were difficulty scaling issues, but other than that, the game was amazing. I played it when I had my 3 months of gamepass for $1 or whatever it was. I loved everything about it.
Prey was great!
I just got a free copy from Amazon Prime Gaming! I can’t wait to try it on the Deck.
Wow I almost forgot about PREY. What a fantastic game. Looks like I’ll be starting another play through on my deck!
Vampire Survivors, Dome Keepers, Brotato are great games on the deck as well.
Brotato is so good!
What’s the one-sentence pitch for brotato? I know it’s a roguelike? I think?
Arena rogue like with a wide variety of weapons/abilities and enemies as well as a system of combining like weapons to upgrade them to the next tier.
Shadow Of Mordor is a great game! I played it quite a few years ago and I remember immensely enjoying it. Something about the combat was very satisfying. I liked how you had to figure out how to get around certain captains’ strengths to beat them.
And having one nemesis that keeps coming back to kill you made things feel very personal.
I recently got Prey for free via Amazon gaming, not sure how to make that work on the deck though 🤔
I’m currently playing the Amazon version.
As it’s a code for gog, you can easily use heroic launcher, it works wonderfull.
Go to desktop mode, in the discover app install heroic launcher.
Then open it, go to the store and login to gog. Now you can install any gog games and add it to steam directly from heroic launcher. Then it works perfectly out of the box in game mode.
Awesome, thank you I’m going to try this out!
How do you get it for free?
- Diablo IV
- Stardew Valley
- Red Dead Redemption II
- Brotato
- Fallout 4
- Spiderman
- Mass Effect Trilogy
- Diablo II: Resurrected
- No Man’s Sky
- Vintage Story :)
How does Diablo play on the deck? I’ve never played a Diablo game, but really want to play this one, can I hop in without having played the others?
It plays fantastic. 60fps on low, ~45 maxed out. Control work great for both diablos as well since they were both released on console
Thanks. Are the stories stand alone or would I be lost paying this as me first?
You might be slightly lost. It requires some knowledge of the Diablo lore in general. That said I spent literally thousands of hours in D2,/I highly recommend it :) you can watch videos to catch up on the relevant stories, its not a super complicated timeline. Maybeann hour or two to get the main points across.
Ok thanks. I was thinking about playing Diablo 2 first, I heard it’s the best, I just got it in sale so I’ll give it a go.
OH yes, Diablo 2 is fantastic. If you plan on playing online, Tristram and Baal runs are all the rage :)
That’s a great list. Mine are, in no particular order:
Witcher 3
Hades (never liked rogue-lites till this one and Dead Cells)
Dead Cells
Soul Reaver (playing through the legacy of Kain series, this one plays well enough)
Transistor (basic but fun)
Skyrim (going to give Morrowind a play through on here now)
Shadow of Mordor
Vampire Survivors
Tons of emualated games
It’d be nice if I could get a 64G model in the UK.
I feel like I am really the only one who didn’t liked Elden Ring on deck. I adored the game on my desktop, but the performance on deck made it significantly more difficult. I feel this game really benefits from a stable 60fps.
