I was recently in the US for a conference, and while there I decided to finally pick up a Steam Deck, which is hard to find in New Zealand. This is my review of [spoiler] a pretty amazing gaming device.
In terms of gaming, there were a few "problems" I wanted to solve.
First, I want to find more time to play video games. There are only 24 hours in a day, so instead of finding time I figure the thing to do is to make the most of any opportunity to game. The Steam Deck is solves that problem by being portable. No matter where you are, you can play a video game.
Within a week of owning a Steam Deck, I'd completed Banner Saga, a game I'd had unplayed in my library for years. Other games that feel frankly like mobile games, like Lara Croft Go and Hitman Go and Journey, I've been able to play more often for the same reason.
The convenience of the Steam Deck, combined with its power, offers the best of both worlds. You can play the big video games you would want to play on a desktop, or you can play the casual games you'd be happy to play on a tablet.
One thing about gaming on a PC is that your system is never really done. Whether you like it or not, some game is going to want a little adjustment or improvement or an update of some library.
This happens on consoles, too, but the console does the work for you. You turn your console on, but you sit through a bunch of updates before you can do anything. You start a game, but you sit through a bunch of updates before you can play. It's annoying, but also a little liberating, because when the updates are done everything works, and all you had to do was be patient. On a PC, some updates happen automatically, but your OS doesn't know what your games need and your games don't know what your OS includes, and sometimes you just have to go in and make changes yourself.
The Steam Deck bridges the gap between console and PC. It's powerful enough to run games delivered to PC, but it acts like a console, with updates strictly applied whether you know you need them or not.
I've enjoyed a few mobile games, but generally that's not the kind of video game I'm looking to spend time playing. My goal is to play through games with a fairly big scope, but that tell a defined story. I want a beginning and an ending, I want the game to feel like a video game and not a mobile game. That's not to say that mobile games aren't real video games, or that they aren't fun. I'm just not looking to get into mobile games. I want to explore video games found on PC and consoles.
The Steam Deck is mobile (in a literal sense) enough to be easy to carry around with me, either around town or just in my own home, but it's got a physical controller built in. And I love the controller. It doesn't look like a controller you'd love. It looks like the designers forgot to include controls, and so stuck them on at the last minute. But actually the controls feel completely natural.
This is a real benefit for me, because even though I've been [not] playing games primarily on PC for the last decade, I'm actually a console gamer. I got back into video games through the Playstation 3, and when I switched to PC thanks to the availability of Steam on Linux, I bought a controller to avoid having to learn to game with WASD and mouse. The Steam Deck defaults to controller (I think you can use a keyboard and mouse with it through bluetooth, but I've never tried) so it's a perfect match for me.
I decided long ago that if I wanted to play more video games (and I do want to), then I needed a portable device to increase my opportunities to play. Back in 2013, when Steam first came to Linux, I built a modest gaming desktop, which is the same desktop (with several upgrades) I still use today for gaming and daily computing. I'm not unhappy with it but it is, after all, a desktop. It's in my home office, it's surrounded by a bunch of tempting tabletop games and my miniature painting station, and it's away from the main room where my partner hangs out. I needed something that would let me play "serious" video games without a "serious" setup.
The Steam Deck is exactly what I was hoping for.
Header photo by Valve.