Steam Deck

In my first month with the Deck, I have mostly played:

• Death Stranding
• Red Faction: Guerrilla
• GRID (2008)

And the hilarious tech demo of course!

I'm really happy with how well Death Stranding works and really see myself finishing it now that I can play it on commute. Love that game but it never fit my schedule (at the desk, I always played flight sims in VR or just a very quick shooter session).

Red Faction and GRID are easy enough on the battery, especially at 40 fps, and not too fussy about controls so they feel good with a controller (I felt a bit handicapped in Dirt Rally 2 and Project Cars 2).

In terms of emulation, I installed RetroDeck and tried Gran Turismo PSP but found that hard with the large stick and no analog controls for accelerate/brake Just putting some PS1 and PS2 games on it now, let's see if those will be able to bump GRID and Red Faction from my frequented list:

• Metal Gear Solid 1,2 and 3
• Gran Turismo 4

I just got a deck last week and I'm loving it so far. Been playing Castle Crashers again (here's hoping the new update comes out soon!) as well as Baldur's Gate 3 with my wife, which runs incredibly well surprisingly.

This week has been a bit of UFO 50 and Terra Memoria.

UFO 50 hasn't hooked me with a single specific game yet, but the entire package together is incredibly compelling and fun. It's just neat to hop in, play half an hour of a game that makes me think back to playing on my dad's NES, and then put it down for something else, much like how I played when I was 5 or 6.

I'm still very early on in Terra Memoria, but I think it's pretty neat! I like the combat system as they've introduced it so far, and it looks like there will be a lot of depth and choices to make in combat or team-building (maybe). Something about turn-based RPGs feel perfectly suited for the Deck.

Went back to playing Luck be a Landlord.

I really really like it, and I've been playing it in my learning language and I've learned so much from the rich dialogue and story elements.

Its in the same vain as hollow knight in terms of tight controls and skill based combat, with aspects of exploration.

I say this as a person who is not a fan of metroidvanias at large, nor dark souls games, but I'm a huge fan of souls-lights.

Still Elden Ring ( ...man if isn't big 🤩)

Horizon Zero Dawn

I tried starting Control last night. I've played it like 4 times on PS5, but it was on sale with Disco Elysium recently. But Direct X 12 seems to be a no-go, and then when I tried 11 it just crashed immediately. But the second I'd get to the mail room it just shits the bed and grinds to like 1.5 fps.