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Comment by ggregoire | Hacker News Reader

> really just a much more comfortable experience than sitting at a desk or playing on the TV

Can I ask what types of games do you play?

I feel like the ones I play wouldn't be as enjoyable on the Deck than on a big monitor with a keyboard and a mouse. Especially for very long sessions. Strategy, FPS, ARPG... I'm still thinking about getting one to occasionally play JRPGs (FFs, Yakuzas, Personas...) and other story driven games that were originally designed for consoles (God of War, Red Dead Redemption, The Last of Us...). I guess it works great for this type of games and it would be more comfortable than playing on a laptop in bed.

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You're right in your thoughts. It's the perfect form factor for those single player narrative games, especially if you don't own a tv w/ a steamlink or the like. I usually have trouble finishing games, because i'm often distracted. I found when I can't alt tab to the internet, i focus a lot longer on narrative games. The steam deck has been wonderful for me.

JRPGs and PS3/4-era story driven controller games have been my goto on the Deck, and I'm not traditionally a big JRPG guy outside of the really well known ones.

There is a huge range of them out there I haven't played, and the Deck's hardware is extremely well suited to running most of them. I've found I've played stuff that completely passed me by on the desktop - Ni No Kuni, Valkyria Chronicles etc.

The less intense gameplay of these just fits drop in/drop out gameplay on a mobile device surprisingly well too, especially as the Deck can sleep the game at any point, regardless of whether you've been able to save in-game or not.

The PS4 era action games you list also work pretty well - thinking of the Deck as a portable 720p PS4 I think actually describes its abilities pretty nicely. Yakuza 0 clips along at a great 60fps with reasonable battery life on medium settings.

The only genres I avoid are the really mouse heavy ones - strategy games and anything first person. Outside of these two genres, most things do work well with a controller or the Deck.

Yes, I’ve mostly played games that had a console release and came out of the box with reasonable console controls. That said, the steam deck is really at the next level when it comes to being able to control PC-centric games. The combo of mouse control through the touch pads, touchscreen, and key combo mapping to buttons means that you can have a decent quality of life on a lot of titles meant for PC. And someone has probably already done that hard work for you and just uploaded a community controller profile to steam. It’s really a lot better than trying to play a lot of games with a laptop keyboard and trackpad. Certainly you sacrifice something to portability for a game designed only to be played with a full keyboard and mouse.

In the last 1 month, Games I have enjoyed on my steam deck:

* A Plague Tale: Innocence

* Shadow tactics: Blades of Shogun

* Metro 2033

* Mark of the Ninja

* A way out (co op only)..

My only recommendation for playing in bed is that get some kind of stand or something so you can rest the deck on your chest/stomach and comfortably play for 2-3 hours at a time.

What stand do you use?

I purchased this one: https://www.amazon.com/Accessories-Protective-Adjustable-Pro... it came with a stand. While the stand itself is comfy to use, i hate how i have to manually hold the stand while picking up my steam deck.

Maybe one of the fancy cases with detachable stands is better?

Shadow tactics is one my favorite games, how did you play it without a mouse?

the steam deck has haptic trackpads

Ohh it supports controllers decently too. Almost as comfortable as keyboard and mouse. Once you've used keyboard and mouse, you'll find it a little slow to toggle through characters and their abilities using right and left buttons ... But you'll quickly get the muscle memory and start worrying more about the strategy than the controls. The trackpad can be used to move the camera around.

There maybe some community provided controller layouts to improve shortcuts.. but i haven't explored them yet.

Plus i really like the game so if there were any little annoyances i probably didn't notice them ..

I play a lot of solo adventure games from yesteryear that I just didn't have time nor the opportunities before acquiring the Deck. With kids in the house, this little device is great!

Adventure/RPG/Story Games: Tomb Rader 2013 Trilogy (TR, Rise, Shadow), Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order; SOMA, RiME (both haunt me to this day, highly recommended), Skyrim/Oblivion, Assassins Creed 1-3, Black Flag

Racing: Grip Combat Racing, Redout

Shooters: Halo MCC, Bioshock 1-Infinity

Other: Rocket League, Minecraft - Java with shaders! With a LOT of tweaking, it's possible to add Minecraft Java as a shortcut and pre-load it with shaders and mods. It looks incredible and can easily handle 7-12 chunks at 60 fps with shaders depending the settings.

yeah, I've been very tempted to get one, but what's holding me back is that I don't play games all that much, and when I do it's usually 4x games. I tried playing civ6 on a borrowed steam deck and it technically ran fine but the screen felt a bit too small for it.

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