2023 was a pretty amazing year for games, but I’m also interested to hear what didn’t meet expectations or didn’t run as well as you expected it to.
My favorite would probably be No Man’s Sky. I had known about it for years but never tried it until this year. I was completely unprepared for how much I would get into it, and how much time I would spend in it. It worked so well on deck too, being able to put the deck to sleep, and then wake it up hours later to collect the harvest from a plant or mineral extractor was very convenient.
My most disappointing was Diablo 4. I was really glad to see it come to steam and thought I would love it, but the always online requirement and how they handled disconnects really killed my enjoyment of the game. One of my favorite things with the Deck is being able to suspend my game anytime and pick it up later, but suspending the deck with D4 means it will disconnect and I’ll have to restart the game when I return. It wouldn’t be so bad if I just had to wait on the game to reconnect or something similar. It’s also a game where you can’t pause, and setting it down with the game running always seems to result in my character getting killed by some monster that wandered too close and agro’d. Some other games with always online requirements (like Honkai Star Rail) handle internet much better, I can suspend at anytime and just have to wait for it to reconnect when I wake it back up.
Felt the same with the witcher 3, can’t put it down!
I have thought about playing NMS on my steam deck but didn’t know how well it would work on the small screen. I had maybe 40 hours in on my PC, but I got the SD because I didn’t have the time chunks to be on my PC to game with very often.
What controller set up have you been using on NMS? I think I’ll have to pick it back up again if it really does work well on there. Right now I’m in the middle of Southpark the stick of truth and it works out perfect on my deck.
Honestly the default controller bindings work really well, I barely changed anything with the setup.
Can you see and read everything easy enough?
I could see plenty well enough.
My most pleasant surprise on the Deck this year has been Shadow of War. It plays on high settings at a smooth, consistent 60FPS, even in big battles. As a fan of its predecessor, Shadow of Mordor, I’ve been loving it!
Worst was definitely American Truck Simulator. I’d been interested in the game for a long while, and finally decided to buy it when it was only $5. I got about halfway through the tutorial before I refunded it and added it to my Ignore list.
Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War are both on my deck backlog, I bought the first one years ago and couldn’t get it to run on my computer at the time, and got the second one from a recent bundle.
One of these days I’ll finish my installed games and play through them.
What made you uninstall American Truck Sim? I played a bit of Euro Truck Sim on my computer and I was satisfied; it’s good for what it is.
The UI was immediately very off-putting, feeling like a 90s sim game, and not in a good way. Definitely didn’t translate well to Steam Deck.
Additionally, the lack of any direction whatsoever was very unappealing to me.
Maybe I just don’t like sim games. It’s been decades since I was really into them, after all.
It’s a game that requires next to no focus to play. Perfect for putting on a podcast and relaxing. Probably best for those who enjoy driving. Not everyone’s cup of tea tho, I get that
As for the UI, if it’s like ets2, it’s dated but not too bad. It is an old but very good truck driving game
Especially after you configure it with control settings on the deck. It has native steam input support so all controls are configured on the deck menus itself.
It’s really easy, I have right touchpad for looking around and using the mouse in menus, and back paddles to signals, center camera and toggle lights
For some reason, I simply focus so much better when playing ets2 lool. I can’t listen to podcasts any other way, my mind always wonders
I have most hours on Deep Rock Galactic, but it’s no longer what I’d call a favorite. I’m getting a bit bored. It runs perfectly and I have clocked 2000 hour on it, so it remains something I can just play through instinct and relax.
My favorite surprise was that developers finally fixed Gunner, HEAT, PC, so it doesn’t freeze the steam deck on almost every run. It now works great on Steam Deck with med GFX settings. Although making a good controller setting is a pain and you need virtual menus. Didn’t find good ones ready.
Disappointment was Starbourne 2. Keeps freezing the steam deck within 30min, although it had gold level status in protondb. Hard reset is the only way to recover. Dock + keyb + mouse is a must.
The Starbourne issue sounds like a memory leak, I had the same issue with God of War. It would probably be fixed or mitigated by increasing your swap size (can do it manually or use Cryoutilities) or possibly by lowering the texture quality or other vram using settings.
Also that’s some seriously respectable DRG hours, I only have about 600. As much as I love the game, I don’t like to play it on Deck, feel too hampered by the lack of a mouse.
The game that surprised me the most was Murder by Numbers. It’s a very nice hybrid of a visual novel and a puzzle game. When I had more time I played the story mode, and when I didn’t I played the challenges.
My biggest disappointments were games from Sony — Horizon and Spiderman. Both of them are verified, but both of them crash at start-up.
HZD I hadn’t tested but both Spider-Men games run great?
According to other people, Horizon worked but a recent patch broke it. Spiderman (the first one) launches, freezes after a few seconds, and then the Deck restarts. 🤷♂️
Have you done the usual, verify game files, trying a different version of proton, and then reinstall if issues persist?
I tried a bunch of versions of Proton, verified the game files, redownloaded the game, installed a previous version of the game. Sadly nothing worked.
Did you undervolt your SD? Is it the steam version of Spiderman? Did you install it on your SD card or main memory?
Since it works for everyone else really well it has to be an issue with your deck, specifically.
Lol I just posted that the Sony games were some of my favorites. I didn’t have any issues playing them on deck, I wonder what the difference is.
Do you have power tools installed? Make sure you don’t have SMT disabled, that will cause some games to crash on launch.
I’ve also known people to get results like that from undervolting. Unfortunately it’s possible it that you could have borderline passable hardware that has the same instability people get from undervolting at default values.
I don’t have anything special installed, I didn’t undervolt anything. My Deck is an officially refurbished unit, so the borderline passable hardware is unfortunately likely. :(
Uninstaller the game. Restart your deck. Install it again, and if the issue is still there I’d open a support ticket over it. If it’s a refurbished deck you couldn’t have owned it that long and it should still have a warranty on it?
I’m responding to both your comments here.
Did you undervolt your SD? Is it the steam version of Spiderman? Did you install it on your SD card or main memory?
The Deck’s basically new, I haven’t done anything to it (yet): No undervolting, no SD card, no non-steam games (except Minecraft).
Uninstall the game. Restart your deck. Install it again.
I’ve tried this already, but it did not work. I’ll try it again, but it’ll take a while, because my internet is really slow.
I’d open a support ticket over it. Since it works for everyone else really well it has to be an issue with your deck, specifically.
Sounds like it’s my a fault of my particular unit. 🫠 As I said, I’ll try to reinstall the game again and if that doesn’t work, I’ll open a ticket. Thanks for the suggestion.
I haven’t played many games on my Deck yet, but all of them—except the two I mentioned—worked very well. Even Baldur’s Gate 3 runs fine and it is a very demanding game. I wonder why just the games from Sony are problematic. The worst thing about this is that they load, seem to run fine for a few seconds, then freeze and crash.
Maybe I’ll bite the bullet and not worry about it now and later I’ll buy Steam Deck 2 sooner rather than later.
I’d just be worried about running into issues or crashes later with other things as well. Some games hit your hardware just right in just the right way to make an error to cause a crash. My home pc spent two years running games without ever crashing. Then I ran into a game that would crash maybe once or twice an hour. I after a lot (a flipping lot) of testing I determined it was a ram issue and I had to loosen my timing up a bit on it.
It seemed like it would be a ram issue pretty early on in my diagnosis and by its behavior, but getting my confirmation took forever. I had to run the extended 8+ hour worth of meanest before it would finally hit my ram in just the right way to log an error.
It sounds like you may have more or less the same issue, though. Only your system isn’t running right when it’s on default values. You may have a ram chip in there (i think theres like 8) that is just slightly flawed or isn’t quite getting power to it correctly and something about Sony just happens to tweak on it in just the wrong way.
For real, just have valve get you another. No reason to put up with a system that isn’t quite right, and it could get worse.
My favorite was the first Talos Principle, TP2 is also great, but the suspense in the story of 1 was so much I found it hard to put the game down (My Steam year in review shows I played it for 37 days straight). The puzzles in TP1 were also harder (TP2 had hard optional puzzles but the story was so long that I lost all will to do even 1 more puzzle by the game end, plus there’s no fast travel to those optional puzzles)
I didn’t like Titanfall 2 on the Steam Deck, the game is fine, but FPS games just dont work for me with joysticks.
I’d recommend flickstick +gyro for fps games, there’s a definite learning curve but it’s the only way I’ve found that is at all comparable to playing with a mouse.
Have been experimenting with this using the steam controller, but the learning curve is really high. Haven’t been close to dock+keyb+mouse level of dexterity.
It’s fun though. Really hope it works out in the end.
I’m surprised to hear you didn’t like TF2. If you’ve never played FPS on sticks I guess that makes sense, but TF2 has the best-feeling sensitivity curve of any game I’ve ever played on the sticks
My favorite, probably Spider man Miles Morales. Other notables: Mudrunner Dead cells Hellblade Senuas sacrifice Horizon Zero Dawn
Least favorite: Mass effect legendary edition It just keeps breaking and I gave up on it. Never buying from that shitty company again.
STAR OF PROVIDENCE!! I bound movement to the left trackpad too, for real precise maneuvers. Amazing game
Biggest disappointment? That’s tough, I’ve enjoyed most games I’ve played this year. Probably Risk of Rain Returns? Nothing to do with the deck, just didn’t feel as fun as the first
Started going through my backlog a couple months ago. I want to give all worthy games a chance, preferably complete before I think about buying another
Started by cutting out all the trash from my library, bringing it from 110 to about 30. I then used a decky plugin to split the games up into:
- Playing
- Story Backlog
- Non-story backlog
I will have max 1 story game in my “playing” group and a bunch of non story games when I want a relaxed, not mentally focused session
Dying light - on hold after ~10 hours
too scary and the strength and stamina of the guy is annoyingly low. The idea of playing it sounds really fun, so I’ll probably pick it back up when I feel like playing a scary game
stardew valley - completed main story/objective (the community center). Took me ~80 hours
the only game I’ve completed this year but I mean it when I say I loved that game. Couldn’t put it down, even played for 8 hours straight once; which is very rare for adult me. Only stopped playing because I felt burnt out after nearly 80 hours. There’s still content for me to get back to when I want
the Witcher 3 - currently my “in progress” major story game
About 10 hours into my second attempt at a playthrough. Wow what a game. No spoilers at all pls even if it’s something that happens at the start
Dishonoured - abandoned after 9 hours
It’s a fun game, the story is okay but it’s just not gripping me. It’s a meh game. I abandoned it when I realised I kept procrastinating it and moved onto the Witcher 3 (thank goodness I did!!). Small chance I try again in the future.
Bully - abandoned after 8 hours
This game did not age well at all.
Very fun idea but it’s too old to enjoy. Controls too clunky, missions are too basic, doesn’t run smoothly and just a bad experience overall. The missions are also very basic.
Some of the casual, short session games I currently have in the rotation:
- Brawlhala - just downloaded, seems fun.
- Vampire survivors - lives up to the hype 100%
- Forza horizon 5 - my virtual Sunday drive
- Hotline Miami - stuck on a level! Quite a difficult game
- Doom 2016 - one mission per month is enough for me!
- Dirt rally 1 - have to be in a specific mood to play this!
Some games in my story Backlog (in no order):
- GTA IV - up next after I finish TW3
- Fallout 4 - I hate bugs and spiders though D:
- RDR2 - played prologue already
- Shadow of modor
- Shadow warrior
I just realised I put so much effort into a comment no one will read 🙃 it’s too late to delete now, I ain’t getting my time back so neither are you ;)
Now im doubling down and giving all the info!! I’ve got nothing better to do (apart from the fact I should have been asleep 2 hours ago)
I read it :) I can’t seem to get started on stardew… I planted some stuff and went to bed and then didn’t really feel motivated to do more 🤷
Haha thanks for reading!
And yeah it took me a few tries to get into stardew. Mainly because I was playing a simple looking game on a beefy desktop pc, it didn’t sit right with me
The deck however, being in bed and playing stardew?? Hell yeah
Not every game is for everyone, if you don’t like it fair enough and move on! But I will say it gets very addicting once you’ve learned the game and played through the first “season”
My least favorites have to be Call of Duty Black Ops, and Black Ops 3. BO1 doesn’t let you play Zombies EVEN IN SOLO if you aren’t connected to the internet. Black Ops 3 crashed every time I tried to play zombies.
My favorite has to be Cyberpunk 2077. I didn’t expect to love the thumbstick+gyro controls for aiming as much as I did. And driving with a controller in that game is too much fun. It’s making me want to get an OLED just so it’ll look even better in HDR.
