Tag: ratings

Vampire Survivors debuted on PC before arriving on Xbox and eventually mobile through developer Poncle. Read my Steam Deck review of the base game here, DLC review here, and iOS review of the base game here. Following the Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell DLC release which took a little while to come to mobile, the second paid DLC for the game is out now on all platforms in the form of the Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari DLC. As with the main game and prior DLC, I’ve been playing Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari pre-release for review on Steam Deck. Early access was not available for the mobile version, so this review will cover the DLC and the current state of the game on Steam Deck.

Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari adds in a huge new stage, eight new characters, many new weapons, and additional secrets as usual. In a lot of ways, it feels like the prior DLC, which is to say, it isn’t bad, but it is more of the good stuff. As of this writing, I’ve spent about 12 hours in the game on Steam Deck since getting access to the DLC. I’ve been experimenting with different builds, testing my old builds like the money farm build with new weapons, and more. One more notable addition in this DLC is the attack animations for two characters which is new to Vampire Survivors as a whole.

The fantasy focus in the DLC has been good, and it carries through to the enemies found in Lake Foscari, upgrades, the music, and also the aesthetic of the stage. I’m curious to see how this feels on a new save on another platform, because my near 100%-completed PC save with Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari has been a lot of fun. I just wish performance on Steam Deck was better, which remains my only real complaint with the game right now, unless you opt into the New Engine Beta. I swapped into this following the public launch a few hours ago, and it is a marked improvement on Steam Deck.

I still haven’t seen everything Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari has to offer, and likely will be playing it daily over the next few weeks like I did with the first paid DLC pack. I’m also looking forward to replaying the DLC on Xbox and mobile from tonight. Just like the setting, the fantasy theme carries over into the music, which is amazing in this DLC for the new characters. I hope the soundtrack on Steam gets updated with these new songs soon, because I’m certain I’ll be listening to them outside the game just like with prior songs.

Like I said with the Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell DLC, Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari is a lot like the Dead Cells DLC packs where they add in a lot of content to the base game that already had tons of quality content. If you enjoy playing Vampire Survivors I don’t think you need a review to tell you it is worth paying just $2 to add more to do in-game, but if you are still on the fence, I’ve enjoyed just about everything Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari has given me so far, and look forward to seeing what else the developer brings to Vampire Survivors in 2023.

Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari with its fantasy focus, new characters, weapons, and lovely stage is an easy recommendation for any fan of the game. The base game was already too cheap for what it offers, and these DLC packs are a nice way to enhance the core experience while getting more to do for those who have been hitting 100% with prior content drops. I still hope 2023 sees the game get cross platform saves to let me go from Steam Deck to Xbox Series X to iOS and back. Right now, Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari is essential for everyone playing the game. Grab that Academy Badge and jump in.

Vampire Survivors: Tides of Foscari Steam Deck Review Score: 5/5

Earlier this year, Dead Space had a superb remake that hit current PC and console platforms. I was very impressed with how it looked and ran on Steam Deck, and called it the first tech showcase for the system in 2023. Following that brilliant horror release, I was very curious about how Resident Evil 4 Remake from Capcom would fare on Valve’s portable system. Having played it through the launch week and seeing improvements in the final game, I can safely recommend Resident Evil 4 Remake for any Steam Deck owner hoping to play it on the go.

Just like the recent remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, Resident Evil 4 Remake from Capcom is a blend of a re-imagining and a remake. While a lot of people adore Resident Evil 4 and consider it one of the best games ever, my favorite game in the series is actually Resident Evil 2 Remake. It is incredible that Capcom managed to release such a great action horror game with Resident Evil 4 Remake, and I hope the publisher lets this team, that also did Resident Evil 2 Remake work on a brand-new game in the series.

While I originally did a lot of testing across different frame rate targets on Steam Deck, the current default preset will serve you well. If you do want to try something else, 30 or 40fps targets work well so far with some drops in busier areas while delivering very good image quality for the system. The two settings I definitely would play around with are toggling lens disabling lens distortion and enabling gyro on the Steam Deck’s controller settings for Resident Evil 4 Remake. Gyro helps a lot in the game, and it should’ve been an official setting like in the PS5 version. Speaking of controls, I’m glad Capcom lets you manually force button prompts for different controllers here. I used the PlayStation button prompts on Steam Deck.

In the case of beloved games like Resident Evil 4 and Final Fantasy VII, I’m glad that current players can experience the originals and the remakes on modern platforms. In both situations, the remakes and originals can co-exist, and more choice is always better. While I prefer Resident Evil 4 Remake and Dead Space Remake, both the original experiences are still playable on current platforms.

When Capcom sent me PC review code for Resident Evil 4 Remake, I had the base game, but was curious about the DLC included in the deluxe edition. I upgraded to it through the bundle available for purchase on Steam, and it has been hit or miss. If you like the costumes included, I’d recommend getting it. If you aren’t a fan of the costumes in the DLC, this bundle isn’t for you. Thankfully, you can buy everything separately as well. Speaking of DLC, hopefully we see this release get some story DLC in the future. I’m looking forward to the Mercenaries update later in the week as well.

As of this writing, Resident Evil 4 Remake is marked as ‘Playable’ by Valve. It isn’t ‘Verified’ because it sometimes shows non-Steam Deck icons or displays mouse/keyboard prompts. As far as I’m concerned, Resident Evil 4 Remake is amazing on Steam Deck. While it had a bit of a rough time during the demo, it has only gotten better since the final game was released and Valve has pushed out a few shader updates for the game.

If you’re hoping to experience Resident Evil 4 Remake on Steam Deck to have a great experience on a portable, it is essential. Having now played it on PC, PS5, and Steam Deck, the DualSense features definitely make the PS5 version my favorite, but Resident Evil 4 Remake is a joy to play on Steam Deck, and it plays without issues from the get go. It is fantastic to see a big budget release like this work out of the box on Steam Deck while managing looking and playing so well. The game itself has a few frustrating moments, but it still gets my highest possible recommendation for Steam Deck owners hoping to play it on the go.

Interested in more Steam Deck coverage? Check out our Steam Deck recommendations!

Having played wrestling games since the original PlayStation with WWF Warzone, ECW Anarchy Rulz, and WCW Backstage Assault taking up a ton of my time, I missed out on the PS2 era of wrestling games until much later. I started getting back to playing them regularly towards the end of the PS3 generation. A lot has changed since, and WWE games, now under 2K, have been of varying degrees of quality. While I enjoyed WWE 2K16’s showcase for obvious reasons, WWE 2K22 last year was a massive step in the right direction. Now WWE 2K23 feels like the first great Wrestling game in a long time, albeit one with its own issues. In my WWE 2K23 Steam Deck review, I’m going to focus on how it looks and runs on Steam Deck with what I did to fix any issues I ran into.

Having only played WWE 2K22 a few months after it launched directly on Xbox Series X, I was impressed with how most aspects were improved over prior games. WWE 2K23 feels like a more confident entry that took learnings from 2K22, but added a lot of polish to actually be a wrestling game I have enjoyed playing from day one. Whether you should grab it right now or wait, is something I will address a bit later in this review. Even the excellent tutorial from Xavier Woods is good. John Cena’s Showcase mode is a nice twist on the formula as well. It is worth playing even if you aren’t a fan of his.

Right off the bat, WWE 2K23 surprised me on Steam Deck. The default graphics options it had selected had WWE 2K23 running perfectly in the first few matches I played on Steam Deck. It almost felt too good to be true with a near flawless 60fps and great visuals with fast loading. Then I decided to start stress testing the game on Steam Deck. The new WarGames mode with eight players was far too much for Steam Deck with the frame rate constantly dropping to the 40s from 60. In a game like this, you want the frame rate to remain at 60fps even if it means playing with worse visuals so the action doesn’t slow down.

I was surprised to see some of the eight man modes run at 60fps without dropping more than a few frames during camera cuts in the five matches I tested specifically before getting back to the normal modes I play. It takes a lot of tweaking in the settings to get the WarGames mode with eight total superstars working at 60fps without issues though. If you’re planning on playing WWE 2K23 on Steam Deck and want to focus on this mode, you’re going to need to try out many settings to see what sticks. If you don’t care about the most demanding matches like that, you can make it look really great and play at 60fps, which isn’t something I expected on Steam Deck at all given how modern AAA games usually run on the system day one.

WWE 2K23 Steam Deck graphics and performance

There is an in-game benchmark, but I’d recommend opting for standard textures, standard models, 60fps action camera, medium or low shadows, medium shaders, FXAA (or TAA if you’re playing less visually demanding matches only), FSR upscaling, and then try to find which of the other settings you want to keep on when it comes to your own taste. If you disable windowed mode, WWE 2K23 even runs at 16:10 during matches with most of the interface and other parts of the game being rendered at 16:9. I used Proton Experimental (bleeding edge) and the default Proton in my testing, and the only major difference I noticed was the entrances and some other camera cuts did run at a higher frame rate when using Proton Experimental.

WWE 2K23 on Steam Deck with Remote Play Together

I was curious to see how WWE 2K23 on Steam Deck would handle Valve’s Remote Play Together, so I invited a friend of mine in another country to join my game on Steam Deck. The experience for him wasn’t great over wireless as expected, but it did run perfectly fine at 60fps on my Steam Deck even in an eight man battle royal. The image quality obviously isn’t perfect, but the 60fps and Steam Deck’s smaller screen make it a fine experience. The only thing to keep in mind is the Steam Deck sometimes reboots when ending a Remote Play Together session. This happens in other games as well, so it isn’t a WWE 2K23 specific issue.

Since this is the first time a full fledged 2K WWE game has been available without feature compromises on a portable, I wanted to see how it would handle suspending as well. I left the game suspended for a few hours to test and it resumed fine on Steam Deck without internet as well. On the battery life side, I usually play with full brightness and the projected battery life indicator when I was playing an eight man ladder match was about 1 hour 50 minutes left when I had around 65% battery left when I did this. I’m not the best judge of this as I always push the Steam Deck for better performance and full brightness, but I wanted to give you a rough idea of what to expect with how I set up the game and play on Steam Deck. I installed it on my SD card from the start where it takes about 81.5GB of storage space.

In its current state, my main issues with WWE 2K23 on Steam Deck also apply to the PC version in general. As of this writing, I don’t have access to the other platforms, but the regular server issues are beyond annoying. Barring that, the modes all worked fine on Steam Deck barring the video portion of the creation suite which crashed every single time regardless of what Proton version I tried. I don’t usually spend time in that mode, but I wanted to test it for this WWE 2K23 Steam Deck review.

WWE 2K23 is shockingly good on Steam Deck despite the few issues I ran into. If you skipped the last few years of WWE games, WWE 2K23 is worth your time. It feels like an enhanced version of WWE 2K22 that improves in all the right ways and brings some long overdue features. Just don’t come into this expecting as much of a jump in quality as you had with WWE 2K22 from prior games. In its current state, WWE 2K23 is an excellent wrestling game with tons of content, but one that is let down by its online servers.

Interested in more Steam Deck coverage? Check out our Steam Deck recommendations!

If you’ve been reading our news and reviews over the last few years, you’ve seen that we are big fans of Feral Interactive. Feral Interactive have been bringing classic PC and console games to mobile for a while now with releases like Company of Heroes, Alien Isolation, Rome Total War, and much more. I adore the iPad and iPhone version of Company of Heroes, and it is a mainstay on my devices. While we have been covering a few games on Steam Deck, I was very interested in checking out Company of Heroes 3 as a fan of Company of Heroes, and also to see how a full blown AAA PC game built for keyboard and mouse would fare on Steam Deck. Having now played it for a few weeks, it is impressive with some caveats.

Company of Heroes 3 sees the real-time strategy series return after many years. I never played much of Company of Heroes 2, so this is my first real taste of the series following Company of Heroes and its expansions. Company of Heroes 3 launches with two campaign options. The Italian Dynamic Campaign aimed at newcomers with more tutorials is the first campaign option while the North African Operation is a more linear and focused campaign that is aimed at veteran fans of the series. The latter is shorter than I expected. You also have access to multiplayer (co-op vs AI and PvP), skirmishes, custom games, and more from day one.

While Company of Heroes 3 multiplayer was unplayable on Steam Deck around launch, it now works without desyncing for me. Attempting any multiplayer game previously caused it to freeze after a few seconds of the match starting. Company of Heroes 3 is now branded “Playable” on Steam Deck by Valve. The caveats for Valve right now include the game showing non Steam Deck controller icons, requiring players to manually invoke the keyboard, and the text being too small in-game in some cases. The screenshot below shows how the frame rate can drop when you change camera angle and zoom during multiplayer:

My main issue with Company of Heroes 3 on Steam Deck also affects the game in general. It is a bit inconsistent visually. Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen loads of hotfixes released for Company of Heroes 3 on Steam, many of which addressed most of my issues with the visuals. It still doesn’t look as nice as I had hoped even on my laptop, but it is in a much better state right now compared to launch day in general.

With the negatives out of the way, Company of Heroes 3 loads up and runs without issues on the default Proton version on Steam Deck with 16:10 support and good performance. After running the benchmark, I set Company of Heroes 3 to its low presets to see how high the frame rate would go. Depending on the camera angle, 60fps is possible, but it really doesn’t stay remotely close to that when you’re actually playing during battles and movement. Aiming for 30fps with a mix of medium and low seems like the best option right now. Some settings require re-launching the game and cannot be changed in the middle of a battle.

In its current state, Company of Heroes 3 requires you to deal with controls you might not be used to. I’ve been playing a lot of PC-specific keyboard and mouse games on Steam Deck thanks to community layouts, so that aspect wasn’t a huge deal for me. Despite Company of Heroes 3 coming to current generation consoles later this year, it doesn’t have controller support on PC in its current state. Valve has a custom layout for games designed for keyboard and mouse, but I’d recommend using this layout. It has been amazing to see such a well put together community layout right from launch week.

The text size for the interface and some tooltips might be small for some, but I’ve grown used to small text thanks to games like Fire Emblem Three Houses on Nintendo Switch a few years ago, and more recently checking out many PC-exclusives on Steam Deck. This is another thing to keep in mind right now.

With everything I’ve said so far, I clearly ended up enjoying Company of Heroes 3 a lot more than I expected on Steam Deck. I wanted to see if any post-launch updates addressed issues with the campaign and visuals, and we’ve had multiple patches since. As of its most recent patch, I’m very pleased with Company of Heroes 3 on Steam Deck, and you will find a lot to like here assuming you’re ok with the controls.

In its current state, Company of Heroes 3 is an easy recommendation with the caveat about non standard controls. While you could always use a mouse and keyboard to play it on Steam Deck, I’m impressed with the community layouts, and have enjoyed Company of Heroes 3 quite a bit thanks to one specific layout I used. I assume we will get proper controller support when it hits consoles later this year. Until then, Company of Heroes 3 on Steam Deck is a solid base, and I’m glad that it didn’t fall short of my expectations like Age of Empires IV did at launch.

Interested in more Steam Deck coverage? Check out our Steam Deck recommendations!

When Sony started bringing its games to PC, I had a big list of PS4 and PS5 games I’d like to see hit the platform. We’ve slowly seen many PS4 and cross-generation titles come, but none of Sony’s PS5-only games have made the jump yet barring remasters. This changes with Returnal, Housemarque’s masterpiece. Returnal, Ratchet and Clank A Rift Apart, and the Demon’s Souls remake were the three major PS5-only releases back in 2021, but Returnal was a mind blowing experience that only got better after a few updates.

If you’ve not played or heard of Returnal, it is a third person shooter bullet hell roguelike experience. At launch, I was shocked at how good it felt to play, and how it blended together mechanics from my favorite genres, but was disappointed by the lack of any sort of save and quit option. Most roguelikes let you save or save quite often, but Returnal needed you to play a complete run, or it ended that cycle if you quit. A post-launch update allowed for a suspend and quit option, which dramatically improved how I felt about Returnal.

With Returnal now on PC, I obviously wanted to see how one of my favorite games in years fared on Steam Deck, since it is the only portable that will get Returnal officially. Sony’s games on Steam Deck have almost all been excellent, with some even being showcases for the hardware like Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales. Returnal sadly isn’t as nice of an experience visually, but the gameplay is a perfect fit for Steam Deck.

When you initially boot up Returnal, you need to wait for it to install Epic Online Services or update it for multiplayer. Once this is done, you can run an optional benchmark in-game for it to decide what settings to go with for your computer. The lowest preset is what I went with alongside FSR performance. Even with this, it sometimes dropped below 30 in the more hectic battles, but a few updates that arrived pre-release for Returnal on PC dramatically improved how it runs for me barring those situations.

I set Returnal to 16:10 aspect ratio, used 800p, and played in fullscreen mode. On the graphics side, I set everything to low or off with FSR set to performance as mentioned above. I did this to see how high the frame rate could go. With this setup, I was happy with the 40hz refresh rate on Steam Deck and v-sync enabled in-game. If you prefer playing at 30fps for better visuals, you could try FSR at balanced. I didn’t get more time to tweak settings, so settled on FSR at performance and 800p with low settings.

Aside from being able to finally play Returnal on a portable, the Steam Deck’s gyro support makes it even better. I enabled gyro, and mapped the paddles to L3 and R3 so I never have to press into the sticks. This setup was a lot nicer, and I hope to try out something similar when I eventually get a DualSense Edge for use with my PS5.

One thing to keep in mind is Returnal offers adaptive trigger support if you use a DualSense controller, and enabling it on your PC will have it carry over to Steam Deck through Steam Cloud. I hope this can be rectified to be stored on device as configuration settings rather than being synced over with your actual save file because it changes some button mapping. Speaking of DualSense support, it works brilliantly on PC when wired. I didn’t spend much time on my laptop with Returnal because I was focusing on Steam Deck for this review.

In its current state, Returnal perfectly suits the Steam Deck, and it runs quite well given the hardware, with visual cutbacks. While it isn’t as nice as playing on PS5 of course, I’ve found myself enjoying Returnal on the go quite a bit thanks to the suspend feature and sublime core gameplay. It also helps that Returnal on PC arrives at a lower asking price with all prior updates included from the start making it a super-polished version of one of Sony’s best exclusives in years.

Interested in more lists? Check out our other Steam Deck recommendations!

I initially planned on reviewing Marvel’s Midnight Suns in the middle of December, but it was broken in a few ways for me on PC and Steam Deck at the time. Firaxis’ collaboration with Marvel resulted in my favorite Marvel game alongside Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales, but the PC version was not in a great place. Alongside the PC version, I was also playing Marvel’s Midnight Suns on Xbox Series X, and having a lot of fun with how it blended elements from some of my favorite games while retaining what makes Firaxis’ tactical RPGs worth playing. With it being Steam Deck Verified as of last week, I wanted to resume my PC playthrough and see if it was actually fixed up and worth getting if you were hoping to experience it on Valve’s portable gaming system.

Before getting to what makes Marvel’s Midnight Suns a great game, it has been an interesting journey with it on Steam Deck from day one. When I first tried it during launch week, I was shocked at how it was running a lot better than I expected. I played it for a few days, and even gifted it to a friend on Steam. Each update that arrived since, made it a worse experience for me, and I even had trouble loading my save for about two or three weeks. I gave up on playing it on Steam Deck and decided to focus on it on my laptop. Fast forward to last week, Marvel’s Midnight Suns is now Steam Deck Verified, and a recent update even fixed the Steam Cloud issues and made it a much better experience on Steam Deck. It isn’t perfect right now, but I can safely recommend it to any Steam Deck owner interested in it with a few caveats.

If you’ve not played Marvel’s Midnight Suns yet, it blends in Firaxis’ turn-based tactical RPG combat, card-based battles, and some elements of games like Fire Emblem Three Houses in the downtime between battles. You have excellent tactical battles that I enjoyed throughout the game, a lovely upgrade system, and light social elements as you interact with other superheroes in the Abbey which acts as not only your hub, but also a massive area full of secrets and more. The gameplay style perfectly suits the pickup and play nature of the Steam Deck, but it hasn’t been fun to play on Deck until now.

Since Marvel’s Midnight Suns only launched on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S alongside PC, I wasn’t sure what to expect from it on Steam Deck at launch. My launch setup is not really relevant anymore, but I’m very impressed at how well Marvel’s Midnight Suns plays on Steam Deck right now. I set it to the medium preset and tried the dynamic resolution and FSR options for a better frame rate. Right now, the tactical battles can hit 60fps relatively well with some drops during big skill animations, but the Abbey (your hub) is where performance drops to the 30s from 60. The best current setup would be turning a few things down to maintain 40fps in the Abbey and during battles. This will save you battery life as well as giving you a more consistent experience overall. With that setup, Marvel’s Midnight Suns looks very good on the Steam Deck’s screen, and it plays brilliantly in combat.

Ideally, I’d be able to set it to 60fps for battles and 30fps for the Abbey. Even at the lowest preset, running around in the Abbey can see it drop below 30fps for a bit, but it usually hovers around 40fps at the low preset. This doesn’t surprise me, because even the PS5 version doesn’t hold a stable frame rate in the Abbey, while my Xbox Series X’s support for FreeSync helped make things feel better here. Speaking of the other versions, I wish Marvel’s Midnight Suns had cross progression so I could take my progress across platforms.

My only issues with Marvel’s Midnight Suns right now, have to do with how the graphics settings sometimes didn’t save as I was checking different configurations to see how the Steam Deck handles the game in different scenarios, and in how the hub itself still isn’t optimized too well. The battles were a joy to play with great performance. I only had some drops during the special skill animations that had a lot of particle effects, but no issues during actual movement or gameplay where you have control of a character.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns itself is a bit too bloated, but I had similar issues with Fire Emblem Three Houses‘ downtime sections in between battles. I would’ve preferred if it was a bit shorter, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy this much more than I expected. I even started the new Deadpool DLC which has been fun to play on Steam Deck so far.

While I wasn’t really sold on Marvel’s Midnight Suns pre-release, it has continued to impress me more as I played through the story, and it is chock full of a ton of optional content that will keep you busy for a very long time. It wasn’t a great experience around launch on PC, but Marvel’s Midnight Suns is well worth your time right now, and a joy to play on Steam Deck. It already felt like a perfect fit for Steam Deck from the start, and it has finally been fixed for Valve’s portable system with a recent update.

Interested in more lists? Check out our other Steam Deck recommendations!

Need for Speed Unbound was one of the first new current generation only games to impress me on Steam Deck. I’ve played many games that have been ported to PC from other platforms and also games built for PC from the start, but it is always great seeing the Steam Deck handle games built for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S well. That is where our first Steam Deck review of 2023 comes into the picture. It has been quite an experience playing Dead Space from launch day until about a week later on Steam Deck, PS5, and my laptop.

I wanted to approach this Dead Space Steam Deck review a bit differently. I hadn’t actually played the original game until I decided I wanted to cover this new release, and it led to me trying the original out on Steam Deck alongside Dead Space. I also wanted to see how the Steam Deck would hold up compared to the PS5 version of Dead Space.

Dead Space itself is a game I wish I had played before. Experiencing it through this new remake reminded me of my time with Capcom’s amazing Resident Evil 2 remake from a few years ago. Playing it with a good pair of headphones has been excellent, but the real shocker has been how good it looks on Steam Deck.

As of this writing, Dead Space has been Steam Deck Verified by Valve, and it shows. The only changes I’ve made are forcing the game to display PlayStation button prompts in the settings, and also playing around with the graphics and display options for testing how much I can push the hardware. Rest assured, Dead Space is an excellent experience on Steam Deck now out of the box and I’m shocked that a current generation exclusive runs and looks this well on the hardware.

Dead Space has quite a few visual options to improve and adjust the image quality. I left the film grain and motion blur on for my first playthrough. It has dynamic resolution scaling options and support for AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0. I enabled both of them and used FSR 2.0’s performance mode with the automatic preset for most of my time with Dead Space. You can push some settings higher if you’d like and are ok playing with a 30fps cap (which you need to do on the Steam Deck’s own settings). I tested uncapped frame rate at the default settings and was surprised to even see it running at 60fps in parts with v-sync off.

On the performance side, there are a few things you can work with to improve the frame rate like a lower internal resolution (not 800p like I used), opting for a different FSR 2.0 mode, and even the Steam Deck’s own “allow tearing” option in the menu. The only issue with changing a lot of settings is you will need to wait for a few seconds or even 20 seconds sometimes for performance to stabilize after making big changes to the game’s setting. The major issues I ran into with my setup were in rooms with multiple enemies where the performance drops noticeably.

On the control side, I mapped any analog stick presses to the Steam Deck paddles as I don’t like pressing into the sticks. The remaining control options are fine as is. You can change to a control preset faithful to the original Dead Space or Dead Space 2 as well here.

While Dead Space is a fantastic game and a brilliant remake, it really needs commendation for its accessibility options. These aren’t as good as recent Naughty Dog games, but there is a lot you can adjust to make the experience more suited to your playstyle including the option to hide certain disturbing scenes and display more content warnings and colorblind options.

Despite being portable and having pretty good speakers, I’d recommend playing Dead Space with a good pair of headphones. The audio design is amazing, and an important part of the gameplay, so using the Deck’s speakers would mean missing out on the complete immersive experience.

Compared to the original game which also is Steam Deck Verified, Dead Space is a massive upgrade and improvement in just about every way. Hopefully EA gives Dead Space 2 the same treatment in the future, it would be great if Valve could work with EA to have its other AAA releases in such a nice state on Steam Deck from the start. If you’re curious how one of the last areas in the game looks, click here. I’m not embedding this specific image to keep this spoiler free.

Having also played Dead Space on PS5, the DualSense features like haptic feedback are not present in the PC version of the game even when using a DualSense controller wired. Barring that, Dead Space scales down very well for Steam Deck, but it really shines at higher fidelity and is brilliant on PS5 after the most-recent update. I haven’t tested the Xbox Series X version, but Dead Space is an easy recommendation on PC and PS5 in its current state.

I enjoyed swapping between my old laptop and Steam Deck while playing Dead Space without any issues. Despite a slightly rough launch day, Valve’s Proton fixes have made Dead Space a survival horror essential for Steam Deck owners, and a true tech showcase for the platform. 2023 is already starting out brilliantly for Steam Deck owners with Dead Space, Hi Fi Rush, and more playing great on the system.

Dead Space is available for PC on Steam here.

Interested in more lists? Check out our other Steam Deck recommendations!

I reviewed Vampire Survivors as our first ever Steam Deck review when it hit 1.0. Since then, Vampire Survivors launched on Xbox platforms using the new engine, and finally made its way to iOS and Android as revealed during The Game Awards. Read my review of the iOS version here. Yesterday, the first paid DLC for Vampire Survivors launched on PC and Xbox platforms in the form of Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell priced at $1.99. This DLC will be on mobile early next year, and I’ve been playing it for review over the last week on Steam Deck and also on Xbox since yesterday.

Given how Vampire Survivors remains a killer app for the Steam Deck and how amazing the game is on iOS, I wanted to make sure we cover the first ever paid DLC on Steam Deck. Having now spent over 12 hours with the DLC across Steam Deck and Xbox, I can safely say that Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell offers superlative value, but there is one annoyance with the game on Steam Deck in its current state.

Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell adds new characters, weapons, secrets, achievements, and a massive new map. Mt.Moonspell, the new map, has different biomes with unique monsters. This map feels multiple times larger than the other ones in the game, but the focus on exploration here makes a huge difference. In the base game core stages, I didn’t really bother doing much exploration barring looking for the stage power-ups or initially going towards the question marks to unlock something. With Mt.Moonspell, every run so far has felt like a breath of fresh, and confusing, air.

Early on when I was still getting used to the map, the late-game portions with tons of enemies made exploration borderline impossible. Imagine being stuck in a narrow corridor in a labyrinth-like zone but with tons of enemies covering the screen throughout. That is just one of the situations I had in the early hours of this DLC. I almost want every new DLC to have a large map like this with a different theme because of how good it is.

I’ve not seen every combination or all the synergies possible with weapons and characters in the time I’ve spent across platforms, but I’m more than pleased with everything I’ve experienced so far in Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell. A few of my friends have worked towards unlocking everything much quicker, but I’ve been slowly savoring the new content. The weapons in particular are fantastic additions. We usually see DLC that brings a lot less to a game sell for 10 or 20 times this price. Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell is absolutely underpriced for what it brings to the base game, but it has one flaw.

Right now, the only thing holding Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell back is the fact that the PC version still seemingly hasn’t moved over to the new engine port like the Xbox and mobile versions. This means performance in later parts of a run drop to sub 15fps on Steam Deck as shown in a screenshot here. This is my only complaint with the game and the DLC on Steam Deck right now. Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell elevates one of the best games of the year to a whole other level for a fraction of the already low asking price of the base game.

In the time I’ve spent with the DLC on Xbox Series X, the major frame drops only happened with damage numbers enabled. I usually disable them, but left them on to test. Things still get really bad, but the performance is much better than the game on Steam Deck right now. While not a complaint about the DLC specifically, I really hope that we get cross platform progression with Steam, Xbox, and mobile in the near future. Unlocking everything on multiple platforms isn’t going to be fun for most people.

In a lot of ways, Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell reminds me of the Dead Cells paid DLC where each pack offers a ton of value, but a lot of the players are just happy to throw more support to the developers for more free and paid content. If you enjoyed Vampire Survivors, the Legacy of the Moonspell DLC is an essential. The new map is massively awesome, and I can’t wait for the superb new songs to be added to the soundtrack. If this is the direction poncle takes with future paid content, I’m ready to keep gifting friends the game and its DLC across platforms.

When Sony began porting its major exclusives to PC with Horizon Zero Dawn, I wondered how long it would take for a recent Naughty Dog release to come to Steam. With Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, Sony brought two of its most successful PS4 games to PS5 earlier in the year, and that collection has now made its way to PC platforms. If you’ve never played a game in the series before, and none of them barring this collection are even on PC, the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection includes Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy together with visual enhancements over the original PS4 releases.

Back when Uncharted 4 was about to release on PS4, I was preparing to check it out by playing through the Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection on PS4, but I got kind of burnt out by the end of it. I never ended up playing Uncharted 4 around launch, and only got into it on PS5 and now on PC through this collection. For this Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection Steam Deck review, I’m going to cover the port, how this collection is on Steam Deck, and whether it is worth your time and money if you’re new to Uncharted or someone who has played these games before.

There are some big caveats to the PC release of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection that will affect you right from the start. While the PS5 collection is under 70GB, the PC version takes nearly double the storage space at 124GB initially. I say initially because once you boot up the game, it starts compiling shaders for about 20 minutes in each game. Once this is complete, it takes up a massive 138.71GB with no way to only download a single game at a time.

Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection arrived verified by Valve for Steam Deck right from the start. This is always a good sign, because it shows developers working with Valve pre-release to ensure a specific game runs fine for Steam Deck owners, and having a big game like this arrive verified is a good sign for future ports which I will be covering on release.

I was initially skeptical of Uncharted on Steam Deck because a lot of the draw of the series is the fantastic visuals, and I thought those would be too compromised on Steam Deck to get it running at an acceptable frame rate. I was wrong, because both Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy can look stunning on Steam Deck while running at between 30 and 40fps. One another notable feature is 16:10 support during gameplay which is nice to have on Steam Deck.

If you aren’t interested in spending too much time tweaking and want the smoothest performance possible, I’d recommend going for the medium preset and capping the frame rate to 40fps through the Steam Deck’s limiter. There will be some drops, but nothing too major.

If you’re ok settling for 30fps, you can try the high preset and turn shadows down if you’d like. I spent a bit of time tweaking the image quality to my liking to play at a 30fps target rather than 40fps for the best possible visuals. If you’re ok compromising on image quality for better performance, I’d recommend using the FSR settings.

If you’ve never played an Uncharted game before, both of these are excellent action adventure games with superlative set pieces. It is unfortunate that Sony didn’t release the first three games before this though, but you can play these directly. If you already played them on PS4 or PS5 and are wondering how they are on Steam Deck, I’d wait for a discount before buying them to play on the go. While they hold up well, there are too many caveats to this recommendation at full price if you already played these games before. If you haven’t the price is worth it assuming you’re ok with the storage requirements.

While there’s no denying the value of this collection, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is one of Sony’s weaker PC conversions so far. Games like Marvel’s Spider-Man and God of War play like a dream on Steam Deck while the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection feels a bit lacking in comparison. Hopefully The Last of Us Part I on PC that likely is out soon will be better out of the box. It would also be great if Sony brought over Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection to PC so that the complete saga will be available on the platform like it is on PS4 and PS5.

Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is out now on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.

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You’re probably wondering why we are reviewing a PC-only game here on TouchArcade. If you’ve not kept up with our coverage in recent years, we have been covering Nintendo Switch in addition to mobile, and have enjoyed using the Steam Deck quite a bit since earlier this year. We started covering Steam Deck games and the hardware itself beginning with Jared’s review and my features on games for the device across different styles and genres.

If you own a Steam Deck or have played anything on Steam over the last year, you likely have heard of or seen Vampire Survivors. When it had just hit Steam Early Access, I had a few friends try to get me to play it, but I didn’t bother because I rarely play games until they do their proper 1.0 launch. Vampire Survivors on Steam Deck made me break that rule after I saw a few GIFs of the gameplay. The blend of survival, rogue-lite, bullet hell, avoidance, and more with the aesthetic from developer poncle has been a joy to play for the most part, and it has been mindblowing seeing how much is included in this game at its low price point.

At its core, Vampire Survivors is a one input game that has you moving and shooting or attacking at the same time. As you take down the many enemies trying to kill you, you earn experience and level up. On leveling up, you choose new skills, weapons, or buff existing ones. Initially, I spent more time trying out the various unlocks than working towards actually surviving a full run. Once I got used to the flow of a run, I was a near-godlike player with garlic, lightning, pentagrams, fireballs, and much more with a blend of particle effects and enemies making things almost too overwhelming visually.

On paper, Vampire Survivors is a simple casual game about surviving, leveling up, growing more powerful, and carefully working towards different parts of a specific map to unlock secrets or just use the environment to your advantage. The one button control scheme makes it a perfect pickup and play casual game, but there’s a ton of depth here. While you initially will just work on surviving runs or getting as far as possible, you soon will look into unlocking characters, new abilities, stages, and even game modes with version 1.0.

With how you only move as your interaction with the character, there’s quite a bit of strategy involved. The weapons all have their own timers or cooldowns, and you are basically moving and aiming. Picking the right combination of buffs or upgrading a specific weapon instead of adding another one is likely going to make or break your run in the late-game.

Barring the regular runs you can do, there are unlockables like Hyper and Hurry mode. The former speeds you, enemies, spawn rate, and projectile speed while the latter has the clock running at twice the speed. Both of those can be combined for a complete chaotic run as well. You also end up unlocking arcanas that are modifiers for runs. One aspect that I hope future updates can work on is making it more obvious how to unlock specific things in-game. The new interface helps, but it still needs some work.

I’m going to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but I can safely say that Vampire Survivors isn’t a game you just buy to unlock everything quickly and move on. You’re here for multiple runs, experimentation, tons of deaths, slaying thousands of enemies, and more. This is more true with version 1.0 and the plethora of new content added. Even as someone who didn’t unlock everything in the early access version, I saw a steady flow of improvements and enhancements in 1.0 right from the menus and with the added options. The interface improvements and options are welcome, but I’m surprised at how much I like the new sounds added given how much I got used to how things sounded before.

Having now seen how much Vampire Survivors has improved and added in the last few months leading up to 1.0, I really hope poncle can license or release an official guide and lore book for the game. There is so much I’ve enjoyed unlocking, and I’d love to have a nice physical book like with the Stardew Valley guidebook. Even before it hit 1.0, Vampire Survivors had almost infinite replay value, and it is even better now.

The one aspect of Vampire Survivors I’m not happy with, is the performance on Steam Deck. I know the late-game even on more powerful systems has performance issues, but I was hoping 1.0 would mean the performance was sorted in those situations on Steam Deck. Even with performance mode and disabling damage numbers, it doesn’t run great in later parts of stages with tons of enemies. I’m curious to see how the new engine port aiming for release by the end of the year will fare on Steam Deck, but right now don’t get your hopes up for big performance improvements in 1.0 compared to the early access version.

In the beginning of this review, I mentioned that this was our first ever Steam Deck game review. Going forward, we might do full reviews of games that we enjoy enough, or launches of games we are excited to play. Half a year later, the Steam Deck is in a much better place when it comes to software and compatibility. While there is still work to be done, games like Vampire Survivors and others make it worth owning a Steam Deck more and more each day.

If you haven’t gotten Vampire Survivors yet, it is easily one of the best PC-only games you can buy in 2022. Having played more than 50 hours of it over the last few months, it really feels like a steal at even its newly increased price point of $4.99. It has remained in the most-played games on Steam Deck for months now, and Valve should just pay to have it pre-installed on every Steam Deck at this point. It is that good. If you do end up getting it, don’t blame me if you spend hours on it daily like I did when I got addicted to it. The soundtrack is absolutely worth grabbing as well. I’ve not grown remotely tired of it after all these dozens of hours with the game.

Interested in more Steam Deck features? Check out our other Steam Deck recommendations!