[Discussion] What were your favorite and least favorite games you played on Deck in 2023?

Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz⁩ to ⁨steamdeck@sopuli.xyz⁩

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.

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Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Felt the same with the witcher 3, can’t put it down!
  
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BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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winety@communick.news ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  So 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.
  
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  - winety@communick.news ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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. :(
    
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- averyminya@beehaw.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  HZD I hadn’t tested but both Spider-Men games run great?
  
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  - winety@communick.news ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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. 🤷‍♂️
    
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blindsight@beehaw.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not sure if I should post since I’ve just had mine for a week, but my highlights so far are Stardew Valley and Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed.

Stardew Valley is a charming game that’s really nice to play while watching something with my wife. It’s chill, and doesn’t take much attention usually, so it’s perfect for the mobile nature of the Deck to play in bed.

Sonic Racing I’ve been playing with my 5y.o. son. I suck at it, lol. I can’t consistently get 1st place in normal mode yet, but it’s fun, looks great, and plays smooth as silk.

The one game I tried and immediately put down was Against the Storm. I’m really excited to play it, but the controller is just moving a mouse cursor around. From the little I played, I was instantly frustrated that I needed to move the cursor over small UI buttons to open menus; it doesn’t seem to have a sensible control scheme for the Deck, and I mostly play in bed, so a mouse isn’t really an option for me. Disappointing, since I was so excited for it!

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flakpanzer@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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