(note: part 1 here)
Intro:
So there I was...commuting without the steam deck for the last time. Then cycling the last part home. And yes! The package was right there on the table:
ISLEBOUND!!!
Oh...wait. I meant that OTHER package that arrived on the same day (seriously, though: Ryan Laukat's a great board game designer). That arrived in a common brown box, just as I expected it to. It looked just like the many other unboxing videos you've seen a hundred times. Well...with one exception to most (all?): the power adapter's fit for Belgian power sockets. So...great!
I've heard it mention and it deserves repeating: the caseholder is really high quality. Obviously I'm not going to try it, but I think the steam deck inside might just survive if you throw it against a wall. The slight "U"-shape in the device is in the case as well, so you can somewhat hold the charger or headphones there. Not exactly the greatest position, but good enough. Certainly good enough.
I somewhat want to pretend that an angelic chorus started doing gregorian hymns when I opened the case, but alas...real world got in the way. More specifically: our daughter had a very moody day. Even though both her mom and mine (her granny) were there, there were moments where she just was very needy of attention. So...sorry geeks, but I'm a father first. Spending quantity time (I don't know how to do quality time, so I make up for it in amount) with her was priority one and two. In the next paragraphs I'm filtering it out for sake of the review, but do consider about five interrupts between every step of the way.
It was at least partially charged when I booted it up. At that point my first thoughts were "it really isn't that big". And until you put e.g. a gpd xd+ next to it, you wouldn't think so. But it's larger than my wiiu game pad, albeit not by much. But I immediately noticed what I hoped and expected: decent buttons. Not those tiny "clicky" things nintendo makes for children, or the fair (but not outstanding) quality of gpd's line-up. I came to expect this. Only surprise was a positive one: the D-pad is actually really, really good (I think one reviewer compared it to xbox360...if that's accurate, my own second hand xbox360 controllers must've been worn out or something).
Then came a stupid thing I had missed: what's my steam password again? Seriously: I've set it up well over ten years ago and it mostly transitioned through google. I have it stored, but only "sort of" know it (that is: don't ask me about capital letters or where which number is). It was added quickly, but by this time I was really melting with anticipation. So I immediately got out and installed the first game on my list...
Aperture science labs:
I won't lie: this was a letdown. A double one, even. But I did found out the most important thing: yes, you can shut down (hibernate) and restart the deck pretty much like a tablet. The second or third time I tried timing it, but it's no use: the game's already started by the time I pressed the "power on" button. So...yeeey!
...but to get back to that double letdown. Well...the first is the high pitched 'iiiiiiiiiii'-sound the game started making, even while idling. While beautiful, ASL is not a demanding game. So it softly but annoyingly screeching like that (like having tinnitus, I presume) wasn't good. Girlfriend said I wasn't allowed to play it in bed while she was there.
Granted: this was without tweaking. And as the_faux pointed out months earlier: you can't really notice the difference between 60 and 40 frames per second but it has a large impact on drawn power (and heating...and therefore fan noise). Version 3.2 had just gone stable, so I think this first letdown eliminated itself later on.
The second one didn't. Simply put: Aperture science labs sucks. Yes, it' s a free game by valve, yes, it's a sort of tutorial, yes, it's beautiful and yes, it has some valve-style humor to it. But somehow they forgot to put the actual GAME in there. Really: ASL is a walking simulator without the walking part, and I'm not sure if it simulates anything either. There's a shooting segment that got me interested a bit ("finally: something resembling a game "), but it was over before it got started, and it turned out to be the ONLY gamey thing in the program. I can't argue much with 'free', but...if this is somehow supposed to draw people in the steam deck, I can't disagree with that idea more. Time for an ACTUAL game...
Portal:
Of course I played portal before. Played through it two or three times, but so long ago I can only remember a few setpieces (
). I never played it without a mouse, though. In fact, I've never played anything truly mouse-driven on a gamepad before (portal's not the shootiest of shooters, but it still is one).
My first start had me baffled: none of the buttons worked! After some trying, only wiping the screen rotated the screen. I didn't get it. Still don't, to be honest. But the first control layout (I presume with gyro movement, but I don't want to wave around my device like a moron) just didn't do anything. Luckily, once I started figuring out what shortcuts did what, I found steam deck's custom button layouts. Turns out valve has two official custom button layouts; the second one has everything mapped to buttons.
To be honest: this should've been bundled with the deck. Portal is a classic for a reason: it gradually lets you explore and gradually shifts from puzzles to a more action oriented gameplay.
It also controls worse than with a mouse. Roughly halfway through the game I mapped the right touchpad for rotating, which is much needed for quick aiming...which I need to totally relearn. But aside a sensitivity that was probably too high, it was only afterward that it hit me: neither the joystick nor the trackpad can be used properly in conjunction with the XYAB buttons. It's not so bad for the joystick (you can quickly shift), but releasing your thumb from the trackpad to jump or grab an object tends to shift the aim a bit. On hindsight, I should've remapped those buttons to the shoulder or even the back buttons. I did finish the game, but it was far from using the best way.
Another mention: since I don't play 3D games as much anymore, I tend to get motion sickness from some games. Portal certainly induced this, which isn't a wonder in some levels with lots of vertical action. That I've played it mostly on the train certainly added to this.
Gris:
Started playing this a couple weeks ago and then decided this was better suited for the deck. And truth be told: it is. True to its ideal, I didn't start from scratch but where I left off, and the controls and movement felt completely natural right from the start. Gris is also a very beautiful game, wherein your little dweller wanders through sometimes impressively huge statues and landscapes.
Unfortunately...I found the game to be boring and lacking to similar games I've played. Monument valley has the Escher perspective puzzles, a story about my uncle has a grappling hook, duet has tough as nails levels, fez has the perspective puzzles, element4l has physics based gameplay, celeste has a better story AND better levels, and so on. Gris is inferior to all of those: you walk (okay: run) from one beautiful cloudy village or statue to the next. The story's told without words but it doesn't really communicate much through actions. Really: I wanted to like gris more than I did, but I won't be finishing this one.
Hob:
Hob is Runic's take on Zelda. I've played it before in the early days of proton. The colors were drab and it crashed a lot; the former probably due to my pc's aging graphic's card. Both of those are (mostly) fixed: the colors are brighter and the doomed game world is absolutely STUNNING! I have to admit it's slightly lacking behind Zelda in terms of level design (it's not always clear where to go) and storytelling (though for a game without words it knocks it out of the park), but hob is an absolute, absolute gem.
Yes, the game crashed twice on me in my...roughly 3 hours of play. Both of those I jumped right back in and was back where I was less than a minute later.
First playing conclusions:
I guess you notice a trend here: each game I like better than the previous in some way. That isn't just due to the games themselves, but also familiarity with the device. Hob, for example, was my first "playable" game, and...lemme say it right now: valve is too modest in this. The reason it's that isn't the crashes (I'm sure those happen on windows as well), but because when you start you get the option of "starting a launcher" or "starting without launcher". The former lets you pick things like resolution, image quality and so on. The latter gets you in game directly.
So...seriously, valve? If that's the sort of thing that keeps it from verified status, at least introduce more scaling in this process.
Intro:
So there I was...commuting without the steam deck for the last time. Then cycling the last part home. And yes! The package was right there on the table:
ISLEBOUND!!!
Oh...wait. I meant that OTHER package that arrived on the same day (seriously, though: Ryan Laukat's a great board game designer). That arrived in a common brown box, just as I expected it to. It looked just like the many other unboxing videos you've seen a hundred times. Well...with one exception to most (all?): the power adapter's fit for Belgian power sockets. So...great!
I've heard it mention and it deserves repeating: the caseholder is really high quality. Obviously I'm not going to try it, but I think the steam deck inside might just survive if you throw it against a wall. The slight "U"-shape in the device is in the case as well, so you can somewhat hold the charger or headphones there. Not exactly the greatest position, but good enough. Certainly good enough.
I somewhat want to pretend that an angelic chorus started doing gregorian hymns when I opened the case, but alas...real world got in the way. More specifically: our daughter had a very moody day. Even though both her mom and mine (her granny) were there, there were moments where she just was very needy of attention. So...sorry geeks, but I'm a father first. Spending quantity time (I don't know how to do quality time, so I make up for it in amount) with her was priority one and two. In the next paragraphs I'm filtering it out for sake of the review, but do consider about five interrupts between every step of the way.
It was at least partially charged when I booted it up. At that point my first thoughts were "it really isn't that big". And until you put e.g. a gpd xd+ next to it, you wouldn't think so. But it's larger than my wiiu game pad, albeit not by much. But I immediately noticed what I hoped and expected: decent buttons. Not those tiny "clicky" things nintendo makes for children, or the fair (but not outstanding) quality of gpd's line-up. I came to expect this. Only surprise was a positive one: the D-pad is actually really, really good (I think one reviewer compared it to xbox360...if that's accurate, my own second hand xbox360 controllers must've been worn out or something).
Then came a stupid thing I had missed: what's my steam password again? Seriously: I've set it up well over ten years ago and it mostly transitioned through google. I have it stored, but only "sort of" know it (that is: don't ask me about capital letters or where which number is). It was added quickly, but by this time I was really melting with anticipation. So I immediately got out and installed the first game on my list...
Aperture science labs:
I won't lie: this was a letdown. A double one, even. But I did found out the most important thing: yes, you can shut down (hibernate) and restart the deck pretty much like a tablet. The second or third time I tried timing it, but it's no use: the game's already started by the time I pressed the "power on" button. So...yeeey!
...but to get back to that double letdown. Well...the first is the high pitched 'iiiiiiiiiii'-sound the game started making, even while idling. While beautiful, ASL is not a demanding game. So it softly but annoyingly screeching like that (like having tinnitus, I presume) wasn't good. Girlfriend said I wasn't allowed to play it in bed while she was there.
Granted: this was without tweaking. And as the_faux pointed out months earlier: you can't really notice the difference between 60 and 40 frames per second but it has a large impact on drawn power (and heating...and therefore fan noise). Version 3.2 had just gone stable, so I think this first letdown eliminated itself later on.
The second one didn't. Simply put: Aperture science labs sucks. Yes, it' s a free game by valve, yes, it's a sort of tutorial, yes, it's beautiful and yes, it has some valve-style humor to it. But somehow they forgot to put the actual GAME in there. Really: ASL is a walking simulator without the walking part, and I'm not sure if it simulates anything either. There's a shooting segment that got me interested a bit ("finally: something resembling a game
"), but it was over before it got started, and it turned out to be the ONLY gamey thing in the program. I can't argue much with 'free', but...if this is somehow supposed to draw people in the steam deck, I can't disagree with that idea more. Time for an ACTUAL game...Portal:
Of course I played portal before. Played through it two or three times, but so long ago I can only remember a few setpieces (
The cake is a lie!
My first start had me baffled: none of the buttons worked! After some trying, only wiping the screen rotated the screen. I didn't get it. Still don't, to be honest. But the first control layout (I presume with gyro movement, but I don't want to wave around my device like a moron) just didn't do anything. Luckily, once I started figuring out what shortcuts did what, I found steam deck's custom button layouts. Turns out valve has two official custom button layouts; the second one has everything mapped to buttons.
To be honest: this should've been bundled with the deck. Portal is a classic for a reason: it gradually lets you explore and gradually shifts from puzzles to a more action oriented gameplay.
It also controls worse than with a mouse. Roughly halfway through the game I mapped the right touchpad for rotating, which is much needed for quick aiming...which I need to totally relearn. But aside a sensitivity that was probably too high, it was only afterward that it hit me: neither the joystick nor the trackpad can be used properly in conjunction with the XYAB buttons. It's not so bad for the joystick (you can quickly shift), but releasing your thumb from the trackpad to jump or grab an object tends to shift the aim a bit. On hindsight, I should've remapped those buttons to the shoulder or even the back buttons. I did finish the game, but it was far from using the best way.
Another mention: since I don't play 3D games as much anymore, I tend to get motion sickness from some games. Portal certainly induced this, which isn't a wonder in some levels with lots of vertical action. That I've played it mostly on the train certainly added to this.
Gris:
Started playing this a couple weeks ago and then decided this was better suited for the deck. And truth be told: it is. True to its ideal, I didn't start from scratch but where I left off, and the controls and movement felt completely natural right from the start. Gris is also a very beautiful game, wherein your little dweller wanders through sometimes impressively huge statues and landscapes.
Unfortunately...I found the game to be boring and lacking to similar games I've played. Monument valley has the Escher perspective puzzles, a story about my uncle has a grappling hook, duet has tough as nails levels, fez has the perspective puzzles, element4l has physics based gameplay, celeste has a better story AND better levels, and so on. Gris is inferior to all of those: you walk (okay: run) from one beautiful cloudy village or statue to the next. The story's told without words but it doesn't really communicate much through actions. Really: I wanted to like gris more than I did, but I won't be finishing this one.
Hob:
Hob is Runic's take on Zelda. I've played it before in the early days of proton. The colors were drab and it crashed a lot; the former probably due to my pc's aging graphic's card. Both of those are (mostly) fixed: the colors are brighter and the doomed game world is absolutely STUNNING! I have to admit it's slightly lacking behind Zelda in terms of level design (it's not always clear where to go) and storytelling (though for a game without words it knocks it out of the park), but hob is an absolute, absolute gem.
Yes, the game crashed twice on me in my...roughly 3 hours of play. Both of those I jumped right back in and was back where I was less than a minute later.
First playing conclusions:
I guess you notice a trend here: each game I like better than the previous in some way. That isn't just due to the games themselves, but also familiarity with the device. Hob, for example, was my first "playable" game, and...lemme say it right now: valve is too modest in this. The reason it's that isn't the crashes (I'm sure those happen on windows as well), but because when you start you get the option of "starting a launcher" or "starting without launcher". The former lets you pick things like resolution, image quality and so on. The latter gets you in game directly.
So...seriously, valve? If that's the sort of thing that keeps it from verified status, at least introduce more scaling in this process.
