It's been three days with my Steam Deck. I've had my Switch since Day 1.
Things I think are better with the Deck:
- A lot more third party/multipatform titles, including every modern and graphically intensive game released to date. Elden Ring? Got it. Jedi: Fallen Order? Plays great. DMC V? Smooth 60fps portable glory. The entire The Legend of Heroes franchise? Got you covered. And so on and so on...
- In the case were the game is both on the Switch and on the Deck, you get significantly better performance and image quality there, even if you limit the framerate and reduce graphical options. And you normally get equal or better battery life than V1 Switch, which is pretty neat when you consider the quality jump.
- The amount of freedom you get. Install Windows, play games from other stores like Epic or GoG, browse the internet, do whathever the hell you want. After all, it's a PC. It doesn't matter if SE doesn't want to bring KH natively to the Switch. It doesn't matter if they don't put the games on Steam. I can run the Epic Games version no problem ^^
- Emulators. This little thing can run almost anything at excellent or acceptable levels. From 8/16 bit systems to PS2, GC, Wii U or even the Switch itself. Everything in a portable device. For me, it's like a dream come true.
- The device options. Modify how much energy it consumes, limit your framerate, choose between different control schemes (the touch pads feel AMAZING and are super handy for FP games like Portal)... and a lot more.
But in the short time I spend with this thing, I also came up with a couple of annoyances:
- No downloads while in sleep mode. I mean, computers have this problem, so I should have expected this. But I got so used to just put my consoles to sleep and let them download the games/updates while I do other stuff that when I found that the Deck couldn't do it... I felt disappointed. It's not a deal breaker, but it's definetley an issue. I've read that Valve is looking to do something about this, so I hope in the near future the figure something out.
- Some key games are not verified or even playable on the Deck. And I'm not even talking about niche games. I'm talking about big names like Batman Arkham Asylum or Devil May Cry Collection HD. I know you can make them run by toying with Proton and stuff, but the whole point of the Steam Deck is the convenience of being able to play your entire Steam Library in a portable device. Both Valve and game studios should work harder on getting their games running well on the system.
- Playing offline is sometimes hit or miss. With some games it works no problem. But some others (mostly games that rely on their own launchers like Ubisoft or EA) really want you to be connected to the internet, even with single player games. You have to do some tweaking to fool them and let you play offline. Again, not a big deal, but it's annoying, specially when, again, the whole point of this device is taking it anywhere and play everything on it. It's like cloud games on the Switch xD
- The intial setup was troublesome and scary for me. While installing updates, it froze at 1 sec remaining. Nothing I could do but turn it off. This happened three times in a row. I was getting very scared seeing how something this expensive was giving me problems by just booting it up. Thankfully, at the fourth try it finally finished updating and I haven't encountered any other error of this nature.
All in all, I'm VERY happy with my Deck. But I don't see it replacing my Switch anytime soon. The Switch still has many upcoming games for me to enjoy and while it's lacking in many areas, it still has its own good points like sleep mode downloads, lots of exclusives (which happen to be some of my favourites across all systems), no need to worry if a game plays or no, easier to carry on (although not by much, you still need a backpack), built in co-op play anywhere thanks to the joycons...
I see both devices compenetrating each other beautifully for me. Since I play mostly Nintendo games, the Switch will still be my primary console. But since I've never had a gaming PC and I've been acumulating Steam games for like... 12 years... now I have the chance of not only play them all, but not missing out on those games that the Switch will not get. Plus, emulators.
Whenever I need something that the Switch cannot offer me, the Deck will be there. And viceversa.
