Steam Deck and Indies

 

            Hello again. You. Oh youuuu. Yes! Hello! Alright, hi, the Steam Deck and indie games are impressing me at the moment. Some people are dismissing the Steam Deck or since they themselves don’t see its value think it’s a dumb thing and no one actually needs it. Nintendo Life and The Escapist both did great videos on the Steam Deck vs Switch and both bring up good points. Personally the Deck would be great for me. I bring my Switch to work and play it on breaks and in the past I often wished for a portable PC, not a laptop but something smaller. I’ve expressed my non-interest in gaming on my phone and with the Deck being basically a Switch, it seems perfect for me.

            Something both Nintendo Life and The Escapist mentioned is that the Steam Deck could be a lot of peoples’ indie machine. I’ve double-dipped for indies on PC and Switch because I wanted to play them at work; Hyper Light Drifter and the Shantae games as examples. For some reason I feel like those games belong on the Switch rather than my PC. I don’t know why but I do. That being said though, when HLD first came out it didn’t run great on the Switch. I’m not the type of person that can typically tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps but in HLD I could see it and had trouble with a few bosses because of it. Now I really like having Hollow Knight on my Switch but depending on when Silk Song comes out I may want to get that on the Deck. I really like achievements and such. I was more into achievement hunting on the 360 but not so much on Steam. Like, I like to go after them on my PC but I still would rather it somehow went towards my Xbox gamer score but not having them on Switch games just kind of makes me not play as much. If I think I can do it I’ll try but there are some achievements that I know I can’t do. On the Switch I kind of make my own achievements you know? Just try to complete as much of the game as possible. Mario Odyssey for example; I will never be able to do the jump rope moon. I just don’t have it in me and I know I’ll get frustrated and throw something… Kind of off track but I guess if I can try to do some of the achievements with these games, on the Deck, then I’ll be more likely to have them in my Steam library rather than my Switch. Hollow Knight for instance; I did the main story bit, did the final boss or secret boss? I don’t know, it was all white and it was bullshit but I did it but I did not do the GrimmTroupe DLC. It was a little too much for me.

            I saw comments about “who would want this if you already have a PC” and they just don’t understand. If the Steam Deck was out right now I would play A Plague Tale: Innocence on it at work. I’ve been streaming it, slowly, and am almost done but since it crashed mid-stream for the second time I kinda said fuck it and have been playing it without streaming but if I had the Deck I would’ve been chipping away at it on my breaks. When I’m home and my friends are online, which is 9/10^th of the time, we’re usually doing something. Be it Apex or after this weekend, The Ascent, so I don’t have much time to just play what I want. I mean I could, obviously, but at the same time I would rather do something with my friends. Something I’d love to revisit is Knights of the Old Republic. I had got it on my phone only because I was so shocked that I could play it on my phone but it takes up too much space and the controls aren’t the best, obviously, so the Deck would be a perfect thing to have that on. Another thing is I have so many games on my Steam wishlist that I haven’t bought because I don’t see when I would actually play them. There’s a game called Panzer Knights that looks like Girls Und Panzer and I would totally get that to play at work. I got rid of my Vita and copy of Girls Und Panzer, regrettably, and it would be nice to have something similar but fresh.

            Something else I was seeing was the space of the Steam Deck’s storage and game sizes. Some people want to see their whole Steam library and I understand that, I’m like that too to an extent but I would just delete stuff I wasn’t playing on the Deck. Going back to A Plague Tale, once I finish it I’ll probably delete it. Maybe I’ll try to do the achievements but in the end I will delete it and free up some space. Games like Portal would probably hang around because it’s small and I can just jump into it and out with no big deal. The biggest game, storage wise, I’m currently keeping my eye on is Horizon Zero Dawn. I have it on my PlayStation but have been thinking about getting it on my PC but just haven’t. The Steam Deck would push me to buy it again. @NEETproxy just told me that Sony just bought a studio specifically to port games to PC so that’d be amazing. If Sony isn’t going to make a handheld then the Steam Deck is a perfect piece of hardware if they’re willing to port more games. It’d be nice to get Horizon Zero Dawn 2 on PC. People are willing to spend $1500+ on a 3080 but will complain about buying a $100 SD card lol.

Another complaint I see is the weight of the Steam Deck or that their hands might cramp playing it. I know some have cramping issues playing the Switch but as far as the weight, I’d have to hold it to find out. The Switch weighs next to nothing. Wait, I just looked at how much the Deck is probably going to weight and it’s a pound and a half… that’s nothing. I don’t know, seems like a non-issue.

            Other than that stuff, if you’re keen on doing so you can put Windows on the Steam Deck and effectively run Xbox Game Pass. Also, if you put Windows on it, you could emulate games. I’m not too familiar with emulating and have only done it a few times with varying degrees of success so I don’t plan on doing that but the fact that you can is amazing. The Steam Deck could just become PlayStation’s new portable device and even for Xbox, even though they’re doing their Xcloud thing but what would people rather use, really? It also is something that happens to Microsoft a lot I think, they try something that seems pretty good but then it doesn’t work out and they discontinue it. Windows Phone, Zune. Always a timing issue for Microsoft, but Steam also has a spotty history with hardware so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

            Onto the indie side of things; there’s a lot of promising games coming out. Games that gamers have been asking for but the big companies just haven’t provided. We got Spectre that is a Splinter Cell Spies vs Mercs successor, Zero Six Behind Enemy Lines that looks to be like the SOCOM games and Vigilance 2099 that looks like the original Prey 2 teaser. I hope these games show the big devs that they’re not the only game in town anymore. And I understand it’s not usually the developers fault, it’s the publishers. The devs might want to make a game but if they publishers or share holders don’t think it’ll make THEM money then they won’t sign off on it. I saw a comment on the TC’s XDefiant that said “This game was autogenerated by an algorithm” and I had to laugh because it’s so true. I remember sometime ago games where coming out and were very same-y and not exactly innovative and the discussion was that the game publishers would hire like, game analyst I think and they would tell the publishers what was popular and what they thought would sell so we got a lot of  copy-pasted games. I can totally see publishers using an AI where they just plug in certain words, it generates what is most popular at the time and that’s what they’ll have their devs make.

            So I’m hoping the Steam Deck and indie developers put a fire under the asses of the bigger developers who got comfortable thinking they were the only game in town. I wonder if the Deck will push Microsoft to put Game Pass on the Switch like those rumors we heard about, what feels like, so long ago. I’m intrigued by the Deck, I’m hoping it works well and that Steam supports it. I was very onboard when I saw Alienware’s UFO but I'm very wary of Alienware at the same time. I bought a new, at the time, gaming laptop and Modern Warfare 2 just came out and it couldn't handle it. I was so mad. I think the Steam Deck having its unique operating system will save me from varying and random Windows issues, I hope. Just having a portable PC with its main focus being gaming and nothing else, I’m HOPING, will come with less issues. I just LOOOVE fighting with my PC to get games to work right. It’s really impressive to see what an indie dev team of 10 or even one person can do. Yes the games still actually have to come out and be playable but it’s like what are these teams that have hundreds or even thousands doing? Skins? So what are your thoughts on the Steam Deck? Are there any indie games you’re looking forward to that I should know about? Let me know and I’ll catch you later.

                                @AztecSauce