It has been two full years now since Steam Deck was revealed by Valve, a prominent digital distribution company that founded the Steam platform. When I saw Steam Deck for the first time and found out that I could play all Steam games and Xbox games on it, I instantly wanted to order one. Ever since I started gaming, I always wanted to have a portable gaming device that I could carry with me wherever I go, including school and college. I had a PlayStation Portable (PSP) from 2007-2009 and I really enjoyed playing games on it until it just stopped working due to some technical issue. Nintendo consoles were just not for me as I was never into any of the Mario games (except for the recent Super Smash Bros) or Zelda games. I wanted to play games with amazing graphics and gameplay, and I wanted the protagonist in the game to be stylish and/or badass (sorry Mario & Link fans).
I was very excited to get my hands on Steam Deck as I wanted to experience some of my favorite brand-new AAA games on a portable gaming device. Also, one of the main reasons I wanted to own a Steam Deck was because of Game Pass. I was mistaken that we could install a Game Pass app and play its games natively on the Deck, but that wasn't the case. I was very disappointed when I found out that Game Pass was not available to be downloaded on Steam Deck. Apparently, there is a way to install the Game Pass app on the Deck but that requires a lot of technical work. I don't want to get technical with my portable device, mess with it, and then break it. Yes, I wish Valve had worked something out with Xbox to have Steam Deck compatible with Game Pass, as Steam Deck would have been a perfect Game Pass machine for me. I still decided to order the most expensive version of the Deck. My plan was to buy three or four games once I receive the console and see how they performed.
Once I got the console delivered to me last year in September and when I opened up the package, I was pleasantly surprised with how big and elegant it was. It looked gorgeous, stylish, and looked expensive for sure. Once I turned it on and browsed through all the games that were available to be purchased, I was just blown away! There were so many AAA games that were compatible with the Deck, and its library has gotten even stronger recently. Not only you can play Steam and Xbox first-party games, but you can also play a decent number of PlayStation first-party games.
On your Steam Deck, you can play God of War, Spider-Man, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Days Gone, Uncharted: A Legacy of Thieves, and a few more PlayStation titles. If for some reason you are not a fan of those PlayStation titles, you can buy and play Apex Legends, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Dark Souls 3, Elden Ring, Doom Eternal, NBA 2K23, Sekiro, Street Fighter 6, and Xbox games like Forza Horizon 5, Sea of Thieves, Halo Infinite, Quantum Break, and so many more. Do you know the best part about playing all those games on your Steam Deck? All of them run exceptionally well!
Obviously, since Steam Deck doesn't offer 4K gaming (it offers only 800p), games don't look visually as good as they do on your Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles. However, when it comes to performance, you can play a decent number of games on your Steam Deck at 60 FPS mode. For the games that don't run at 60 FPS, you can still play them at a very smooth and stable 30 FPS mode. So far on my Steam Deck, I have played The King of Fighters VX, The Witcher 3, Halo Infinite, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, NBA 2K 23, Spider-Man, and a couple more games. I haven't had any complaints regarding the performances of those games as they run perfectly fine. Spider-Man runs super smooth on the Deck. You all need to play Spider-Man on Steam Deck!
Well, it is no secret that Steam Deck's library is insane! The device itself is very powerful as you can play some massive AAA games on your Deck at a very stable performance mode. It is just so wild that there is a portable gaming device where we can play multi-platform games, Xbox games, and PlayStation games. I'm very thankful to these developers and all the Valve engineers who brought Steam Deck to life. Certainly, Steam Deck is an amazing gaming device, but it has one major problem. The battery life is abysmal!
When you go to Steam Deck's official website and look up battery under tech specs, you will see the range is between two to eight hours. I have been playing on my Steam Deck for almost ten months now, and I always run out of battery in less than two hours of gaming after a full charge. Some Steam Deck users have recommended lowering the resolution and other game settings of the AAA games I play so I could get a playtime of three or more hours. The thing is, I don't want to lower the resolution or any game settings. I wanna play games at their best performance on my handheld console, and I should be able to get at least two hours and thirty minutes of gaming.
As I said before, I've never been able to play any AAA game on my Steam Deck for even two hours. I believe the best I have done is an hour and thirty minutes of gaming before I needed to charge the console again. Yes, even though I never liked Nintendo and its games, I did own a Nintendo Switch Lite briefly. I bought it because I really liked the color (yellow) of the device and it was being sold for only $200. Switch Lite has a much better battery life than Steam Deck. I'm aware that Switch isn't as powerful as Steam Deck, but I only paid $200 for it. I spent $650 on my Steam Deck! For that much money, we should be able to get a much better performance in terms of battery from our Steam Deck consoles.
Overall, I really like my Steam Deck as I can play so many of my favorite games on it, and it is a very elegant/sexy-looking device. I would still recommend others to get a Steam Deck if they are looking to own a portable gaming device where they can play multi-platform, Xbox, and PlayStation AAA games on the go. However, I would not recommend playing multiplayer or competitive first-person shooters on it. I have played Halo Infinite multiplayer on my Steam Deck, and while I didn't experience any lags or any sort of performance issue, moving fast and aiming was a bit of a challenge for me.
If it wasn't for the awful battery life and if it had a Game Pass app, I would have rated Steam Deck a 9.8/10. Instead, I'm gonna go with 8/10.
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