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.
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.
I have most hours on Deep Rock Galactic, but it’s no longer what I’d call a favorite. I’m getting a bit bored. It runs perfectly and I have clocked 2000 hour on it, so it remains something I can just play through instinct and relax.
My favorite surprise was that developers finally fixed Gunner, HEAT, PC, so it doesn’t freeze the steam deck on almost every run. It now works great on Steam Deck with med GFX settings. Although making a good controller setting is a pain and you need virtual menus. Didn’t find good ones ready.
Disappointment was Starbourne 2. Keeps freezing the steam deck within 30min, although it had gold level status in protondb. Hard reset is the only way to recover. Dock + keyb + mouse is a must.
The Starbourne issue sounds like a memory leak, I had the same issue with God of War. It would probably be fixed or mitigated by increasing your swap size (can do it manually or use Cryoutilities) or possibly by lowering the texture quality or other vram using settings.
Also that’s some seriously respectable DRG hours, I only have about 600. As much as I love the game, I don’t like to play it on Deck, feel too hampered by the lack of a mouse.
My favorite, probably Spider man Miles Morales. Other notables: Mudrunner Dead cells Hellblade Senuas sacrifice Horizon Zero Dawn
Least favorite: Mass effect legendary edition It just keeps breaking and I gave up on it. Never buying from that shitty company again.
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.
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.
Have been experimenting with this using the steam controller, but the learning curve is really high. Haven’t been close to dock+keyb+mouse level of dexterity.
It’s fun though. Really hope it works out in the end.
Started going through my backlog a couple months ago. I want to give all worthy games a chance, preferably complete before I think about buying another
Started by cutting out all the trash from my library, bringing it from 110 to about 30. I then used a decky plugin to split the games up into:
- Playing
- Story Backlog
- Non-story backlog
I will have max 1 story game in my “playing” group and a bunch of non story games when I want a relaxed, not mentally focused session
Dying light - on hold after ~10 hours
too scary and the strength and stamina of the guy is annoyingly low. The idea of playing it sounds really fun, so I’ll probably pick it back up when I feel like playing a scary game
stardew valley - completed main story/objective (the community center). Took me ~80 hours
the only game I’ve completed this year but I mean it when I say I loved that game. Couldn’t put it down, even played for 8 hours straight once; which is very rare for adult me. Only stopped playing because I felt burnt out after nearly 80 hours. There’s still content for me to get back to when I want
the Witcher 3 - currently my “in progress” major story game
About 10 hours into my second attempt at a playthrough. Wow what a game. No spoilers at all pls even if it’s something that happens at the start
Dishonoured - abandoned after 9 hours
It’s a fun game, the story is okay but it’s just not gripping me. It’s a meh game. I abandoned it when I realised I kept procrastinating it and moved onto the Witcher 3 (thank goodness I did!!). Small chance I try again in the future.
Bully - abandoned after 8 hours
This game did not age well at all.
Very fun idea but it’s too old to enjoy. Controls too clunky, missions are too basic, doesn’t run smoothly and just a bad experience overall. The missions are also very basic.
Some of the casual, short session games I currently have in the rotation:
- Brawlhala - just downloaded, seems fun.
- Vampire survivors - lives up to the hype 100%
- Forza horizon 5 - my virtual Sunday drive
- Hotline Miami - stuck on a level! Quite a difficult game
- Doom 2016 - one mission per month is enough for me!
- Dirt rally 1 - have to be in a specific mood to play this!
Some games in my story Backlog (in no order):
- GTA IV - up next after I finish TW3
- Fallout 4 - I hate bugs and spiders though D:
- RDR2 - played prologue already
- Shadow of modor
- Shadow warrior
I just realised I put so much effort into a comment no one will read 🙃 it’s too late to delete now, I ain’t getting my time back so neither are you ;)
Now im doubling down and giving all the info!! I’ve got nothing better to do (apart from the fact I should have been asleep 2 hours ago)
I read it :) I can’t seem to get started on stardew… I planted some stuff and went to bed and then didn’t really feel motivated to do more 🤷
Haha thanks for reading!
And yeah it took me a few tries to get into stardew. Mainly because I was playing a simple looking game on a beefy desktop pc, it didn’t sit right with me
The deck however, being in bed and playing stardew?? Hell yeah
Not every game is for everyone, if you don’t like it fair enough and move on! But I will say it gets very addicting once you’ve learned the game and played through the first “season”
