After enjoying that feature in Horizon Forbidden West on PlayStation 5, I was excited to see how the Steam Deck's motion-sensing capabilities measured up in Zero Dawn. I haven't had much luck using gyro controls specifically so far, however. It's lightweight and comfortable to hold in your hands at one and a half pounds. There's an entire settings page where you can reassign each button, trigger, thumbstick, and gyroscopic (motion-sensing) control to whatever button press or controller action you want to be reflected in-game. It's easy enough to turn those buttons off and, in fact, control flexibility is a particular strength of the Steam Deck and its custom OS. That said, I'm also not generally a fan of controllers with rear-mounted "paddle" buttons, so your mileage may vary. They nestle into the natural resting points for your fingers on each hand grip, and I regularly find myself hitting those buttons by accident, particularly when a game gets tense. The only part of the control scheme that still doesn't feel right to me are the four buttons on the back of the Steam Deck. I sometimes struggled with working the D-pad into my gaming, but it felt more like new muscle memory training than an actual design flaw. So while it does look at a glance like everything's unceremoniously crammed together, in actual practice the placement is ideal given the Steam Deck's overall size. ![]() The top-mounted shoulder and trigger buttons on each side are also set close to the clustered buttons and sticks. The thumbsticks are lined up horizontally just like on a PlayStation controller, with the directional pad and face buttons positioned next to each stick - left and right sides, respectively - on the outer edge of the hardware. ![]() The Steam Deck's buttons and sticks look more cramped than they actually feel in practice. If you like rear-mounted buttons, the Steam Deck's got 'em! Credit: Dustin Drankoski / MashableĬontrol placement counts for a lot here. Location never mattered - the Steam Deck was always comfy to hold, even during multi-hour sessions. During the three-week review period, I played while holding the Steam Deck in a variety of positions: Over my head in bed out in front of me while lying on my stomach reclining on a couch sitting in a car's passenger seat at my desk and, of course, on the toilet. It's lightweight and comfortable to hold in your hands, though, at roughly one and a half pounds. Hold a Steam Deck up to Nintendo's hardware, and you'll also see that Valve's machine is a couple inches longer (9.5 inches vs. There are also two square touchpads with rounded edges, each situated just below the left and right thumbsticks. It's two inches thick, which is a good bit more than the half-inch OLED Switch but not disruptively so. You've got a 7-inch touchscreen sporting a sharp-for-its-size 1200x800 resolution stuffed between two banks of gamepad controls, as if someone cut a PlayStation controller in two and then taped each half to the sides of a landscape-oriented iPad Mini. Form, not functionĪt a glance, the Steam Deck doesn't look all that different from the Switch. ![]() There's lots to be said about what's more promise than reality at this point, but it's also true that this thing lets you play stuff like Forza Horizon 5 and Elden Ring anywhere you go. ![]() It's important to take a holistic view of the Steam Deck if you're planning to pick one up ( when (Opens in a new tab) you can pick one up (Opens in a new tab), of course). But it's nonetheless correctly pitched as a best-in-class compromise between performance and affordability. The up-front menus and features need work and the battery life makes me feel sad things. Valve Corporation has a fix for that in the form of the Steam Deck (starting at $399), though it isn't exactly its ideal self as it launches. Switch-like gaming PCs, such as the GPD Win 3 (Opens in a new tab) or Aya Neo Pro (Opens in a new tab), can handle a wider array of blockbuster games than Nintendo's more modest hardware specs, but you're spending $1,000 minimum to get either one. Nintendo's own Switch console has been a level-up moment for mobile gaming, but its brand-burnishing hits like Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild don't go toe-to-technical-toe with the visual splendor (Opens in a new tab) of something like Sony's Horizon Zero Dawn. High-end PC gaming, but make it portable? That's been the dream since I haunted my local bodega for the latest Nintendo Power drop. Playing video games on a Steam Deck feels strangely illicit, like you're sneaking a peek at a future of gaming that hasn't really arrived yet.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |