Hey everyone, had my Deck for about 2 weeks now and it’s become my main gaming device mainly due to the convenience. I’ve seen a lot of posts from people that just recently got a SD asking for game recommendations so I figured I’d share what I’ve found works great on the Deck and what doesn’t. Hopefully this helps some newcomers when they’re looking for games to grab. If anyone has any recommendations that aren’t the ‘standard’ games add em in the comments, along with games to avoid!
The Good:
Devil May Cry 5 - almost feels like it was made for the Deck, rock solid 60fps on high settings and has been a blast so far
Grounded - a game I’ve never played before until now, pretty solid 60fps experience on medium settings but it’s enjoyable on medium settings due to the art style, feels nice on the SD
Darkest Dungeon 1&2, Dave the Diver, Cult of the Lamb, Binding of Isaac, all the standard indie games basically - all feel made for this device, great experiences across all of these
Dredge - fun little game with an interesting setting and art style, almost rock solid 60fps on high settings, minor stutters here and there
En Garde - mix of medium to high settings, I set this one to 40hz and it’s been very enjoyable but haven’t sunk a lot of time into it yet. Fun physics
Fallout 4 - surprisingly solid 60fps on high settings except for shadows, crazy this runs so well on a handheld
RDR2 - looks fantastic, I lock it to 30fps and it’s pretty solid, again crazy that it runs so well handheld
Metro Exodus - averaging 55-60 fps on high settings, looks outstanding and plays great
Yakuza Like A Dragon - the game I’ve put the most time into on the Deck, I’ve locked it to 30fps and have a mix of medium to high settings. Was worth sacrificing frames to me in a turn based game to make it look better. Absolutely phenomenal experience on the deck and can’t wait to put more time into it
BG3 - we all have seen the performance on the Deck, not the greatest but still runs well enough to be able to enjoy the hell out of it. Phenomenal game
System Shock Remake - locked this to 45 with high settings, looks and feels mostly great but I’m struggling to get the sensitivity right on the sticks
MGS V - runs at a solid 60fps on high settings, highly recommend for stealth sandbox game
Kingdom Come: Deliverance - solid 60 on high settings, looks nice but don’t have the patience currently for this one, I’ll come back to it sometime
The Bad: Euro Truck Sim 2 - maybe it’s me still trying to learn the deck but this was a terrible experience, tried messing with community control layouts and ended up stuck in menus with the game not registering inputs 3 times before giving up and uninstalling
Bioshock 1,2 & Infinite - could not get these to run well unfortunately . They’d be 60fps and then they would all stutter hard for a good 6-7 seconds and this happened every 15-20 seconds
Mass Effect LE - same as Bioshock, hard stuttering in ME1, made it very unenjoyable for me, uninstalled
Dirt Rally 2.0 - mix of low to medium settings, in my opinion it just looks awful and not only that it stuttered even worse than Bioshock or ME, was unplayable for me
Wild. All the Bioshocks for me were plug and play. I pressed play and changed absolutely nothing and they were all smooth sailing 60 fps all game. Bioshock Infinite got hot but still no frame rate problems. This was some time last year so maybe something changed.
Yeah it’s unfortunate because Bioshock is one of my favorite series and I always play thru them all once a year, not sure what the deal was but I’m definitely going to try to get them running right now
Yakuza Like a dragon is such a good game on deck. I’ve got mine set to 40fps and it stays there for the most part unless it’s super crowded or a very flashy animation then it Dips to 35 for a second or 2.