‘Starfield’ Steam Deck and Xbox Series X Review (in Progress) – The Final Frontier – TouchArcade
toucharcade.com
One of the advantages of not paying much attention to pre-release media, has been discovering many things directly in-game. Starfield is a huge game, and Bethesda Game Studios' most ambitious and polished one yet, but it still feels familiar in many ways.

“After dozens of hours on just Steam Deck, Starfield feels good in some parts, but really struggles in the bigger cities. Turning everything to low and enabling FSR2 is basically the only way to play it right now on Valve’s handheld, and even that drops to 20fps often in the first major city (New Atlantis). The game itself can look very good on the device screen in many parts, but it is very CPU-heavy right now. This has been tested after the day one patch as well.”

  • MJBrune@beehaw.orgEnglish
    01·
    1 year ago

    We had this conversation over on Beehaw chat just yesterday. I absolutely think it’s okay for Valve to say “No, your has to meet performance standards to become verified.” Personally, I feel like Verified should guarantee 60 FPS, with dips in places. Playable should be a stable 30 FPS. That said they have zero performance requirements right now so running 10 FPS could potentially be verified status.

    Right now though, Valve is verifying everything they can to say “see we have high-end releases on the steam deck.” and in the end, it’s going to hurt them.

    • TheHalc@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      1 year ago

      While I appreciate a 60fps experience as much as the next gamer, this game targets 30fps on consoles. A 60 fps guarantee for Verified status is totally unrealistic.

      I agree that there needs to be some sort of performance standards, but not everything has to run at 60 fps to give an absolutely fantastic experience. 30fps (as long as it’s a solid 30 fps) can do that too.

      • MJBrune@beehaw.orgEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        It’s also okay for Valve to accept that some of these new releases aren’t going to run well on the steam deck. I don’t think they are willing to take that answer though. Frankly, in my mind, Starfield should never be verified on steam deck. It’s not playable at 20 FPS.

    • PrinzKasper@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      I think they should add some eplanation to each “Verified” status game, giving some insight as to what performance to expect. Games that run at a stable 60fps deserve to be separated from games that only just run at 30. At least make separate “Verified (60fps)” and “Verified (30fps)” tags.

      • MJBrune@beehaw.orgEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        I could see that being better than Verified/Playable. At the end of the day though, seeing these games under 30 FPS getting verified is a shocker.