Orginal Oblivion with mods. I have never played it. I just got the game installed yesterday, and set up in Vortex. Now I have to go grab all the mods, which is very manual. Vortex mod installation links on the Nexus don’t work on the deck. There might be a way to fix that because the mod suggestion list I’m looking at said there’s a way to make links work with Mod Manager 2 on the Deck.
I’m following a curated list of mods that will be a “vanilla+” experience. Not too crazy or anything. It’s called “A Pocket Full of Cheese Wheels” on the Nexus. It comes with a one-click installer shell script that installs Mod Manager 2 and a bunch of other stuff on the Deck but I’m just going to do it manually. The script is old and no longer maintained.
I modded Fallout 3 with Vortex on my Deck, and it was pretty easy when the game is installed on the SD card. I feel like that was key, but I don’t remember exactly why. You also have to symlink the “My Games” folder from the Fallout 3 (or Oblivion) Proton prefix into the Vortex Proton Prefix. That’s so Vortex can manage the INI files and such. Plus you set the SD card as the D: drive in the Vortex Proton prefix so it can see the game’s folder, too. In fact, I think that’s was done automatically done by Steam. Maybe that was why I installed the game on the SD card. But it’s not like you couldn’t make your own drive mapping. It’s a simple symlink named like “d:” or “e:” in the “dos_devices” folder. I don’t see why that couldn’t point to the NVMe drive, but I feel like people online said that wouldn’t work. Vortex is also installed on the SD card.
Maybe some day I’ll document all of this.
Scritchy Scratchy demo
Marvel Heroes Omega via the Project TAHITI private server. It has a lot of frame drops despite being on the lowest settings, but it’s playable. I’m surprised a game from 2018 runs this rough on the Deck.
You might try pinning gpu speed or setting a fixed cpu speed (through powertools if installed). It can fix some games that have drops when they shouldn’t, at the cost of slightly worse battery life.
Slay the spire and Titanfall 2
The Binding of Isaac Rebirth
Final Fantasy 7 (the original). With so many singing it’s praises, I figured I should try and finish it once. I just got out of the desert prison. I have to say, so far I don’t really get the hype.
- Sektori (steam)
- Tomb Raider GOTY (GOG)
- Stardew Valley (GOG)
- F-Zero GX on the Dolphin emulator
I’ve discovered that I’m tired and bored of the new AAA titles, so I’ve been playing the old stuff more and more.
The old games also conveniently run very well on the Steam Deck. It is perfect for games roughly pre-2019.
Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection. Missed the series when it was on the (3)DS, and $40 is a good price for the collection so I scooped it up when it came out last week.
Gran Turismo emulated.
Monster Train 2. I have 1 more challenge run left before reaching 100% completion of those. Then I might finally pick up the DLC and try to finish 100% of clan combos at max crucible level.
Only then will I allow myself to pick up Slay the Spire 2. I try to avoid early access games, but will make an exception here.
In MT1 last month, I beat 100% class combos at C20. The challenges were less fun because they required you to play at C20, and I felt like that difficulty permanently limited what strategies were viable. Challenges in 2 are zanier and most are at a lower difficulty, so it’s altogether more fun.
I finally finished Spider-Man: Miles Morales and just started Spider-Man 2. Man, that game runs like ass on the Deck while I have to make it look worse than the previous two.
And it actually feels like what I’m experiencing are bugs and not necessarily the Steam Deck’s fault. Stuff like models popping in without animations. I remember seeing pictures of that when it was new. Strange that they didn’t manage to fix it. Couldn’t they just have stayed on the old engine? It worked perfectly fine!
Played a whole bunch of No Way Home in the last week or so. A charming little shooter I had to buy after playing the demo on the last Next Fest. Now playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shattered Fate - a button bashing rougelite with cool artwork and combat that I’m enjoying despite being far too old to be a Ninja Turtles fan.
I just got Super Meatboy 3D after enjoying the demo as well, which will be my next thumb-buster.
Just finished control, starting Firewatch next. Control played very well, at some point it started crashing within a few minutes of playing, I made whatever change was on protondb and it worked fine after that.
Edit: it was -dx11
for some reason Hogwarts Legacy just grabbed me and won’t let go. it’s been excellent.
also been playing quite a bit of modded minecraft and loving that as well!
Artisan of Glimmith, and Under The Island. I always love me a Zeldou, but now I’m at a cooking-minigame boss and siiigh I don’t wanna do that I wanna stab things.
