On the day Hollow Knight: Silksong launched, I had everything organized. Planning to relive cozy memories of playing Hollow Knight in winter 2018 – all while the weather turns chill in the present – I installed Silksong on my PC, dimmed the lights, and locked in. For the first two hours, it was like travelling back in time – a recaptured atmosphere so enthralling, I half expected to blink and find myself in my old home.
The illusion was broken by a cup of tea. During a much-needed break between Bell Beast battles, as the kettle boiled, I installed Silksong on my Steam Deck out of curiosity. I bought the handheld back in July, but have mostly used it to replay familiar games (honorary shoutouts to Hotline Miami, Fallout: New Vegas, and Final Fantasy 12). For Silksong, I wanted to see how a new game ran – and more importantly, whether I could get the same feeling of absorption from a smaller screen.
Fast forward to today, and I've since spent another 11 hours on Silksong. Of those hours, every single second has been on the Steam Deck, and I'm yet to reopen it on my PC since stepping away for a cuppa. It's made me realize just how much the handheld has changed my gaming habits over the last two months – and looking ahead, how hard it may be to go back.
On the move
Why have I stuck with Silksong on the Steam Deck? Part of it is the OLED screen, which makes Pharloom look crisper and more vivid than my PC's non-OLED monitor can. But that's the boring answer. The real magnetism is that platforming feels good when you're holding it in your hands. Perhaps it's a lifetime of being unable to stop tilting the controller when I make a turn in racing games, but there's something about the physicality – of piloting Hornet and letting her run like a raindrop along the small pane of glass – that connects with me at a deeper level.
Part of me wonders if that's why I seem to be enjoying Silksong's runbacks a little more than most. I've already touched on how journeying between boss fights helps to delay the gratification of winning, but there's another side to it: Hornet is very fun to control. Using sprint to breeze through long stretches of a well-trodden route, effortlessly clearing pogo jumps because I get it now, aerial-attacking enemies for boosts – inject this flow state straight into my veins, let me enter it while walking the dog. It's the closest thing I've played to Counter-Strike's modded Surf maps, in which the goal is similarly to keep that momentum up (and make it look effortless) for as long as possible.
An added benefit is that these moments offer quiet breathers – a chance to hone your precision back in while your adrenalin-muddled brain shakes off your last attempt at Widow – though when I've been lying in bed playing, there's always a temptation to just… keep running. It's no surprise that 2D platformers feel good on handheld consoles – Nintendo knows that better than anyone – but given so many of the best Switch games I've played have been 3D Zelda games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it's a charm I'd forgotten.
Still, PC has been my optimal way of playing games since building my once-powerful computer in 2016. Only over the last year or two, as my whirring Ship of Theseus has begun to struggle with newer releases, have I leaned on the PS5 (and appreciated how easy console gaming is). Either way, the importance has always been on making it a big experience – loud audio, big screen, immersive purely because there's no room left for my senses to process anything else.
The Steam Deck is antithetical to that, which is why I opted to first play Silksong on my PC. But, after switching over to Steam Deck for all of the reasons above, it's made me realize that I no longer approach new games with the same need for spectacle. I'm just as happy curling up on the sofa with my Steam Deck and dog, or sprawled on the bed listening to a late summer shower. Taking the time to get comfortable before playing a game – setting aside snacks, getting the lights just right – still feels special, the atmosphere is still there, it's just different. (And on a petty note, being able to simply set my Steam Deck down and step away for five minutes when Sister Splinter kicks my ass for the hundredth time has likely avoided several lifetimes of stress).
Despite its charm and wealth of brilliant exclusives, the Switch never quite won me over on handheld gaming. Now, I'll seize opportunities to do so at any chance: a cursory glance at Steam tells me the only non-work games I've played on my PC since July have been Baldur's Gate 3 and Risk of Rain 2, and those are only because I'm playing with pals on Discord. That sounds dramatic, but it's been a natural shift – Silksong being the first time in two months I've noticed it happening is proof of that – and as the autumn nights draw in, I suspect I'll only fall harder for the Steam Deck's 'play me while bundled under an alarming amount of blankets' charm.
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