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As I hold a brand-new Steam Deck in my hands, it occurs to me that logic may not be my strong suit. For the last three years I've talked myself out of buying the handheld, and when the Nintendo Switch 2 launched in June, I talked myself out of that. Both arguments were largely the same: "Will I use it? Won't I just play the same games I already have?"
Yet here I am, lying in bed with a Steam Deck, playing Hotline Miami 2 for the umpteenth time. Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim are waiting their turn, as is Persona 4 Golden. The only relatively new game I have installed is Civilization 7, but that scarcely counts because I've already sunk 50-odd hours into it on PC this year. So yes, I will be playing the same games I already have – but while that prospect was enough to kill my Switch 2 dreams, it makes the Steam Deck more exciting than ever.
Holding onto a hero
Steam Deck OLED review: “Valve’s new handheld has reclaimed my heart”
Back in May, I wrote about how the Switch 2 needs to have more big-hitters for me to consider buying in. If Donkey Kong Bananza was a launch title, perhaps we'd be having a different conversation. But right now, the Switch 2 doesn't offer me a fundamentally different experience to the original Switch – making The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom look better would be nice, but not nice enough to justify buying a whole new console.
Meanwhile, the Steam Deck offers a way to cut through the faff of PC gaming. While sitting at my desktop can be too much effort, the Steam Deck in Big Picture mode cuts through the hassle. It is, for lack of a better phrase, a slumpy handheld – one that you can pick up and play while sprawled halfway down your chair, sofa, or floor – and while I'd usually turn to my PS5 for Console On Brain Off Time (patent pending), the Steam Deck brings my PC library into that space.
There are some other perks to having that catalog on the go. Again: I can play Hotline Miami 2 in bed. Some games actually look better on the smaller, crisper OLED screen – I don't know much about hardware, but if anyone can explain to me why Fallout: New Vegas looks vastly better than it does on my PC, I'll be eternally grateful. Other games just feel right on a handheld – Cult of the Lamb and The Binding of Isaac are leading the pack in that regard, along with Hotline Miami 2 which I am playing in bed. Were humans meant to fly this close to the sun?
When I'm not gaming, I'm doing this weird thing where I sit and browse games I could be playing. "Wow," I say for the millionth time, "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle runs on this thing?" I'm yet to install Indy, to clarify, nor the majority of games I've made similar comments about. But hey, it's neat to know I could! In a similar vein, I find myself browsing on Desktop Mode (see: playing with the mouse and scroll pads) and marveling at how slick the whole thing is.
If this all sounds very silly, that's because it absolutely is. But I can't remember the last time I was so enamored with a gadget, least of all one that basically does the same things as my PC. For me – purely me – I just wouldn't get that kid-at-Christmas feeling from a Switch 2. I've never encountered any of the performance issues many people have reported from the first Switch, so I can't say I'd get much from playing them on a shinier console. I've heard the Switch 2 upgrades are phenomenal, so I'm certainly not trying to say buying in is a bad idea – only that I'm not a big enough Nintendo-head to pull it off.
Whichever console you're sinking time into, we're seeing the best gaming handhelds take off. I never expected to see the day where Cyberpunk 2077 ran on a Nintendo console, and until a few years ago the thought of a handheld gaming PC felt like a sci-fi pipe dream. Even Microsoft is getting involved with the ROG Xbox Ally X, which sounds powerful enough to win over hearts and minds – if not bank accounts, given the unconfirmed yet scary-looking price leaks that surfaced earlier in the month. Who knows what the future holds? But sometimes, while beaming top-down ultraviolence into my eyeballs from the comfort of bed, I wonder if it's already arrived.
Join me in working through the best Steam Deck games our team has picked up
