
It's easy enough to turn those buttons off and, in fact, control flexibility is a particular strength of the Steam Deck and its custom OS. That said, I'm also not generally a fan of controllers with rear-mounted "paddle" buttons, so your mileage may vary. They nestle into the natural resting points for your fingers on each hand grip, and I regularly find myself hitting those buttons by accident, particularly when a game gets tense. The only part of the control scheme that still doesn't feel right to me are the four buttons on the back of the Steam Deck. I sometimes struggled with working the D-pad into my gaming, but it felt more like new muscle memory training than an actual design flaw. So while it does look at a glance like everything's unceremoniously crammed together, in actual practice the placement is ideal given the Steam Deck's overall size. The top-mounted shoulder and trigger buttons on each side are also set close to the clustered buttons and sticks. The thumbsticks are lined up horizontally just like on a PlayStation controller, with the directional pad and face buttons positioned next to each stick - left and right sides, respectively - on the outer edge of the hardware. The Steam Deck's buttons and sticks look more cramped than they actually feel in practice. If you like rear-mounted buttons, the Steam Deck's got 'em! Credit: Dustin Drankoski / MashableĬontrol placement counts for a lot here. Location never mattered - the Steam Deck was always comfy to hold, even during multi-hour sessions. During the three-week review period, I played while holding the Steam Deck in a variety of positions: Over my head in bed out in front of me while lying on my stomach reclining on a couch sitting in a car's passenger seat at my desk and, of course, on the toilet. It's lightweight and comfortable to hold in your hands, though, at roughly one and a half pounds. Hold a Steam Deck up to Nintendo's hardware, and you'll also see that Valve's machine is a couple inches longer (9.5 inches vs.

There are also two square touchpads with rounded edges, each situated just below the left and right thumbsticks. It's two inches thick, which is a good bit more than the half-inch OLED Switch but not disruptively so. You've got a 7-inch touchscreen sporting a sharp-for-its-size 1200x800 resolution stuffed between two banks of gamepad controls, as if someone cut a PlayStation controller in two and then taped each half to the sides of a landscape-oriented iPad Mini. Form, not functionĪt a glance, the Steam Deck doesn't look all that different from the Switch. There's lots to be said about what's more promise than reality at this point, but it's also true that this thing lets you play stuff like Forza Horizon 5 and Elden Ring anywhere you go. It's important to take a holistic view of the Steam Deck if you're planning to pick one up ( when you can pick one up, of course).

But it's nonetheless correctly pitched as a best-in-class compromise between performance and affordability. The up-front menus and features need work and the battery life makes me feel sad things. Valve Corporation has a fix for that in the form of the Steam Deck (starting at $399), though it isn't exactly its ideal self as it launches. Switch-like gaming PCs, such as the GPD Win 3 or Aya Neo Pro, can handle a wider array of blockbuster games than Nintendo's more modest hardware specs, but you're spending $1,000 minimum to get either one.

Nintendo's own Switch console has been a level-up moment for mobile gaming, but its brand-burnishing hits like Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild don't go toe-to-technical-toe with the visual splendor of something like Sony's Horizon Zero Dawn.
#Shadow warrior 3 screen surround Pc
High-end PC gaming, but make it portable? That's been the dream since I haunted my local bodega for the latest Nintendo Power drop. Playing video games on a Steam Deck feels strangely illicit, like you're sneaking a peek at a future of gaming that hasn't really arrived yet.
