Thanks to Humble Monthly I have over 400 games on my Steam account.
In just the last three weeks I’ve played No Man’s Sky, Worms WMD, Civ 6, Bravery and Greed, Darkest Dungeon, Warframe and just today LEGO 2K Drive.
And that’s not counting emulation.
If you’re complaining that some AAA games don’t work, that’s because AAA games have sucked for the past 5 or so years. Starfield, Jedi Survivor, Cyberpunk all still struggle to run nicely on even the best hardware out there. Not a problem with the Deck, but rather the state of the industry.
I’m curious about the emulation on Steam Deck. Which emulator run well enough to play daily? Can it run Switch emulator at 30fps, or specifically Mario Kart 8 Deluxe?
I use Yuzu through EmuDeck. Even with Nintendo having given the crunch on Yuzu it’s still my preferred emu and can run almost anything with little to ko flaws.
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Mariokart 8 Deluxe runs great, flawlessly I’d almost say! Online multiplayer works really well too, if you have friends that are also playing through Yuzu. However… Local multiplayer is hit or miss; there is a prevalent issue starting up a splitscreen match with the controller activation pop-up, as it tends to soft-lock the game.
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The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild runs great too, but with occasional framerate instability. However, I noticed framerate on the native Switch wasn’t perfectly stable either when I played my friend’s copy. You’ll certainly notice bad framerate when the game has to render rainy thunderstorms.
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Raymen Legends The Complete Edition is completely flawless!
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Mario Wonder struggles a lot with framedrops. Dunno what it is, but that game is seriously difficult to get a stable framerate on regardless of the Deck or a modestly powerful desktop, even after trying all sorts of settings.
Those are all the Switch games I’ve played, but I’m also playing, and have played other emulated games:
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PCSX2 for PlayStation 2 I don’t think you’re going to have any problems with. I’ve played through some of Rayman 2 and Spyro The Eternal Night and have had no issues.
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RPCS3 for Playstation 3 takes some finangling with the settings to get games to run decently, and you WILL still get imperfect framerates… Buuuuut… I’m currently playing the first Motorstorm and the Ratchet & Clank HD Trilogy and I really can’t complain. Despite the occasional slow-mo lag (especially in Ratchet & Clank for some reason) performance is great.
The two games I’m playing through RPCS3 work best by setting the resolution to 75% native and turning on 50% FSR in the emulator’s graphics settings. It looks better and runs better that way, as opposed to using the native resolution.
