Same. My Gamesir Cyclone 2 is so great. I don’t use the track pads at all on the Steam Deck. The 4 customisable back buttons would be useful, but not for £85. I have yet to figure out what good motion controls are in game with any controller.

But if anyone else is looking flto buy a controller this does look like a solid option.

Board games are more difficult. There’s a minimum requirement of at least one friend.

This is not related to the solution posted, but may be useful to someone:

My NAS has been amazing for this. This obviously needs additional hardware, but can be done by connecting a USB stick to your existing router. Works great as the middle man to move files to any device (PC, Steam Deck, handheld emulation console, etc). Also works great to auto sync the files with syncthing.

My opinion on that for myself is that it is better to watch a video guide on a boss to be able to enjoy an amazing game rather than abandon it completely.

The other thing to say is (for roguelites generally) attack power = defense. It’s usually a damage check. If you can’t output enough damage then you can’t really go on dodging endlessly in a major boss fight. The best defense is to be able to put out enough damage to end it (relatively) quickly.

Roguelites have all been great on the Deck. Brotato, Enter the Gungeon, Hades 2, etc etc.

Fragmented communities is such an annoying problem in the fediverse.

It will never be “end of life”. There are retro consoles that people are buying just for running SNES or GameBoy Advance games. Even those are perfectly functional for their purpose. Even if the Steam Deck got hard locked to only run games released up till 2025, it will still have enduring value. EoL can mean the battery is too degraded, but the battery is replaceable.

A “soft EoL” will realistically come when much much faster hardware is cheaper, the Steam Deck is out of production and it starts struggling to play even indie games. At this point, buying a secondhand Deck for £100 is still going to be a bargain and get recommended for emulators, retro gamers and patient gamers.

Depends on what your usecase is.

My brother wants to play demanding AAA games on a big screen. He doesn’t see the point of a Steam Deck and is about to sell his.

I play indie games and emulated retro games. The Steam Deck is perfect for me to play. I can sit with my kids when they play in the back yard. The hardware isn’t going to go out of date for me for a very long time.

I do this with movies in IMDB. Bookmark movies I’m meaning to watch. Rate the movies I have watched. You need to find a website or ap that let’s you track games in this way. I can see there’s IGDB.com, but have never tried it. This game tracking will happen on your phone and be seperate from your collection, so it doesn’t matter which market or platform you use.

Game suggestions are more difficult. Sites tend to suggest sponsored content and AAA expensive suggestions. The better way to find new content is from user forums or trusted reviewers/publications.

I’m not in a position to deep-dive into whether this specific story is true or not, but here is some information that I think is important for readers to know:

If you’re not from the UK then you might not know about Daily Mail news. This is a far right “news source” that has very poor journalistic integrity and often makes shit up. They have a very strong “anti-foreigner” agenda and heavily embellish or make up stuff to stoke up sentiment about “backward savages foreigners”. They are not a reliable news source at all. Wikipedia does not accept Daily Mail as a source.

Personally: if I see a Daily Mail source, I wouldn’t bother reading the story at all as the “news” will be of less value than used toilet paper. These turds thrive on writing rage-bait which then circulates on social media (this story currently has a higher upvote score than any BBC, Guardian, etc sourced news recently posted to this community).

Any idea of this guy made any significant impact when he installed Linux recently?

Here’s the current list I have that I’ve played/playing/plan to play through.

3DS: New Super Mario Bros 2, Kirby Planet Robobot, Super Mario 3D Land.

Gamecube: Legend of Zelda, The - The Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine

GBA: Advance Wars (1+2), Super Mario Advance 4, Kirby - Nightmare in Dream Land

Mega Drive: Earthworm Jim (1+2), Streets of Rage 2, Lost Vikings, Micro Machines 2, Sonic and knuckles, Jungle Strike

N64: Golden Eye 007, Super Mario 64

PS1: Castlevania - Symphony of the Night, Grand Theft Auto 2, Legacy of Kain - Soul Reaver, Final Fantasy 7+8+9

PS2: Crazy Taxi, GranTurismo 4, Metal Gear Solid 2+3, Okami, Ratchet & Clank - Up Your Arsenal (all the Ratchet and Clank games actually), Shadow of the Colossus, Tony Hawks Underground 2, Sly Cooper, Jak and Daxter

PS3: Everybodys Golf 6, Ratchet & Clank Future - A Crack in Time

PSP: Rock Band Unplugged, Blast Off, Disgaea - Afternoon Of Darkness, Final Fantasy Tactics - The War of the Lions, Grand Theft Auto - Chinatown Wars, Half-Minute Hero, Hotshots Tennis, LittleBigPlanet, Lumines 2, Mega Man - Powered Up, Mercury Meltdown, Patapon, PixelJunk Monsters - Deluxe, Puzzle Quest - Challenge of the Warlords, Space Invaders Extreme, Wipeout (Pulse+Pure), Daxter

SNES: Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World, Tetris Attack.

PS Vita: Gravity Rush, Wipeout 2048, Geometry Wars 3

Wii: Bully, Cave Story, Donky Kong Country Returns, Geometry Wars Galaxies, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Rhythm Heaven Fever, Super Mario Galaxy (1+2), Super Paper Mario, Tetris Party Deluxe, Zack and Wiki

Arguably one of the best genres that retro games excelled at were longdrawn RPGs and I haven’t even started with those…if that’s your thing then I’ve missed off that entire genre here.

There’s a world of options out there and you need to be more specific with what sorts of games you enjoy. I’ve been emulating on my Switch for a while, but also recently bought a dedicated retro emulation console so I have quite a few recommendations.

For games that are literally still up to modern standards, you can go back to Wii, 3DS, PS Vita, PS3 and beyond and you’ve basically got games that will still hold up just fine.

For older games: PSP, PS2, SNES and GBA are gold mines of content.

I’ve found it difficult to get into PS1, N64 and Dreamcast gaming. This was a time when 3D graphics were just starting to be widely used and are so very dated. It’s difficult to look past the terrible graphics without nostalgia goggles. I’ve had more success in going back to SNES and Mega Drive games… At least they have great pixel graphics with suitable games (side scrollers, platformers, etc).

For specific games, I find it best to go to metacritic and look at their list of all time best games, and limit by console and then work through the best every reviews. This does miss a lot of games though and if you say what sort of games you like then people can make recommendations. There are tons of hidden gems and niches… Rhythm games, block drop, quirky puzzle games, etc. E.g.:

Everybody’s Golf 6 (PS3) - excellent arcadey golf game

Mercury Meltdown (PSP) - puzzle game about manipulating mercury blobs. Great to play entirely with the Steam Deck gyroscope.

GTA China Town wars (PSP) - top down GTA game, modernised beyond the GTA2 controls

Rhythm Heaven Fever (Wii) - excellent rhythm games

Super Mario 3D land (3DS) - 2.5 D Mario. Really solid platformer.

Wipeout 2048 (PS Vita) - solid combat racer

Micro machines 2 (Mega Drive) - quirky top down racer. Excellent for multiplayer.

Crazy Taxi (PS2) - taxi driving, really crazy though

America: I can’t believe you would say something so fucking stupid.