Great write up as usual! I really enjoy reading through these.

I don’t remember having any issues with the anchor boss in Control, and I don’t see any mentions of it on ProtonDB either. Is it just an issue for the non-steam versions of the game, or did I just get lucky?

You could do remote installs with games before, but not demos as far as I know.

Great writeup like usual, I really enjoy reading through these.

It does have PVP, and is generally online only.

They also make their money through in-game-purchases, so they want anti-cheat to protect people from unlocking that stuff for free.

This review by steamdeckHQ has a full section on Deck performance.

TL;DR (AI summary):

Surprisingly playable on the Steam Deck at a mostly stable 30 FPS. However, this comes with significant visual compromises, including dynamic resolution leading to pixelation and blurriness, noticeable ghosting, frequent model pop-ins, and framerate drops in towns. The game also suffers from high battery drain and occasional model glitches. While a significantly better experience is expected on more powerful hardware, the game is still enjoyable on the Steam Deck, albeit with these limitations.

If it’s the bug I’m thinking of, you can get around it by disabling hardware acceleration for web views in the desktop client.

Still annoying though.

I would recommend grabbing this bundle: https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/safe-in-our-world-charity-bundle-2025 It’s got a kinda weird mix of games, but a lot of the games are great and several are fantastic for what you’re asking. Of particular note:

Edit: unfortunately that bundle is out of stock, and I just realized it. Sorry. My recommendation for the following games is still valid though:

• Little Kitty Big City - play as a cat doing cat things and exploring a japanese city. Very chill, fun animal characters, real fun experience.
• Thank Goodness You’re Here - very well animated adventures in a british town. Less of a game and more of an experience, but very enjoyable.

Assuming it’s the same as It Takes Two, yes, coop only.

You only need one copy for two people though. There’s a free friend pass to let someone else play with you online, or you can play split screen with someone local.

Yeah I agree. Far too many games have anti-cheat when it’s not really needed.

I’m also of the belief that anti-cheat should always be optional, letting people play with friends with it disabled.

I’ve never heard of GuardIT anticheat before, no idea if it’s linux compatible or not.

Others have already answered most of this, but I’ll add my piece:

Gnome on SteamOS

It’s possible, but every steamOS update will wipe it. There are scripts out there to automate reinstalling gnome after every system update. Still, Bazzite would be the easier long term option. I personally prefer Gnome as well, but I’ve actually been fine with KDE on my deck. I’m not frequently docking my deck and using it as a PC though.

Easy deck upgrades

You can very easily replace the SSD, backplate, thumbsticks, fans (some of the LCD models have a whiny fan) and rear buttons. Replacing the front buttons takes more disassembly but isn’t too bad afaik. Replacing the front plate or the screen requires separating the screen from the frontplate with heat, which is where a lot of people become uncomfortable.

Many replacements and alternative parts exist. You can get transparent or multicolor shells, shells that claim to offer better cooling (which I’m skeptical of tbh), hall effect joysticks, extra clicky button assemblies, alternative back button designs, buttons with different materials and textures, and higher resolution or OLED screen upgrades for the LCD models.

Other stuff

If you primarily play on PS5, be sure to check out Chiaki4Deck as it will let you stream your PS5 to your deck. If you get the OLED model it will even support the PS5’s HDR, which is a benefit you don’t get with the official PS Portal device.

Valve is private. That fact alone is neither inherently good, nor bad.

I’m leaning towards being a public company is inherently bad, so being a private company is preferable as the primary “not bad” option.

My main experiences with public companies lately is that they prioritize quarterly and yearly profits over long term health of the company and a good relationship with their customers. I don’t think that approach will be healthy for the company long term, and hurts consumers short term.

Privately owned companies can be just as shitty as publicly owned companies, but they’re not required to put short term shareholder profits first. The well run ones (especially family run ones) are more likely to prioritize building a good reputation and consumer loyalty, which is how you get companies that don’t suck to interact with.

It’s specifically for installing windows games from Epic, GoG, and Amazon. You can sync your libraries from those platforms and manage all your games you own there.

I’m not sure how well it would work for installing windows games that aren’t from one of those stores.

Heroic is probably the most full featured way to install games from those platforms, but you can also use other launchers like junk store (which is a Decky plugin for installing Epic games directly inside of game mode), non-steam launchers, and more.

Ars Technica is a pretty well respected tech news site, which is basically the only reason I considered sharing this to begin with. They cite that we know a new Half Life game is in development, and the critical role that half life played in the foundation of steam as a game platform in general.

Overall it’s a much better article than the title would otherwise suggest.

I think it would be cool as a freebie to steamOS users. Would encourage people to try out installing steamOS to get the game for free.

Could either be that they just need to try it once to claim the game, or the game is free to play as long as they stay on Linux/steamOS to encourage them to use it long enough to finish the game.

AI upscaling is cool when it lets older and weaker hardware play modern games, but I don’t like the wave of modern poorly optimized games that use it as a crutch to be playable at all.

It’s mostly UE5 games, but now we also have RE engine performing terribly on MH Wilds. There’s also games like Indiana Jones that now have mandatory ray tracing for all the lighting.

What mods are you using?

Some games when installed with heroic will need additional windows components installed before they work. When you select a game in heroic, it has an option to use winetricks to install missing components, but the trick is figuring out what it is you need to install. Unfortunately I don’t have a perfect method for this, checking protonDB and searching google are the best ways I know of to identify what missing package is needed.

Recently played through Little Kitty Big City and Thank Goodness You’re Here from a recent fanatical bundle, and both were a joy to play.

Currently I’m starting to play through Psychonauts 2. It’s been a long time since I played the first one. I love some of the surreal level design, but some other parts of the design feel dated. I think playing 3D platformers like Mario Odyssey have set a really high bar for the genre, and Psychonauts 2’s gameplay feels a bit dated at times.

It Takes Two was definitely worth it, so I’m hoping this game will be too.