Pictures of the Steam Deck couldn’t prepare me for seeing it in person. After working on the Steam Deck in secret for years, Valve invited us to its offices to be among the first to test out the handheld gaming PC, before game developers have even gotten their hands on it. And wow, is it big. This is the full tower PC case of videogame handhelds.
Once I actually picked up the Steam Deck, though, the size didn’t seem to matter much. At 1.47 pounds it isn’t too heavy to hold comfortably. It’s wide, but the inputs are close enough to reach naturally. The button arrangement may look a little odd, but it fits how you grip the device. The Stream Deck is as big as it needed to be to pack in all the features Valve thought it should contain (which is basically everything, minus the CD drive).
Somehow it all fits in an 11.7-inch wide tablet. Spending a couple of hours with the Stream Deck was convincing: it’s not the first Frankensteined mash-up of PC and Game Boy, but it’s easily the most polished and premium I’ve seen.
With Steam Machines, Valve tried and failed to sell PC gaming in the living room. But PC gaming anywhere? That’s a harder pitch to ignore. And once I started using it, I could almost forget that the games I was playing were never designed for a portable machine.
BUTTONED UP
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Esta historia es de la edición November 2021 de PC Gamer.
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BITING BACK
The tooth is out there in adventure TEETH OF GLASS
SMOKE ALARM
THE INVISIBLE SMOKE FACTORY is back in a Flash
MECH ME OVER
Move over Mario, here's mech-based platforming in ARMORED SHELL NIGHTJAR
"I like Pillars of Eternity better than Baldur's Gate III"
PILLARS OF ETERNITY deserves a bigger space in the CRPG pantheon
"A harrowing dark fantasy about hapless, bright-eyed children"
Spelunking into hell with MADE IN ABYSS: BINARY STAR FALLING INTO DARKNESS
THE IMMORTAL LOCK
A massive, meaty game in a single horrific Quake map.
NEW MANOEUVRES
Building a dedicated sim racing space in an average family house
OVERWATCH 2
Save me space girl.
REET GOOD TIME
THANK GOODNESS YOU'RE HERE is a riotous recreation of Yorkshire
THE PLUCKY SQUIRE
How many games let you make friends with a MtG card?