Steam Deck Related News

5 followers

0 articles/week

Stay ahead with the latest news and updates about the Steam Deck. We bring you all the information you need about this new handheld gaming device.

Best Consoles for JRPGs Right Now There are lots of JRPGs coming out constantly from Atlus, Square Enix, and other Japanese publishers but only a few consoles and platforms are the best for them. Whether you are trying to play previously released titles like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth or check out upcoming games like Metaphor Re:Fantazio , these are the best consoles for JRPGs today. Image via Square Enix Best Consoles for JRPGs Today: PS5 If I had to pick an overall best console today for JRPGs, it would have to be the PlayStation 5 and its more powerful sibling, the PS5 Pro . There is the obvious point in how it is much more powerful than the second console for JRPGs, but also its library as well. The PS5 has the most possible JRPGs since exclusives like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth , Final Fantasy XVI , and more demanding third-party games like Tales of Arise are there. This even includes games that aren’t yet available on PC and may potentially never be. If you are looking for the best console to play JRPGs these days, this is the one. Image via Nintendo Nintendo Switch The runner-up console I would recommend to JRPG fans these days is the Nintendo Switch . This will likely extend to its eventual successor as well. What it lacks in power and graphics, it makes up for in its versatility. You can play amazing JRPGs like Persona 5 Royal and Trails through Daybreak on the go anywhere you like. In addition, the Nintendo Switch does have its own selection of worthy exclusive JRPGs. Games like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 , Fire Emblem Three Houses , and Tokyo Mirage Sessions are all phenomenal games you can’t play anywhere else. Plus, it has access to older titles through the Nintendo Switch Online like Earthbound . Image via Sabotage Studio Honorable Mention: Steam Deck Finally, an honorable mention worth considering is the Steam Deck . While technically a PC, it is like the Switch in its portability. It has access many different third-party JRPGs, plus plenty of JRPG-inspired indies like Sea of Stars . Though it lacks some in the hardware department, it makes up for that with its emulation potential for other consoles. However, be very careful when navigating that legally gray area. The post Best Consoles for JRPGs Right Now appeared first on Siliconera .

SiliconeraSep 20

Review: Frostpunk 2 Makes for a More Complex Sequel The original Frostpunk surprisingly appealed to me, despite my usual disdain for city builder and strategy-style games. I adored the gritty, dark, and often disturbing post-apocalyptic setting of trying to survive amidst a never-ending winter. Frostpunk 2 is finally here and as you’ll see in our review, it is a much larger and more complicated sequel that gains and loses a lot in the process. Frostpunk 2 picks up 30 years after the original title, with the same locale of New London and a much broader focus. Players take on the role of the Steward, a person in charge of keeping the city and everyone alive and well. This is similar enough to the base game, as players build out the city further, customize roads, and manage the ever-dwindling resources. Image via 11 bit studios However, nearly every aspect of the original survival city builder is expanded upon here, for better and for worse. The scope is honestly impressive. Instead of focusing on a creating and customizing a single building in New London, you now deal with entire districts. The city is also much larger than ever possible before, with many more citizens and workers. The sheer amount to deal with is somehow overwhelming in an enjoyable way. You have to constantly make choices that affect the entire city and everyone in it. Do you send kids off to work, instead of school, to improve your petroleum output or keep them educated for their futures? Do you put your workers at risk by blasting further into the mines or play it safer but risk not having enough for your city? There are countless choices and they aren’t the easiest ones to make. Fortunately, this is where the story mode comes into play. This 12-15-hour experience is essentially one huge tutorial. I do wish there was a bit more to the plot, but it provides the occasional little cutscene to give an idea of what’s happening. The story mode eases the player into all of the new mechanics and acts as a nice refresher, too. That said, the whole point of the story mode is to prepare the player for the real meat and potatoes of the experience: Utopia Builder. This is the other mode available in Frostpunk 2 at its launch. It is essentially an endless city builder where you are free to do whatever you want. Image via 11 bit studios This means crafting the New London you desire and even beyond that. One of the intriguing new focuses of this sequel is on the colonies. You can create a colony and ship out other citizens to live there. Then you can connect your cities together in one massive network to feed resources from one place to another. This all creates such an intricate and complex system. This complexity only furthers when you have moments where the encroaching cold gets wild. During these special storms, people aren’t able to work. Instead, you have to rely on the resources and food you’ve saved over the months to survive. These moments are a bit too frequent in my experience and annoying, but they add an intriguing layer. However, the real standout part about Frostpunk 2 is the new Council Hall. Here, the several factions in the city come into play. Each faction has its own desires for the future of the city and they often conflict with one another. One may care about the people more, while others prefer improving the city at any cost. You as the Steward have to manage these factions and essentially negotiate with them to pass legislations. This often plays out in buttering up one faction or even bribing them to side with you. It is a delicate and fascinating duel of politics that I quite enjoyed as my favorite new part of this sequel. Image via 11 bit studios In fact, the Council Hall helped to alleviate my core issue with Frostpunk 2 , which is actually the scope. Something about the original Frostpunk that captivated me was its emphasis on the people. It physically hurt to see children and even workers die. After all, you could clearly see them all as little people running around the city. This sequel expands so much that it loses that personal feel. This sequel feels much more like a numbers game rather than the emotional and often morally challenging survival experience it was before. Even still, Frostpunk 2 is a worthy enough survival city builder sequel. Like the original, it is absolutely stunning to play, though I do recommend against Steam Deck. It just doesn’t run as well and the input controls aren’t the best here. If you have a beefy PC or modern console, this is a real looker to play. With the complicated decisions, larger scope, and new Council Hall decisions, Frostpunk 2 is one of the most elaborate and complex sim games available. Frostpunk 2 releases for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on September 20, 2024. Early access begins for Digital Deluxe players on September 17, 2024. The post Review: Frostpunk 2 Makes for a More Complex Sequel appeared first on Siliconera .

SiliconeraSep 20

New GTA Online Update Breaks Steam Deck SupportToday, Grand Theft Auto Online received an update, with the PC port of the crime sim finally getting anti-cheating software. Yet not everyone is happy, as this update has now made it impossible to play GTA Online on Steam Deck. Read more...

KotakuSep 17

Review: UFO 50 Is Absolutely Worth Your Time UFO 50 , the faux-retro compilation from the creators of games like Spelunky , Air, Land & Sea and Downwell , is finally releasing after a long development process. Which, well, makes sense! There are 50 games in here, and it didn’t quite take them 50 times as long to make, so perhaps they can take that as a victory. And it seems like it was worth the extra effort, because it’s largely a delight to play. UFO 50 ’s titles are, the developers insist, not minigames! And they’re right; this isn’t Mario Party . What they do offer, though, is a more concentrated experience than most games that would launch by themselves. The lengths vary, but if you like the process of learning a game more than what comes after, you’ll enjoy that in UFO 50 every few hours. Since it was made by a collective of folks used to creating their own stuff, they can feel very different in aims. Having a primarily-analog designer, Jon Perry, on board means a lot more tactical play, which we do love around here. Downwell creator Ojiro Fumoto’s brief involvement with the release shows through in some super-quick action. These sorts of different minds add both to the variety of fun you’ll have and to the feeling that it’s a compilation of disparate releases from within an old game company. Screenshot by Siliconera It’s important to note that this isn’t a Retro Game Challenge sort of release. There are ideas that only work within the fictional retro context, for sure! But these are generally original game ideas, rather than straightforward ‘80s homages. They’re all built for a fictional retro computer, which in practice means they share a color palette and resolution and a two-button control scheme. We do like the simplicity! There are a few of these games that would have benefited from in-game start button functionality for a menu or a third face button to keep from overlapping controls, but they stuck to their guns on that point and it does mean that these games are as tight and streamlined as it feels they could manage. An example on the more conventional end is Grimstone . It replicates the grind-heavy feel of NES-era RPGs, implementing a timing-based battle system but otherwise sticking with the restrictions and ideas of the era. As a standalone game, it would be frustrating and generally lacking, but here it serves as an important part of the game’s fictional fabric. On the other end, you have games like disc-flicker Lords of Diskonia and deck-builder Party House , which clearly have their roots in the more modern analog game scene. But they handle them in a very video-game-like way. In Lords of Diskonia , for example, the opponent never misses. Bank shots? Wild combos? They can absolutely do it every time. The key is in exploiting the factors they don’t take into account as frequently, like ending their turn in fog or leaving themselves vulnerable after their moves. This is very different from playing a human (which you can still do here, by the way), who can absolutely consider all the factors but won’t necessarily keep 360-no-scoping you the whole time. Screenshot by Siliconera Many of the action games in the collection are what you'd call “Nintendo hard,” the punishing sort of difficulty that many games of the era had to extend play time through repetition with limited resources and storage space to make new worlds. Though we're sure this will vary from person to person, we found the difficulty to vacillate somewhere between “totally doable” and “I might be able to beat this first level with enough practice, but that doesn't sound like a fun time.” In addition to “Nintendo hard,” there’s also sometimes “ Spelunky hard,” not afraid to be punishing and wipe progress away in an instant. This makes sense given the dev team, of course! And myriad factors make this an okay approach. The shorter included games and the quantity, in case you just want to bounce around and find what you like without feeling too bad about what you don’t. A generation of players raised on Demon’s Souls -like games. It does mean that, well, we’re not beating some of these ourselves. But we’re sure others will. True to its retro feel, UFO 50 is a game that could really benefit from something like an instruction manual. As it stands, it’s more like sifting through a collection of ROMs: you’ll get the button commands in the menu and a one-sentence descriptor, but a lot of context or explanation you’d get in the documentation ephemera of the past just isn’t here. We’re sure there will be a lot of resources for players very quickly after the game releases and fans create them! But they weren’t there for us in the pre-launch review period. Screenshot by Siliconera The selection of games feels primarily tuned for a great two-player experience, and it’s here that you’ll find some more easily explained games. Kick Club is Bubble Bobble with a ball-kicking attack. Bushido Ball is a samurai Windjammers . Fist Hell is River City Ransom with zombies. Two of our favorites: Hyper Contender and Quibble Race . The first is a TowerFall -style quick battle game, with each character having a movement and attack function, but they can be very different. Is your attack a linear missile or a Castlevania -style axe throw? Do you have a jump, or do you reverse your gravity? The various matchups all play out in different ways. On the complete opposite end of the action spectrum, Quibble Race is a hidden-information pseudo-horse-racing betting concept. You can sponsor Quibbles for a payout of their winnings! You can scout the participants of a race and make an honest bet! Or, hey, we suppose you can try to poison the favorite? Reading opponents and holding out for some luck makes this a lot more fun than we’d expected. We’ve called out a few examples, but we’re making a point not to explain absolutely everything, because a lot of the joy of UFO 50 is stumbling upon and exploring a new game. It’s best approached as a goodie bag, with discovery and learning through playing as its key tenets. The difficulty is perhaps a bit higher than we’d like in spots for some of the games, but overall it really is a can’t-miss release. UFO 50 launches on PC on September 18, 2024. It’s published by Mossmouth, and developed by Derek Yu, Jon Perry, Eirik Suhrke, Paul Hubans, Ojiro Fumoto and Tyriq Plummer. The post Review: UFO 50 Is Absolutely Worth Your Time appeared first on Siliconera .

SiliconeraSep 16

The Steam Deck Is Once Again On Sale, In Case You’re WonderingThe Steam Deck has arguably become gaming’s new favorite toy since it was first released in 2022. Over the years, it’s been widely adopted and praised for its versatility and power, being capable of running a shocking amount of high-intensity games at nominal levels on a handheld device. In lieu of getting a costly PC… Read more...

KotakuSep 12

Review: Fairy Tail: Dungeons Satisfies With Quick Card Battles Fairy Tail: Dungeons offers quick, snappy roguelite deck-building for someone looking for a few quick hands of high-stakes cards. Strikingly simple, but with some great depth to the systems you can quickly pick up, it’s highly entertaining whether you only have a few minutes to play or if you want to spend a good deal of time in its dungeon depths. As someone with no knowledge of the anime , the game offers a fast introduction to some of the characters that felt like just enough to get you rolling. I was concerned that I’d be totally lost after the last few anime games that I’d played when I didn’t know the show, but this title doesn’t really need you to know much. It gives you a handful of playable characters (as well as some other ones you meet), but all you really need to know is their play style and how they fight. As this game is light on plot, it feels like you don’t lose anything from not knowing the show and you still feel like you “get” everything that’s happening. That said, this game is extremely light on plot, but I didn’t find I needed a story. Instead, I was more focused on the card play. In Fairy Tail: Dungeons , you get a small deck of cards to play with at first. You get a mixture of attack cards that deal damage to foes as well as defensive cards that will block incoming damage. These cards area dealt to you four at a time, and you’ll start each round with a full hand of four. You’re given three MP every round you can use, and you get to decide how you spend those MP with your cards (most of which cost one or two MP to cast). Image via ginolabo and Kodansha As for what you should do with your MP every turn, that depends on what your enemies are up to. The game will indicate some damage numbers beside the monsters if they’re going to attack you. If they’re not, you can select an enemy to figure out what sort of defensive or buff spells they may be casting instead. Enemies can also prepare highly-damaging attacks that come with unique ways of stopping them (play X number of attack cards, for example). Knowing everything your opponents are doing helps guide you in what you should do each round. And while you only have four cards to choose from each round, it feels like you really need to think about what to play – you’ll agonize a lot over that simple hand. Should you bulk up your defenses? Try to kill something before it hits you? Prioritize playing the right cards to stop and incoming big hit (always do this one)? Your life points persist across the dungeon, so you can’t just blunder through a fight and then recover afterwards. Mistakes pile on, and if you take too much damage over several fights, you’ll be back to the start of Fairy Tail: Dungeons . You’ll agonize quickly, though. With only a few cards to play, things move briskly through the game. There’s only so much you can do with each hand, so things hurry along. You can spend a bit of your life to redraw your hand if it’s utterly useless, but usually you’ll want to play what you have. This means you’re not usually taking too long to make your decisions, but there still feels like there’s a great depth every round despite the small hand size. Image via ginolabo and Kodansha The real depth lies in building your deck and planning what possibilities you want to have in Fairy Tail: Dungeons . As you explore the dungeon map by choosing tiles to visit, you can pick up cards after fights, events you can stumble across, or shops that appear. Now, I loaded my deck with high-damage cards whenever I came across one, and while it worked great for a while, it eventually meant that my defensive cards didn’t show up as much when I was in combat purely because I had more attack cards in my deck. It was a pure probability thing that I had foolishly ignored in hopes of just slamming enemies. Not that playing more defensively got me any further a few rounds later. Still, I really liked that I had to consider how I was composing my deck for probability. And there are several ways you can shape your deck. You can improve some of your capabilities in combat or add better abilities to specific cards using an upgrade system that costs Lacrima, a currency you pick up as you play. You can also just outright refuse some of the cards you’ve been offered, as well as prune a card from your deck at specific points. After a short time, it felt more important to remove cards, refuse to take them if I felt I had too many high cost cards, or to focus on just improving what I had to better know what to expect each hand rather than continually expand and mess up a predictable probability of getting the cards I wanted. Still, there are some cool things that may make you really want to take that new card. Some cards can play off of one another to cause improved effects (Magic Chains), so you’ll want to ensure you get those often. But is adding a new chain worth it if it bloats your deck? Alternatively, you might unlock a new chain in your upgrade tree that you’ll wish you had picked up a card for earlier. It gave me a lot to think about as I sat mulling over whether to take a card or not. Image via ginolabo and Kodansha How you stack that deck also depends on the character you use in Fairy Tail: Dungeons . Natsu plays offensively but is still more an all-rounder, but Gray plays more defensively, stacking up huge amounts of protection against damage. Lucy offered some more buffs and support casts. The playable characters give some fun options on how to play and build your deck, and their abilities all look very different from each other’s adding some nice visual flair and variety. You also have a fair amount of wiggle room in how you play based on the map as well. Not every tile you can reach is an encounter. There are spaces that have you meeting other characters and having events, tiles with Lacrima on them, and shops as well. You can only see so far ahead so you can’t fully plan your route, but you can shoot for paths with fewer fights to preserve life (or more if you want better rewards). How you walk matters as much as how you play your cards. And when you die (and I died a lot), you gain points towards a rank that unlocks amulets for future runs. These rarely offered extreme bonuses, but can give you little boosts in health, the probability of getting zero cost cards, the ability to carry more items (which is limited gear that can also give you some nice effects), and more. They don’t really break the game so I never felt like I was gaining overwhelming power, but it was enough to get a little leg up here and there. Fairy Tail: Dungeons feels like a straightforward, but still nicely tactical, deck-building game. Being able to play a few quick hands in a fight was great for moments when there wasn’t much time to play, and the ability to dive right in and pick up the rules in seconds made it easy to just jump right into. Even so, the systems underneath had enough depth that it kept pulling me back in to reshape my strategies for the next run. Fairy Tail: Dungeon is available for PC s. The post Review: Fairy Tail: Dungeons Satisfies With Quick Card Battles appeared first on Siliconera .

SiliconeraSep 7

March Got Lots of Gifts in Fields of Mistria’s First Month NPC Studio shared a summary of stats for all Fields of Mistria early access players between August 5, 2024 and September 5, 2024, and it confirmed that the number of downloads passed 250,000 and those who did pick it up played for 4,134,038 hours. The announcement also included a number of details going over what everyone did in spring of their first year in the game. Most notably, the insights suggest March is a popular Fields of Mistria character, based on number of gifts given to him. Given the age of the game and the time going into it, NPC Studio only offered a brief summary of possible Spring Year 1 stats. Most interesting is the section going over gifts given to possible love interests. While it noted that 3,753,747 gifts total had been given in the first month Fields of Mistria was available, 910,916 of those went to March. March is the romanceable blacksmith who tends to like different types of core. Here are the full Fields of Mistria stats going over downloads, playtime, and stats like gifts given, crops harvested, bugs caught, fish caught, and money earned. https://twitter.com/FieldsofMistria/status/1831787758765163006 NPC Studio often uses the game’s social media account to share updates on the game and insights into it that we might be unaware of. For example, it shared a gif going over how to assign a repeated tool use button in its controls menu. The first roadmap for patches appeared there as well. The next major update will appear at the end of 2024 and include new customization options, dungeon features, and heart events with love interests. Fields of Mistria is in early access on Steam, and it is Steam Deck compatible . The full game is expected to release in 2025. The post March Got Lots of Gifts in Fields of Mistria’s First Month appeared first on Siliconera .

SiliconeraSep 6

Balatro Mobile Version Will Also Be an Apple Arcade Game LocalThunk and PlayStack announced that when the Android and iOS mobile Balatro ports arrive on September 26, 2024, they will also be accompanied by an Apple Arcade release of the game. Apple Arcade is $6.99 per month, while the standalone version of the game will cost $9.99 on the App Store and Google Play . As a reminder, Balatro is a roguelike deckbuilder based on Poker . You pick up playing cards for your deck, acquire Jokers that have different scoring and game-influencing effects, and get things like planetary and tarot cards to increase the values of certain hands or affect your game. Your goal is to continually beat more challenging tasks, some with restrictions, by meeting the scoring goals. Campaign and challenge modes are available, and post-launch updates added things like new cosmetics inspired by games like The Witcher . Here’s the official trailer for the Balatro mobile ports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7ZHIxRe66Q Balatro first appeared on consoles and PCs in February 2024. It’s been consistently updated, and physical versions were announced. It also appeared in other games, with an upcoming crossover bringing Balatro into Dave the Diver in October 2024. The Balatro Android, Apple iOS, and Apple Arcade versions of the game will appear on September 26, 2024. It is immediately available on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC. The post Balatro Mobile Version Will Also Be an Apple Arcade Game appeared first on Siliconera .

SiliconeraSep 5

Acer Announced Steam Deck-like Nitro Blaze 7 Handheld PC Acer announced a new Steam Deck competitor at Next at Acer on September 4, 2024, the Nitro Blaze 7 handheld gaming PC. The official site for the device is now open, and there is also a trailer highlighting its features. We don’t know when it will launch or how much it will cost. The Acer Nitro Blaze 7 Steam Deck-like will feature the AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS processor, AMD Radeon 780M graphics card, 16GB LPDDR5x memory, and up to a 2TV SSD. It will support micro SD cards. It will include an Acer Game Space hub, which allows people to easily access games. It will also offer Wi-Fi 6E compatibility and Bluetooth 5.3. The handheld PC will weigh 670g, and have a 7” touch panel screen that supports 1080p. The official page also said it will come with three months of Xbox PC Game Pass. The official site didn’t note what the expected battery life will be, but the device will have a 50.04 Wh Li-Polymer battery. Here’s the announcement trailer for the Acer handheld gaming PC. It primarily focuses on the appearance of the unit. So initially, we see it from the front. Like a Steam Deck or Switch, there is an analog stick on each side, as well as a D-pad on the left and four face buttons on the right. There are two trigger buttons on each shoulder. There also appear to be vents on the back of the unit. The three months of free PC Game Pass also came up at the end of the reveal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJWKfmqCdp4 The Acer Nitro Blaze 7 handheld gaming PC and Steam Deck competitor is in development. The post Acer Announced Steam Deck-like Nitro Blaze 7 Handheld PC appeared first on Siliconera .

SiliconeraSep 4

Fields of Mistria Clip Shows How to Set Repeated Tool Use Button in Controls NPC Studio shared a quick update to remind Fields of Mistria players that the game supports a repeated tool use button in its controls and offered a clip showing how to implement it in-game. The gif walks through the feature, found in the Settings menu, and shows how the change causes it to work in the field. The clip begins by showing what the normal use tool action looks like in Fields of Mistria. From there, the gif goes into the Controls section in Settings. That’s where someone can change the key bindings in-game. Between Use Tool (Charged) and Cast Pinned Spill is a Use Tool (Repeated) control option in Fields of Mistria, which is blank by default. In the example, that action is then mapped to the right mouse button. To show the difference, the gif then shows the Use Tool (Repeated) control option being used to break up a rock in the field. Here’s the full clip showing how to set up the repeated tool use control option in Fields of Mistria . https://twitter.com/FieldsofMistria/status/1831355739849285681 Since launch, NPC Studio mainly uses social media to show off tips for controls, gameplay, or even decorating options. It also confirmed when the game became Steam Deck verified there, as well as when the developers went on a brief break before starting work on the Q4 2024 update . Fields of Mistria is in early access on PCs, and the 1.0 version is expected to launch in 2025. The post Fields of Mistria Clip Shows How to Set Repeated Tool Use Button in Controls appeared first on Siliconera .

SiliconeraSep 4