The Precinct was provided by Kwalee for review. Thank you!
Back in October of last year, there were a couple of games that stood out to me after the Next Fest event. One of which was a police sandbox that made me think of GTA Chinatown Wars, and I loved it. The Precinct wowed me at the time with its beautiful city to explore, sandbox elements to play around with, and fantastic driving mechanics, and I can say that, for the most part, it still holds up in the full release.
The Precinct may be a sandbox-style game, but there's a heavier focus on being a cop and doing your job. Each day, you take a shift that specifies where you will be stationed, what you'll be focusing on, and for how long the shift will be. Once there, you will roam around taking care of any crimes you see being committed or responding to 911 calls. You will arrest your perps, write up all of the crimes they committed, and then either take them down to the station or call for an escort car. Then, the cycle repeats!
It may sound tedious, but it's my favorite part of the game. Observing crimes, wrestling with the ones who resist arrest, checking their ID and possessions, and writing them up. It can range from something as simple as a fine for vandalism and diverge into an all-out lethal shootout or intense car chase. Not knowing what kind of crime you will have to stop next is part of the fun, and adjusting to the situation as it unfolds leads to some exciting moments that make me want to keep playing.
For example, I pulled someone over for reckless driving successfully and made them get out of their car. I checked their ID and used the breathalizer (and of course, they were over the limit). However, as soon as I tried to pat them down, they shoved me out of the way, ran me over, got into a car, and I had to chase them down. I ended up cutting them off and ramming into their car to tip it over, but they got out and made a break for it. I ended up tackling them to the ground and arresting them, adding more offenses they committed. It was exhilarating.
The Precinct's sandbox aspect makes it feel more alive and random, keeping the game interesting. It can sometimes feel like so many crimes are committed in one location, way more than naturally possible, but I didn't know what crime could happen next. I also want to make a special note of the physics when driving. Car chases were especially exciting because I could ram into stores, barricades, and gates and just plow through them. Having debris fly everywhere while chasing down criminals just pumped me up further.
Another great feature I found, utilizing more and more as I kept playing, was calling on support. You can call upon your fellow policemen for support when taking care of crimes based on a bar filling up as you deal with the crime. This can range from extra policemen to call on during combat, road blocks and spikes during car chases, or getting a Riot Van to back you up. You can even spawn in a new Patrol Car whenever you want to, which is extremely helpful when you are running around and lose your car.
However, combat itself walks a fine line between clunky and enjoyable. You have an over-the-head view with a line of sight to aim guns at enemies, which makes it hard to land any shots. It felt really satisfying when it did, but taking cover behind cars sometimes led me to shoot the car instead of the people because of how aiming works. This extends to melee combat as well, and taking cover in general, which I just couldn't enjoy. Combat has enjoyable moments, but it felt too clunky, with an odd camera angle for aiming, which made it hard to get into.
You also have your AI partner with you, and while they were useful here and there, I ended up feeling like they got in the way more than actually helped a situation. Every time you go out for your shift, you have to go with your partner, and he has to come along wherever you go. While this could lead to them being helpful, like taking care of the second of two perps to arrest, but I found they just get in the way most of the time. There were more times than not that my partner Kelly would just stand there and not get one of the suspects or take so long to get in the police car (since I have to wait for him) that I lost sight of a reckless driver, and they got away completely.
As you play, you will get experience points depending on the crimes you solve and how correctly you handle them. These level you up, unlocking new gear (like new guns), support options, shift assignments, cars to use, and more. You will also get upgrade tokens to unlock new perks on your skill tree. The system is very simple and easy to understand, and compared to a lot of JRPGs I have been playing recently, it was a welcome breath of fresh air. The perks were generally helpful, giving even more support options, a new weapon slot, more ammo, extra health, and more support bars.
Some upgrades and unlocks are so essential that they should have been given by default, like the Timed Breath to keep running without all stamina disappearing, Commandeering vehicles, and setting your own shift to decide what you want to do for the game, but it doesn't take long to get any of them in general.
There are some mini-games you can find throughout the world, like street races and looking for artifacts that someone has lost, so I always felt like I had something to do, even when I wasn't taking care of criminals.
While there are some interesting moments in The Precinct's storyline, I never felt fully invested in it. You play as Nick Cordell Jr., a rookie cop joining the force in Averno. Your father was the old chief of the police and was highly regarded by his comrades, but was murdered. So, on top of doing your job, you will have to work to bring down the gangs taking over the town, keep the citizens safe, and find out what actually happened to your dad.
In some ways, it feels a bit like I am watching a TV show drama about a Boston police station in the 1980s, which has its charm. There are some interesting moments, and I was curious about what happened, but I was never 100% invested. It just didn't hook me like I wanted it to, and I cared more about going out on shifts and arresting criminals.
The story advances as you take down the gangs. There's a hierarchy leading up to the big boss of each, and you have to collect enough evidence to unlock the missions to bring them down. It feels like targeted raids, which are quite fun as well when the combat is working, but I never found myself fully invested in the narrative and motivations behind the characters.
After initially testing The Precinct during last year's Steam Next Fest, I was quite excited to try out the full game. It already had Steam Deck-specific graphical settings, so I had a feeling the team was going to do what they could to optimize the game and give us the best experience possible, and I believe they did, for better or worse. I tested all of the game's quality settings and upscalers, and I found the Steam Deck preset to be the best and most stable way to play, which also includes a lock at 30 FPS.
While standing around and dealing with one crime, the Steam Deck can push a decent amount of power and hit higher framerates and higher quality, but as soon as you get in your police car and start driving, the framerate will tank. I also found that most 4-way intersections will also be tough on performance, so I did a majority of my testing during driving and at these spots.
During this testing, I found that the Steam Deck preset, which has a mix of low to high settings, was better performing than the Medium quality and better performing than the low quality with FSR 3 on Quality mode. So, this made the Steam Deck preset the best for a quality focus and battery life. As for framerate, I tested at the lowest possible settings with FSR 3 on Ultra Performance, and it would regularly drop under 40 FPS at these choke points, so 30 FPS will be the way to go.
I was hoping for better results, but it isn't the end of the world. It's still very playable, looks decent, and battery drain sticks to an average of 11W - 13W. There is some ghosting around our character that we can more clearly see when under the light, but for the most part, I never paid too much attention to it and didn't get distracted by it. It's a playable experience through and through, and there will be no issues that pop up other than the occasional battery drain spike, but it will be a solid 30 FPS:
You can change the difficulty, toggle camera distance and shake, dialogue flow, vibration, change auto aim, toggle large text, minimap size, subtitles, and audio sliders.
The game does support 16:10 resolutions, cloud saves, and controllers. It does not have any HDR settings.
The Precinct is an enjoyable police sandbox that is a blast to play a majority of the time. Being a policeman is a lot of fun, and I had a blast running through Aveno, stopping crimes and bringing perps in. I absolutely adored car races and the physics of driving through stores, lights, gates, and watching everything fly up around me. The story is a bit of a hit and miss, and combat can be a little clunky due to the way you aim and use cover, but it has its moments.
The game is also quite playable on the Steam Deck using their specific preset. I wish we could make it better with a higher framerate or higher quality settings that don't need upscaling, but it's at least playable and enjoyable.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back.
ARK: Survival Ascended (ASA), a remastering of ARK: Survival Evolved (ASE) using Unreal Engine 5, has just launched onto Steam Early Access. Although it seems to have been a bit of a rough launch, which we're getting used to in the PC space, the game provides a huge amount of scalability, which is great for handheld users.
ASA isn't just a simple graphical upgrade however, although the map is largely similar, it has been updated and redesigned in some areas. There are improvements to the UI, making it much more simplified and easier to control with a controller. We're also treated to other improvements such as dynamic foliage/water that reacts to dinosaurs and players moving through them, as well as baby dinosaurs in the wild.
The core gameplay experience of ASA remains unchanged from ASE. You will still be crafting your tools, building bases, taming dinosaurs, and progressing through the game's extensive technology tree. This is a plus in my book, as I enjoyed these aspects of the original, and I'm glad they've transferred into the remaster. ASA also makes a huge improvement over ASE in the visuals department. When you can set the graphics settings high, it takes advantage of Unreal Engine 5 features such as Lumen and Nanite to create a truly beautiful world.
The game supports up to 8 players on private multiplayer servers and up to 70 players on dedicated servers. It also supports up to 4 players in split-screen, a first in the series for a PC version. And since a recent patch fixed BattlEye support on the Steam Deck, we can fully take advantage of it! Now, let's take a look at performance.
While the game itself appears to be fully playable from our testing, making a character might be out of the question. So you can't name yourself or choose how you look as it stands, which is a shame, especially for online play. But, outside of that, it is quite playable.
Right out of the gate, ASA is a much nicer experience than ASE to control with a gamepad. The menu has a simple layout, the buttons are bigger, and there are fewer of them, which makes the whole experience surprisingly pleasant to navigate.
16:10 resolutions are supported, so Steam Deck users don't have to suffer with black bars here. There's a large array of graphics settings at our fingertips, and we also have some UI scaling, although I found the default UI scale to be adequate for the Steam Deck.
Right off the bat, we're going to want to select the "Low Preset" to get some settings in place. Studio Wildcard has also said that choosing Presets changes background settings that aren't visible to the end-user right now, so choosing a preset can impact more than we can easily change. After a preset has been chosen, set all other settings to "Low" and disable the optional extras at the side, like Light Bloom and Light Shafts. For resolution, we're running at 960x600 with a resolution scale of 65 and in fullscreen mode. We can lower the resolution further, but the text becomes very difficult to read, so unless you know the UI by heart, keep it here.
On your SteamOS, you'll want to select a frame rate lock of 30FPS and make sure there's no TDP limit, the GPU really needs all the power we can give it. We're also applying the FSR filter to improve the visual quality of the game a bit.
Once you're in the game with your unnamed character, open your Steam on-screen keyboard with STEAM+X, and hit the Tilde key. Once the console opens, type 'r.volumetricclouds 0' and hit enter. This will disable the game's volumetric clouds, it boosts the FPS by quite a bit. I personally prefer the game without the clouds, as they degrade in quality a lot at lower frame rates.
When using these settings and running around a multiplayer server with about 30-40 players online, I found that the Steam Deck mostly held 30FPS. At certain times of day, the frame rate does drop, mainly during early morning and late evening when there are a lot of shadows on the screen. I would describe the experience as Playable but not ideal.
It's worth noting that having large amounts of tamed dinosaurs or large structures will affect the performance. Given the type of game that ARK is, players can do some crazy things, especially online, so if you run into an army or encounter a tribe stronghold, your experience may vary. For single-player or a small server with a few friends, though, the Steam Deck should hold up for you.
If you want to maximize performance, there are also some edits to an INI file you can make. As always with INI files, you edit at your own risk, it could cause glitches/errors in the game, and game updates in the future might stop them from working. These INI edits made it so I was almost always hitting 30FPS, and the visual quality was still pretty decent.
In Desktop Mode, navigate to /home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/ARK Survival Ascended/ShooterGame/Saved/Config/Windows/
Now open the GameUserSettings.ini. Once in the INI file, edit the following lines:
sg.ShadowQuality=0
sg.ReflectionQuality=0
sg.ShadingQuality=0
Those lines were likely on "3", as ARK currently offers no way to change these from in the game. Shadows should be able to be changed in-game, but for whatever reason, mine was still set to 3.
Further down edit the following lines:
HighQualityMaterials=False
HighQualitySurfaces=False
There are some accessibility features in ARK: Survival Ascended, like subtitles for the few voiced lines in the game, increasing the scale of some of the UI elements, the ability to disable view bobbing, and you can adjust the camera's FoV.
Controller support is pretty good, from what I can tell, and I don't think the experience is much different from using a keyboard and mouse. There is also a chat filter to filter out profanities in online play, but it is worth noting that the game carries a PEGI 18+ rating, and the chat filter didn't seem very effective anyway.
If you own the original game, you may not want to dive straight into Ark: Survival Ascended. Much of the content is the same, and right now, the DLC hasn't been added yet. But the graphical upgrades and QoL improvements are a great addition, and in time, ASA will become the clear choice. Performance on the Steam Deck is acceptable and should only improve as the developers make optimizations. We hope that the crash in the character editor is resolved soon. We will keep an eye on this game and update this review accordingly if improvements are made for Deck users throughout early access!
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
If you enjoyed this review, check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back!
Lego Bricktales was provided to us by Thunderful Publishing and Plan of Attack for review. Thank you!
It's time to embark on an epic adventure across the world of Lego. Lego Bricktales will take you across gorgeous unique biomes where you will have to solve puzzles by building your solutions...brick by brick. Journey across the worlds with your robot buddy and help the people so you can gather energy and help your grandfather fix up his rundown amusement park. These puzzles will test your skills in various different ways, including taking physics into consideration, and provide you with a sandbox mode to test the builds you make. With that in mind, let's get to building!
If you are looking for a relaxing game that will challenge your mind while giving you the chance to be creative, look no further! Lego Bricktales will have you walking around gorgeous different overworlds tackling head-scratching puzzles that range from being decently easy to pretty challenging. One moment you will be building a bridge, the next you will have to copy a statue, and then you'll need to build a branching support to hold a platform up, all taking objects and physics into account...and I am all for it.
I love games like this, and with new content updates on the way (Easter is around the corner), now is a great time to check it out! The puzzles sometimes feel weird to control with a controller due to controlling the mouse cursor, but it is something I got used to. Overall, the experience was a good one and luckily, this is a fantastic game to play on the Steam Deck!
With no changes at all, Lego Bricktales runs at 60 FPS with no slowdowns whatsoever at an average of 10W - 12W battery drain. I encountered the game stuttering for a split second a couple times, but this didn't happen often enough to derail my experience, which was near flawless. I also noticed one time where the game spiked battery drain to almost 13W, but this calmed itself down almost immediately and again, didn't change my experience at all.
The controller/gamepad support worked great and I had no visual issues whatsoever. I will say that some of the icons at the bottom during the building screens were a bit small, especially the ones showing the shoulder buttons of the controller, but otherwise, everything else was fantastic.
Lego Bricktales is a wonderful game to sit down and relax with. It doesn't bombard you with time limits or action sequences, its just about taking your time with calming music to build what you need to solve puzzles and help the citizens around you. At times, this feels like a Lego builder's dream, being able to create how you want and even customize it. And with how well it runs on the Steam Deck without changing a thing, this is an easy Best on Deck game!
If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back.
