CLAWPUNK was provided by Megabit Publishing for review. Thank you!
Clawpunk is one of those games that might be just what you need after a hard day at work. You have little energy to do much but vegetate in front of a TV, and then you remember video games exist. You decide to boot up Clawpunk and spend the night ripping through destructible terrain and slaughtering enemies as a collection of mysterious cat mercenaries.
As I discussed at length during my review of Big Hop, I’m not much of a platformer guy. Clearly, our editor took pity on me for my next game to review, which is why I got to play the madhouse that is Clawpunk. It launched last year in mid-November, and after spending the last two weeks with the game, I’m amazed it hasn’t received more attention. I love hidden gems, and Clawpunk deserves so many more eyes on it. Not only is it a solid roguelike with tons of charm and depth, but it’s a great experience on the Steam Deck.
The first thing that drew me to Clawpunk is how much it lets you vibe. From the moment I booted up the game, this title’s music and aesthetics sucked me right in. The loading cutscene sets the narrative of what to expect. Feral City has fallen under the control of several nasty gangs, and it’s up to you to reclaim the city with a crack team of fearsome kitties through an action-packed series of platforming challenges.
There is a solid tutorial to learn the ropes that’s separate from the main game, and I always appreciate games that have a separate game mode that you can dive into whenever you need a refresher. You’re going to need all the help you can get with Clawpunk because this is a brutal game that’s deeper than it looks.
At its core, Clawpunk is a fast-paced hack-and-slash platformer with five worlds with multiple stages in each to navigate. What’s cool is that apart from the last stage, which is only unlockable by completing all previous areas, you can run through the others however you like, and can travel to all four from the beginning. Players start with Dash, an incredibly fast but weak cat with a katana, and unlock perks along with the other eight cats of doom from there. Environments are all destructible, and the goal of each stage is the same: to reach the safehouse at the bottom. It’s an interesting approach to the mission design because while it’s a simple plan in theory, the game throws plenty of curveballs and tools at you to achieve that.
Mortality is rampant, with common enemies and your own army of feline mercenaries possessing squishy bodies. There’s always a ton of threats to navigate from diverse enemies to environmental traps such as dynamite and pools of acid, and you will die often. Clawpunk’s core gameplay is probably its biggest strength, blending great difficulty with an interactivity that really impressed me. The game is extremely punishing, but once you’ve unlocked a couple of extra mercs, things do ease up a little. Your run only ends in defeat when all your unlocked roster dies.
The goal of reaching the safehouse is always there, but the game rewards you for killing as many enemies as possible, rating your competition with a tier system depending on the destruction caused, how much damage you took, and so on. What I also found interesting is the Chaos mechanic. Destroying things and killing enemies all feed this meter, and if you don’t fill it before escaping the stage, your notoriety will increase. It will also increase if you get detected by security cameras.
When this meter goes up enough, the gangs in control of Feral City will send elite troops after you. These things hit even harder than the grunts, so you need to be very careful between balancing chaos and rushing to the finish line. Completing stages is important, but you are sending a message to the gangs as well. It’s an intriguing way of doing things.
The levels are short and sweet in most cases, but despite that, there are plenty of things to do. Collecting purple coins allows you to upgrade stats and unlock new characters in the Airfield, which serves as the hub between runs. There are some things to do as new characters turn up, and you get to practice the platforming between missions, which is nice. Collectible cards can also be added to characters to unlock a ton of modifiers, which only improves the flexibility.
Between the gorgeous visuals, destruction physics, and fast, brutal gameplay, there’s plenty to like with Clawpunk. I have a couple of gripes with figuring out which character is who. With so much happening on screen, it can be hard working out where my feline avatar actually is. More than once, I lost track of where I was and got killed in the confusion, but this is more of an issue with the smaller characters and isn’t a dealbreaker. The difficulty curve is also pretty steep, more than in other games in the genre, which might cause some players to struggle with it. Despite these minor drawbacks, Clawpunk deserves far more attention than it currently has.
Clawpunk is rated Steam Deck Verified by Valve, and it carries an Unknown rating on ProtonDB. The latter is mainly due to the relative lack of attention the game has received in the endless ocean that is the indie game market, but Clawpunk is an excellent experience on the Steam Deck.
That’s just as well, because there isn’t any room to mess around with settings-wise. No graphical options exist, and there’s no way to really change keybindings either. Fortunately, the controller support is out of the box, and I’ve had no complaints about performance. Font size can be a little tricky to read due to the lack of UI scaling, but this isn’t a game where you have to read that much.
With our options limited, there is only one preset we can really use. With a native resolution, 60hz refresh rate, and default TDP, Clawpunk holds a steady 60FPS even in the heaviest action sequences. The controls are fluid despite having no way to adjust them as well.
With the full TDP running, Clawpunk still does decently with battery life. Despite the low-end visuals, the full destructive terrain and screen action can make things pretty hectic. I saw an average power draw of 12 watts during these scenes, which will provide around 4 hours on the Steam Deck OLED during combat.
I tried tinkering with the TDP to see if I could improve the battery life, and a 4-watt TDP kept the framerate around 30FPS with a 7-watt average power draw. While this is a big improvement in overall battery life, I still recommend sticking with the native TDP to ensure the smoothest gameplay possible.
Clawpunk is available in English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Dutch, Japanese, Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese, although only English has full audio.
Clawpunk’s biggest problem lies with the lack of accessibility options, unfortunately. There is a lack of colorblind options, no way to change keybinds or button prompts, and a lack of graphical settings that can be adjusted right now. Players can choose to disable data collection, adjust damage tolerance, and change sound volume, but that’s about it.
Sometimes, even good games fall through the cracks due to the sheer number of titles that exist, especially in the indie gaming scene. After playing Clawpunk, I hope more people discover this. It might not do anything wholly new or unique, but it does a great job with almost everything that matters. The addictive gameplay and amount of content kept me invested, and Clawpunk has great character.
The steep difficulty curve and lack of accessibility options might put some players off, but this is a great complement to the Steam Deck library.
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.
The Outer Worlds 2 was provided by Xbox Game Studios for review. Thank you!
Having not played the original The Outer Worlds game, I wasn't sure what to expect from The Outer Worlds 2, but I would say I was pleasantly surprised. What I ended up finding was a story-based, structured RPG where almost everything has its purpose, except for maybe the copious amounts of loot!
As far as the storyline of The Outer Worlds 2, there's a mix of personal revenge and an overarching plot affecting far more than yourself, although both are intermingled. It's an intriguing, if slightly odd, plot. Some of it felt somewhat contrived, but it does build up nicely, and there are some good set pieces.
The game also does a decent job of giving players some freedom to decide how the storyline progresses, mostly by letting them choose which characters and factions to side with. Although the immediate results aren't too different, the final ending of the game and its various factions will be affected by the choices you make throughout the game, even choices that don't seem particularly critical.
There are 3 main factions in the game, but only 2 are available to side with (or neither), and all 3 are very cult-like in their operations. A sense of loyalty to the factions is a pretty major theme throughout the storyline, and the majority of people you meet will belong to one of the three factions.
When it comes to the actual gameplay, The Outer Worlds 2 does feel pretty decent. The movement feels fine, although vaulting over objects is a little fiddly and seems restrictive at times; you do feel a little stuck to the ground in the game, and I would have liked to feel a bit freer in my movement. The guns feel good to use, though, and even though the enemies do lean on the side of being a bit bullet-spongey, you do still feel somewhat powerful if you have a decent weapon by your side, especially as you lean into automatic weapons later on.
As for the amount of content in the game, there is plenty to sink your teeth into. You have your main quests, which advance the plot, as well as plenty of side quests and companion quests to carry out, which often have an impact on the main quests, such as making them easier to do, so it's to your advantage to explore the world a little and interact with the NPCs.
It's one of the nicer ways I've seen side quests handled in an RPG, to be honest. You don't feel like you're finishing quests just to get experience points. Finishing these quests usually makes something easier later down the line, or will affect the story in a small way at least.
One of my main criticisms of The Outer Worlds 2 is the enemy AI; it's really disappointing in places. Simple things, such as shutting doors or going into another room, seemed to really confuse pursuing AI. They also seemed unable to see through entirely transparent windows; they are treated the same as solid walls for AI detection. which really pulls you out of the game, especially since the game often offers stealth as an option. The systems in place aren't really up to scratch for the game to work as a "Stealth" game.
Beyond the stealth mechanics, the AI sometimes seemed not to know what to do, and some ignored my presence entirely during a fight.
As for the loot in the game, it suffers from the same bloat that Bethesda games suffer from. Some areas just have an abundance of loot that's there for the taking, mostly food products that heal you for about 4-6% of your health. While it's not strictly necessary to loot them, you are going to lose out if you don't. The saving grace here is that at least lootable items are clearly outlined.
Visually, the game does hold up quite well; it's not spectacular; we've seen games look far better than this, but there's almost a stylized quality to the game that helps it along. It does suffer visually at lower settings, though, which is especially noticeable on the Steam Deck.
I also noticed a couple of bugs when playing, such as a character referencing a conversation I was about to have, but hadn't had yet, which was pretty strange. And I presume some of the AI behavior I experienced could also be called a "bug".
The Outer Worlds 2 makes a good first impression on the Steam Deck, defaulting to the native 1280x800 resolution and offering full controller support in all menus and gameplay. The game also runs you through the accessibility options on the first launch, so you can adjust your UI scaling/font sizes to your preference.
When it comes to the graphical settings, The Outer Worlds 2 already has a Steam Deck preset in place. Defaulting the game to the lowest settings, except keeping Shadows on Medium, I would recommend switching this to Low as well.
FSR is left on the "Quality" setting, so while there is some upscaling, it's minor, and we do still get a pretty clear image.
As for performance, the preset is clearly designed to target 30 FPS, so I would recommend using the in-game settings to lock the frame rate to 30 FPS. The SteamOS frame limiter introduces input lag in this game, so don't use it.
You will, however, still get drops below 30 FPS, even as low as 25 FPS in areas like towns where there are NPCs wandering about. In this case, the Steam Deck's CPU is struggling, so no amount of setting adjustments will help. I'd still call the game playable, but it can be a little unpleasant in these busy areas.
As far as power draw goes, expect it to be around 16W-22W, but mostly leaning on the upper side, meaning you'll be getting around 2.5 hours of battery life on a Steam Deck OLED and around 1.5 hours on a Steam Deck LCD. Temperatures were in the 70 °C - 75 °C range.
The Outer Worlds 2 has some good accessibility options. Of most note to Steam Deck users is the various UI scaling options. You can independently scale UI elements like the HUD and subtitles, and add an opaque background to subtitles to make them easier to read, ensuring text is legible on the device.
There are also other accessibility options, such as disabling camera swaying, enabling motion sickness mitigation, and adjusting aim assist. Plus, there is a "story" difficulty mode to make combat easier.
The Outer Worlds 2 is a solid game, if a little rough around the edges in places. I would classify this as a "Bethesda-lite" game. It has less content and a smaller world than, say, the Fallout games, but if you're after a more structured, story-based game, then The Outer Worlds 2 does a good job of being a first-person shooter RPG.
As for Steam Deck performance, it's a bit disappointing; holding 30 FPS just isn't realistic. On the plus side, most areas where you drop below 30 FPS are not combat ones, so I would still call the game playable.
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.
Escape From Duckov was provided by bilibili for review. Thank you!
The rather shamelessly named Escape From Duckov is finally here, and as the name might suggest (being a take on Escape from Tarkov), this one is an extraction shooter, but it's got something that separates itself from the rest of the bunch: it's a single-player extraction shooter. However, while it is a unique experience, it is one I feel conflicted about.
Rarely have I felt so conflicted about a game as I do with Escape From Duckov. I enjoy the concept of a single-player extraction shooter; my main issue with the genre is that they are (usually) competitive multiplayer, which isn't my cup of tea. The gunplay in Escape From Duckov is good; the weapons feel powerful and great to use, and enemies present a challenge, requiring you to play to your weapon's strengths and ensure you are well-equipped.
You've also got a decent progression system, which features many upgrades to enhance your duck, and a bunker that you can upgrade with new furniture that lets you craft more powerful items and get new unlocks. Really, this game should be a lot of my favorite things all boiled down into one game.
The problem is, each of these systems has its own little flaws, and when they're all put together, the game really feels like it's a bit... well, sparse.
The single-player aspect of the game, which initially appealed to me, actually ended up being a downside. Escape From Duckov doesn't have a story that keeps things moving along. A multiplayer game doesn't need one; the motivation and satisfaction come from besting other players or showing off your equipment to your friends. In Escape From Duckov, what's my motivation to keep progressing? It's not a quick pick-up-and-play game; progressing takes time, and it feels a little like a single-player grinding game after you've played the same map a few times to find the randomly generated loot you need.
Therein lies the issue I have with the progression in the game. There's plenty of it, from new weapons and crafting stations to upgraded stats on your duck. The problem is that it takes a long time to progress. Not only do you need the items required to do the upgrade, which can be a little RNG as to whether they spawn in the map, but you also need money for almost every upgrade. Plus, some upgrades take time to research, which is baffling in a single-player game. Why do I have to wait several minutes to research a health upgrade?
Map progression likewise feels like a bit of a pain. You can explore the entire map, but the harder enemies feel like a huge step up from the rest of the map, meaning you'll have to grind for a while to get the absolute best equipment before you can take on the final enemies.
The audio in the game is also a very mixed bag. The guns sound great, with differing sounds depending on the gun type and whether they are silenced. The music, however, was much louder than anything else in the game on the rare occasions it played. It is also a strange lo-fi relaxation mix you might find on a coffee shop ambiance video online, not really fitting for the kind of game Escape From Duckov is.
Sounds like dodge rolling was also unusually loud compared to other sounds. Ambient sound is almost absent from the game, but that is somewhat understandable, as hearing enemy footsteps can be vital to figuring out positions out of your line of sight.
Escape From Duckov does support 1280x800 as a resolution, so we can take advantage of the entirety of the Steam Deck's display.
Sadly, the game does not support controllers, which is pretty irritating given how the aiming works. The best I could come up with is using the default Keyboard (WASD) & Mouse layout, using the left touchpad for a radial menu to control the hotbar, and then adjusting the sensitivity of the right analog stick to your preference to aim somewhat acceptably, but it's not ideal.
As for the game's performance on Steam Deck, if you want a pretty stable 45 FPS experience, you have to play on the lowest settings, aside from having the Shadows bumped up to Low, which is how I decided to play.
If you disable Shadows entirely, you can run at closer to 60 FPS, but it does make the game look worse and is not quite as stable, so I recommend you stick to locking the game in the 40-45 FPS range.
The power draw was around 11W-14W, and temperatures were around 55-60 °C. Expect a battery life of about 4 hours on a Steam Deck OLED and 3 hours on a Steam Deck LCD.
Controls are rebindable, and all dialogue is in text form. Escape From Duckov has no other accessibility options. There are flexible difficulty settings, so you can make the game much easier (or harder) than the default difficulty.
Escape From Duckov has some great potential, but it feels like a rushed game. The actual gameplay feels great, fighting enemies and finding loot is engaging and satisfying, but the progression systems feel too elaborate and lengthy for a single-player game.
Co-op would have gone a long way to fixing the issues I have with the game, allowing us to show off our cool new loot to friends, as well as sharing the burden of progression amongst a group, rather than it just being on you to constantly search out for that 1 item you need.
Escape From Duckov runs OK on the Steam Deck; the performance is fine, and we can get a stable 45 FPS experience here. The controls aren't ideal, though, and I would love to see some actual controller support in the future.
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.
Killing Floor 3 was provided by Tripwire Interactive for review. Thank you!
I remember way back when I first got my Steam account, and I was looking for new games to get. I opened my account with the Counter-Strike: Source and Garry's Mod bundle, but that slowly grew as I discovered new games. One of those was Killing Floor, and I fell in love with it. The co-op shooter was addictive, and that continued into Killing Floor 2, making it feel like an entirely enhanced experience. Now, Killing Floor 3 is here, taking another leap forward in terms of quality and mechanics. It's definitely interesting to see how the game feels compared to its predecessors, but I love the direction it's taking and see a lot of potential, even with the extreme amount of grinding involved.
The biggest changes to Killing Floor 3 that separate it are primarily in the progression systems, which I felt were both an improvement and a drag. The core gameplay loop remains largely unchanged, and I am glad. You, along with up to 5 other friends, run around in medium-sized maps fending off hordes of enemies called Zed. After dispatching the wave, you get Dosh, which can be used to buy new weapons, replenish ammo, and upgrade armor. At the last wave, you will be faced with a giant boss, which, if beaten, will end the run and give you different types of experience.
I have always been a fan of this core loop and find it addictive, and it still feels fantastic here. The gunplay is tight, shots feel weighty and impactful, and it's extraordinarily enjoyable watching heads and limbs get blown off. Developer Tripwire Interactive is using its own dismemberment and persistent blood system, and it helps make each shot feel even more impactful. Watching limbs disappear, skin tear off, bullet holes appear, and heads blown to smithereens made it even more satisfying to play. It was sometimes hard to see the skin and bullet holes in enemies with all of the action going on, but shooting the legs and blowing heads off of Zeds was more than enough to quench my thirst.
Of course, Zed Time returns. There's a new bar at the top of the screen that goes up as you kill enemies and, once done, temporarily slows down time. This is where we can aim more without worrying about being chased and watch as heads are blown off and blood splatters out in slow motion. It's just as gruesome as ever, and I love it.
Other than being able to slide and vault over some objects, the biggest core gameplay change came from how weapons and tools are handled, as well as classes. While each of the six classes has its own four weapons and one sidearm, there are no limits to which can be bought from the store. Progression has been changed so it doesn't limit improvements to the four weapons in each class, so freely selecting whatever weapons or tools desired from other classes has no penalties. On top of that, each class has its own gadget or "Ultimate" ability that can deal devastating damage, like the Commando's flying drone and the Engineer's augmented power suit.
While we do lose out on having our trusty welder that we used to have to reinforce doors, I enjoy the changes to this system. Being able to choose weapons and tools more freely without penalty is wonderful. The tools are also quite varied, ranging from ammo bags and extra syringes to electric shock traps and explosive locks. We also have an option to choose a multitool that allows us to open doors, enable ziplines, jump-start turrets around the level, and unlock armor crates to replenish our armor.
Then we have mutators, which change up the incoming waves. These can range from more enemies coming out to certain damage types doing more, and it keeps things interesting and can change up strategies. Every week, there is a new mutator stage that can be played, which sticks throughout all the waves of enemies, but there will usually be 1-2 mutator waves that happen in regular matches as well.
Co-op is also going to be the best way to play. Killing Floor 3 is playable solo and offline, and I still had a blast, but playing with friends is the biggest draw. The game scales with the number of players, increasing the number of Zeds that will appear in each wave. So, while there may be 60 or so enemies when playing alone, add in one more player, and the wave becomes 110.
The eight levels that come with the full release are decent as well, each having its own style. That being the case, I also felt the maps all had very common themes. They either take place inside or outside and are generally quite dark and gruesome. It sticks with Killing Floor's theme, but I miss having more daylight maps like Outpost and Black Forest from Killing Floor 2. The team does have a lot of post-release content planned, which includes new maps, but the two revealed so far look like more of the same. It's not bad necessarily, but I stopped caring which map I would play on as they felt largely the same.
The core gameplay is as gory and gruesome as ever, and it's quite satisfying. However, progression has changed heavily from the previous games. Instead of traditionally leveling up and increasing class perks, we have skill trees, proficiency ranks, and weapon mods. There are many skills to choose from, which can affect each class's throwables, gadgets, and passive bonuses. These skills can individually be upgraded three times using Proficiency points gained after completing matches, and the more you use them, the higher your proficiency rank with the class goes up for some extra bonuses during Zed time.
Then we have weapon mods, which I both love and dislike. The new system replaces weapon upgrading from Killing Floor 2, which feels more personal and powerful. In the Armory, you can choose any weapon and modify it. We have to craft mods using materials found in matches, and then we can equip them on a gun and create custom loadouts. Mods can have a range of effects, which can affect their stats like damage, accuracy, and recoil, change the type of weapon damage entirely (like Acidic or Heat bullets), and add scopes. The loadouts can be saved and then purchased during your wave.
I love the way the system gives us the ability to create the guns we want that can be used for different situations. Want an assault rifle that can tear flesh off of Zeds, paired with a shotgun capable of lighting large groups of enemies on fire? You can make both of those. Just like skills, each mod can be upgraded three times, increasing its potency and reducing its negative effects. I found myself having a blast creating different loadouts of weapons to use in-game and give me some nicely-earned variety.
However, getting the materials needed to upgrade and craft can be a slog. A majority of the mods use Biosteel to craft, which can be quite rare compared to the other materials, and not all weapons use similar mods. Combined with the fact that each crafted mod can only be equipped to one gun at a time, there's a lot of crafting that needs to be done. On top of that, crafted mods come with random bonus effects, so crafting multiples of each mod to find the bonuses you want to activate when they are fully upgraded means needing even more materials. I can understand some materials being harder to obtain that are exclusive to upgrading mods fully, but I wish materials used to initially craft the mods weren't so rare.
We can also change the look of both our weapons, which can be saved to our loadouts, and our character. Cosmetics for weapons come in the form of skins, stickers, and trinkets that we can hang on the side of them, while characters can have outfits, headgear, and our player card. The weapon cosmetics are largely malleable with every weapon available, which I love, but the character outfits are locked to each specific person. And with only a couple of outfit variants for each class, it didn't feel like I could customize exactly how I wanted.
The main way to get new cosmetics is going to be through Killing Floor 3's battle pass system, aptly named the Supply Pass. These only contain cosmetics and extra premium currency to buy more cosmetics on the in-game store, and there are some free options for those who don't want to upgrade. The free options do contain a variety of rewards, which include outfits and headgear.
Getting more points to unlock the Supply Pass comes from completing missions. We get new daily and weekly missions, as well as primary ones that can be completed multiple times. There are also some story missions that come from each season that are interesting, but aren't captivating. The daily and weekly mission objectives require using different weapons and damage types, which I found way more engaging than the story missions that just had me go to different spots on levels and interact with objects.
I'm also not much of a fan of Killing Floor 3's hub: The Stronghold. It looks nice and is an interesting way for players to interact with each other before going into a match, but I dislike having to actually go to a specific spot to start matches. Most of the other features of the Stronghold can be accessed from a menu, and I like that, but I didn't see any way to quickly go into a match, and I had to go to the VTOL area every time. I would sometimes start matches from the menu directly, so it was a chore each time to have to run to a different area.
Still, while there are these smaller issues here and there, I couldn't stop playing. I was constantly going into matches, both solo and multiplayer, to take on hordes of Zed, grind those materials, upgrade my mods, and complete my Supply Pass. And with Tripwire seemingly consistently going to be adding new weapons, mods, maps, enemies, bosses, and more is going to make it hard to stay away. Their first update is going to decouple perks from their specialists as well, which will allow us to choose whichever person we want with the corresponding perk. This will come with new weapons and mods, as well as improvements across the board, so I have some high hopes here.
However, just when looking at the full release's content, I can say that I found a lot to love and enjoy, even with the minor shortcomings.
Going into Killing Floor 3, I was under the impression it wouldn't play at all on the Steam Deck. When I talked to the team at Gamescom last year, they said it wasn't what they were aiming for, and I understood why. The game is gorgeous, and with so many enemies on the screen at once, it looked like it would be hard to run. Even when I got the game to review, I didn't immediately try the game on the Deck and thought there was no way it would run. However, I am glad I went ahead and tried anyway, because it performs much better than I expected.
The biggest performance drain is going to be UE5's Lumen lighting and reflections. These are on by default, and by turning them off, I went from around 25 - 28 FPS to around 50 - 55. I was even able to bring the XeSS upscaling up from Balanced to Quality and still get above 50 FPS performance when playing solo on Normal mode on the Convoy map. Playing solo isn't nearly as intensive as playing with friends on harder difficulties, and it did still have a drop or two to around 37 FPS when using a grenade or monsters being in my face, but it's definitely playable.
If playing solo, I would probably recommend keeping the game at XeSS Balanced with everything on low and a 40 FPS framerate lock. I would consider the game very playable like this, and while there may still be slight drops, I would consider it a solid experience. I noticed that some menus are also white instead of black, and it did hurt my eyes, but the rest of the game looks great.
To do a stress test, I had one of our other writers, Oliver, join me in a match on the highest difficulty in multiple maps, and there were definitely more drops. It did stay above 30 FPS, but it was never as bad as it could get. If you are playing with a full party of six people on the highest difficulty, I could see it dropping below 30 in some cases. The intense action mixed with hundreds of enemies can be a little too extreme for the Deck, but it still played a lot better than I expected.
I also recommend using Steam Input to bind the Down D-Pad button to one of the Deck's back buttons. This will make using the syringe to heal up significantly easier. It's still a bit weird playing this using a controller, nothing will beat playing first-person shooters on a keyboard + mouse, but it's definitely do-able.
Generally, I would consider the game playable on the Steam Deck. If playing solo, 40 FPS will be the sweet spot, while playing on higher difficulties with friends may need a 30 FPS cap for stability. All of this is done in the lowest settings since the game is still very power-hungry. This is also one of those games where I did enjoy playing without a framerate cap, and it felt pretty smooth most of the time, but for stability purposes, a 30 or 40 cap is the way to go.
The game does have a specific accessibility tab, which covers different color-blind modes and toggles for subtitles, screen shake, and camera bobbing. We can also toggle crossplay, different parts of the UI, crouching and aiming down sights, inverted controls, and audio sliders. We can also rebind controls in-game.
It doesn't support 16:10 resolutions, but it has solid controller and cloud save support. There are HDR settings, and it does recognize the OLED screen! The game can be played offline, but it may not carry over progress.
Killing Floor 3 is bloody, gorgeous, and so much fun to play. The gunplay feels impactful and tight, with fewer limitations for the weapons you want to use. The classic Killing Floor gameplay still holds up even today, and the updated visuals and dismemberment system make each shot count. While it can be a grind, I ultimately love the new weapon mod system and how I can create my own loadouts of each gun to be what I want. The character cosmetics and hub are a little disappointing, but they don't harm the overall experience.
It's also surprisingly playable on the Steam Deck, which I found interesting. I didn't expect it to be playable, but disable Lumen and we have a very solid-performing experience. It's not going to hit 60 FPS, but it will be able to stick above 40 when playing solo and 30 when playing with friends.
Killing Floor 3 is everything I wanted it to be, and I can't wait to see what content will be coming next.
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.
La Quimera was provided by Reburn for review. Thank you!
It's rare to find myself at a loss for words, or at least a cohesive-enough sentence, to articulate my thoughts on how I feel about a given game. I found myself feeling that way in my first dozen or so hours with Assassin's Creed Shadows, for example, not quite knowing if I was enjoying myself or not, and finding myself at odds with mechanics and design choices, all whilst still having every conceivable urge to play more when the chance arose.
La Quimera, on the other hand, doesn't pose that same dilemma for me. It does everything in its power to coerce me into throwing the Steam Deck aside, or mashing Alt + F4, when I inevitably had to move over to my PC due to glaringly obvious and horrendous technical issues on the little portable that this time couldn't, and contemplating whether this game is egregiously bad or just outright terrible.
"The year is 2064, " says the nameless narrator as you start La Quimerra, developed by Reburn (formerly 4A Games Ukraine of Metro fame). "The collapse of superpowers and various ecological disasters have kick-started the age of the city states, often at war with each other, leaving vast swathes of territory in ruins, ravaged by fighting."
That's the extent of the story you'll be given as you set off on your merry way in this well-trod setting, seeing the usual cast of futuristic, dystopian-lite-inspired tropes as you begrudingly progress. There's little to excite in both the scenario and the setting you find yourself in, bar the occasional glimmer of untapped potential in an element in the environment itself. Again, everything witnessed has all been seen before. It should be noted that there is potential for future updates to expand, story-wise, for this now Early Access title, La Quimera was due to launch as a 'complete' game, so to speak, until the developer rescinded this expectation.
The writing and voice performances throughout show no potential or spark. It's immediately apparent that nothing of substance can be found from the opening character-spoken lines of "Can I mix you another cocktail?" "Maybe some mixed nuts?" "A back rub?". What could almost be seen as a caricature of pseudo-masculine bravado, commonly seen in films depicting war, all sense of irony is lost, considering the delivery.
The following opening lines are equally awful, bordering on infantile, with Mateus, our less-problematic Ant Middleton-lookalike Commander of the Palomo Private Military Company, ineffectively swearing to such a degree he comes across like a 12-year-old who's had one too many sips of their Dad's Shandy at Christmas. The two and a half minutes you spend with Mateus on the Borderlands-like bus opening were enough to confuse at best and disgust at worst, and the quality of, again, both the writing and the performances never changes one iota from that point on.
The moment-to-moment gameplay is a befuddled amalgamation of infrequent genre-defining games over the last few decades. It mixes and matches various stellar elements found in the readily apparent inspirations and instead opts to suck the soul out of every detail with clumsy implementation. Basic gunplay is the bread and butter of La Quimera, with your weapons of choice ranging from a sidearm, shotgun, or rifle. Each falls into two categories - "normal" firearms for the human enemies, and electromagnetic, for shielded/robotic enemies. Your loadout is selected before the mission, meaning the option for any flexibility and change mid-fight to accommodate your present challenge is woefully missing.
The level design throughout feels mildly reminiscent of some of the best third-person cover shooters around, but without an engaging core gameplay to make use of such an environment, it pales in comparison. You either move from point A to point B, usually through a long corridor-like environment, or defend a particular position, such as a rising platform, repeatedly. It's akin to the early days of Destiny, where the variety in public events was severely lacking, except this time it constitutes the entirety of the content on offer.
Various exosuit abilities, like those in Crysis, are also available, but the implementation is a cheap knock-off of the excellence derived in Crytek's 2007 masterpiece. The standard assortment of power-ups is present, like armour enhancements and cloaking, but the previously-mentioned lacklustre level design does little to lend itself to the valuable and enjoyable nature that such an inclusion could have. Improvements for said abilities can be purchased from the currency earned from completing in-game missions, but the differences pre- and post-upgrade are entirely negligible.
La Quimera is not a conventional looker, but it's pushed far beyond the capabilities that the Steam Deck can easily provide. My time throughout, a mere attempt at an hour, portably, was less than ideal, occasionally hitting a 30-fps target but falling into the low 20s more often than not. Specific actions would also further hinder the frame rate, such as throwing a grenade, resulting in a solid 9fps every time.
Slight frame stutters littered said hour, too, severely affecting the accuracy of any otherwise on-target shots. It's simply not recommended to play on the Steam Deck, with all my time from that hour forward having been spent on my PC. Were you to not heed this warning, mind you, you certainly wouldn't be physically able to play for long. The draw on the battery is so severe that you could only get a couple of hours.
There is a specific accessibility tab, but the only option there is Aim Assist. Otherwise, you can change volume settings, language, toggle aim and sprint, and invert the camera.
The game doesn't support 16:10 resolutions or cloud saves, but it does have solid controller support. There are no HDR settings.
La Quimera is a disturbed merger of what would be stellar components from many great games of years gone by, implemented in such a way that mercilessly rips the heart and soul of each element from its very core. Outright terrible writing throughout does nothing to remedy that lack of character, and what could have been seen as hilarious were the performances fully aware, it's severely lacking that self-awareness, only worsening the insipid experience further. Despite the perceived promise of further updates coming, considering the Early Access nature of the title, it's hard to see how it could turn things around to the effect it so desperately needs.
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.
DOOM: The Dark Ages was provided by Bethesda for review. Thank you!
When it comes to intense, first-person boomer shooters, it's hard to deny the groundbreaking work of DOOM. The series has come a long way from its 1993 roots, and now, the newest iteration of the shooter is here with DOOM: The Dark Ages. I was curious how id Software would follow up on the fantastic DOOM Eternal, and I found a familiar surprise of mechanics that brought me back to the good ol' days of DOOM, but with a twist.
The intense, gory, boomer shooter DNA is still alive and well here, and it's still just as addicting to blast through as it has been throughout the previous entries. Running around and demolishing demons feels so fulfilling, as it always has. There's something very satisfying about watching blood fly out when using the newly introduced weapons like the Shredder and Accelerator, and also blasting off entire chunks of their bodies with the old reliable Super Shotgun.
Even though I had favorite weapons, like the Ravager, each one had different uses that encouraged me to switch between them. The Super Shotgun for massive damage against bigger enemies, the Accelerator to deal with energy shields, the Shredder to deal with metal shields, the Chainshot for quickly dealing with Armor, and the Rocket Launcher is great for getting rid of bigger groups of grunts and dealing solid damage to the big guys.
We also have different melee weapons, which can give us extra health or armor, deal different amounts of damage, and always give us more ammo for our weapons. Melee weapons have charges and limited uses, but combined with our shield, there's always a way to demolish our foes in front of us, even when we run out of ammo.
Switching between weapons is a bit slow though, so making sure you're moving is essential. It's like that in every DOOM game, but with The Dark Ages, it's all about horizontal movement. Unlike DOOM: Eternal, the movement feels like the original games, where you stick mostly to the ground with minimal opportunity to be in the air. There's no air-dashing, no flinging yourself in the air, and no double jumping, just quick movements back and forth. You can sprint to move faster, but you'll primarily stick to the ground with some jumping over projectiles. I much preferred this style of movement over dashing through the air.
If you've played DOOM 2016 or DOOM: Eternal, you should have a general idea of what to expect gameplay-wise, and you will not be disappointed in the slightest. The chaos and gore you know and love have returned, and it still feels as bloody good as ever. I wish we had some more brutal finishers, but it doesn't take away from the ones there, and it is enjoyable to see demons be ripped apart either by our guns or the numerous melee weapons we can use. However, there are some changes to keep things fresh.
The biggest modification to this formula comes in the form of your shield, which has a multitude of uses. You can block projectiles this way, but you can also parry attacks and some projectiles, throw your shield to slice through foes or stun them, and bash into enemies from further away. It adds a new method of taking down enemies, and it's so much fun. It leads to a bunch of new ways to demolish tons of enemies in front of you, like throwing your shield to explode demons with heated up metal shields or bashing into grunts to explode all of them around you, and it leads to some pretty intense, wonderfully chaotic moments of shooting, switching guns, and taking out the shield to parry and bash.
However, there's one part of the shield mechanics I do not like. There are some enemies and bosses that can completely get rid of the need for movement. I stopped in my tracks, deflecting projectiles or parrying, focusing more on that over moving around. It led me to a couple of deaths, but I felt like some boss battles took movement out of the equation entirely in favor of utilizing the shield's parrying. It didn't happen often, but I found myself focusing less on it during certain fights.
Luckily, the upgrades and progression systems make using the guns you pick up even more worthwhile. Each of the 22 chapters has specific items and secrets you can get. These include Gold, Rubies, and Wraithstones, which are used to upgrade your gear at shrines. Each weapon has 3-4 upgrades, along with the Shield and Melee weapons having individual upgrades. The upgrades can range from dealing more damage or increasing fire rate to giving special abilities like overcharging your Accelerator to let out a burst of energy and deal massive damage. One of my favorites is with the Shredder, where if you throw your shield at a big enemy and stun them, you can shoot with the Shredder, and bullets will reflect and hurt others around you.
I had a ton of fun running through the chapters and completing challenges and puzzles to find all the secrets. They all appear on your map, so you can find where they are, but there's still some challenge in figuring out how to get them. It felt satisfying to run through the levels and find everything, and even though I was curious to see what would happen next in the story, I still found myself running around to find a new weapon skin, a random toy, or codex pages.
Some parts of certain chapters also have different gameplay mechanics, like flying around on a dragon or controlling a giant mech. They are much simpler to control, with mechs only having dodging and punching/shooting, while dragons can fly and dodge, but they are nice ways to break up the usual running and gunning. I never felt tired of regular gameplay and needed a break, but it's still a nice option, even if they are a bit on the simple side.
I was also a bit surprised by how open some of these chapters are. While some are more on the linear side, the bulk of them are more open, where you will run around in a larger area to kill everyone or find secrets. It made the game feel longer in general, which I appreciated, and there was still a good amount of enemies to kill to keep me satisfied.
While DOOM: The Dark Ages has a story, and it's interesting, it's also not something to write home about. It's a prequel to the previous two games, depicting our protagonist bound into slavery by the Maykrs to repel the demons from Hell. It does enough to tell an intriguing story, and it's nice seeing some characters like King Novik make a return, but I wasn't blown away. The story isn't deep or has meaningful motives behind it, nor are there any surprising twists, but it does the job to justify why we are slaying all the demons we can find.
I also love the darker, gothic theme for The Dark Ages. It feels like a mix between futuristic and medieval styles, with a sprinkle of magic here and there. The world looks hauntingly beautiful, and even in lower graphical settings, I was amazed by some of the details. The demons look gruesome, the weapons are gorgeously designed, and combined with the fantastic heavy-metal soundtrack, I had a grand time and felt more pumped up the longer I played.
I enjoyed the game so much that it made me wish there was more to do. You can go back to each chapter at will and find missing secrets and Gold, but there isn't much else to do outside of that. I liked reading the Codex pages and finding weapon skins, but I would have loved to have more reason to go back and play more, going through on a higher difficulty, or finding all the secrets. The gameplay loop is addicting, and I would take any chance to dive back in and play more, but outside of the campaign, there wasn't much.
Unfortunately, I was not able to test DOOM: The Dark Ages on the Steam Deck. I ran into a bug when I did that, which would crash the game. I believe this is possibly a pre-release issue, so I will make sure to test it again once it has been fully released to everyone.
Luckily, there are a ton of different settings in DOOM: The Dark Ages to toggle. There's an accessibility tab with options for environmental screen shake, whether the shield throw seeks enemies, weapon bobbing, aim assist, HUD and font scale, high contrast mode for the UI, and subtitles. We can also customize the colors of everything on screen, quick switch style, different visual effects, auto sprinting, volume control, camera controls, and rebind inputs.
DOOM: The Dark Ages is a fantastic next step for the franchise and a nice return to its roots. The horizontal-movement focus is easier to wrap my head around, and with a great assortment of weapons and the new shield, there were so many chaotic and destructive moments that I always found myself having a great time in the beautiful world. There were some moments when the shield would disrupt the flow of my movement, and there wasn't much to do outside of completing the campaign and collecting the secrets, but it's hard not to recommend the game just based on its addictive and refined gunplay.
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.
KILL KNIGHT was provided by PlaySide for review. Thank you!
Are you ready for fast-paced bullet-hell arena battles with tight controls and cool aesthetics? Well, KILL KNIGHT might just be the game for you. In this top-down action arena game, you'll be facing off against hordes of monsters as you vie for a score to the top of the leaderboards, with each attempt allowing you to unlock new equipment and perks.
At first glance, KILL KNIGHT might appear to be a survivor-like game. While it does share some similarities with games like Vampire Survivors, it differs in key areas.
Firstly, you don't gain upgrades during the round. Instead, you collect gems from fallen foes to upgrade your "Kill Level." It's up to you whether you absorb these gems to gain a powerful attack that can allow you to regain health or simply pick them up to increase your Kill Level, making your regular attacks more powerful.
The Kill Level is a key part of the game, rising whenever you pick up gems from enemies and falling over time or whenever you get hit by an attack. It's important to keep your Kill Level as high as possible, as it makes defeating enemies much easier and quicker, and you don't waste gems by absorbing them for health instead of raising your Kill Level.
This sums up the big differences between KILL KNIGHT and a survivor-like; it's all very hands-on. Every time your weapon runs out of ammo and needs reloading, there's a quick-time event where you must hit the fire button in time with a reload bar on the screen. Hence, your next ammo clip is more powerful, so you can dodge it, use a powerful melee attack that makes enemies drop ammo, and use your heavy weapon with the ammo dropped by a melee attack.
All of these mechanics combined make the game feel much more skill-based. This is a bullet hell, but your "power-ups" won't protect you from incoming attacks here. It's down to you and your ability to perceive threats and position yourself accordingly. The power of your weapons directly results from how well you've done in the round so far. If you get hit a lot early on, you'll have a low Kill Level and will find the round much more difficult later on.
The movement is smooth, and the game allows you to go exactly where you want to. If you get hit or die, you'll know that it was your fault and no fault of the game's controls or movement. I could identify what I did wrong on each failed attempt, either through panicking and making a wrong move, resulting in me taking unnecessary damage, or simply not realizing an enemy was there until it was too late. This is exactly what you want from this kind of game.
The enemies in KILL KNIGHT are also varied. New ones are introduced gradually as you progress through the round and the arenas, ranging from simple "follow" enemies early on to ones that will dash at you, fire lasers at you, etc. You'll need to avoid environmental hazards, such as exploding rocks and lasers that operate on a pattern, requiring you to dodge enemies and their attacks while paying attention to your environment.
I felt that the progression does fall a bit on the slow side. It doesn't have the serotonin kick that comes from receiving constant upgrades. Instead, you'll likely get a new upgrade every few attempts, although the upgrades are usually meaningful. The first one I got was a Revolver, which made my pistol weapon pierce through enemies, making it much easier to fight against a crowd and whittle them down quickly. Upgrades aren't strictly necessary to progress; a skilled player could likely play through a lot of the game without any upgrades; they just make it a lot easier for us less-skilled players.
Your main objectives in KILL KNIGHT are the grade you receive on each arena, depending on how fast you complete it, your score, and your performance on the leaderboards. You can compare yourself against the world and your best buddies as you compete in a highly skill-based and tense environment. Keeping your kill combo up, avoiding damage, and playing on a higher difficulty setting gives you the best score, and besides progressing from arena to arena, of which there are 5, this will probably be where a lot of your satisfaction comes from.
KILL KNIGHT isn't too impressive visually, but it presents itself in a fine manner. I had blood turned off on my playthrough just because it made the screen a bit more cluttered, and I found it easier to discern enemies with it off. However, generally, there will be large amounts of blood strewn across the arena, which will mostly be flooded with enemies and gunfire.
The sound is also a bit forgettable, but I suppose choices were limited when the entire game involves constantly firing a rapid-fire pistol for several minutes. The sounds aren't irritating, and that's a blessing. However, I found the mix slightly off, so I lowered the sound effect volume, as it can be hard to hear any music over the pistol sound.
I found KILL KNIGHT to be a very enjoyable title. It's tough, even on the lowest difficulty, but it'll reward your skill once you get the hang of it. The unlocks are pretty far apart, but each one gives you a feeling of more power and pushes you to keep progressing to the next arena. If you want a top-down arena shooter, KILL KNIGHT is one of the best.
KILL KNIGHT has full controller support, and playing the game with a controller is recommended. So, Steam Deck users shouldn't have any concerns about how the game controls and the bindings are all remappable. The game also supports 1280x800 resolution, so there will be no black borders around the screen.
There isn't much in the way of graphical settings, and due to the fast-paced and precise nature of the game, I recommend you play it at 60 FPS. So, I'm only offering 1 preset for you today.
Set the SteamOS frame rate limit to 60, and your TDP limit to 10W.
As I said, there aren't many graphical settings to adjust in KILL KNIGHT. We're keeping the resolution at 1280x800, VSync off, the framerate limit at 60, Anti-Aliasing set to None, and Reflections and Ambient Occlusion disabled.
The graphical settings don't make much of a difference to how the game looks, and we can save a few frames and gain extra battery life by turning them off. The game mostly hovers around 60 FPS with these settings, but it can dip into the high 50s and occasionally into the high 40s. However, these instances are rare, usually when firing a special attack. They're also unavoidable regardless of the TDP limit.
The game's power draw stays moderately low, around 11W-14W. So expect around 3 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck LCD and about 4 hours from a Steam Deck OLED.
Temperatures are fairly low in the 60C-65C range, with no fan noise.
KILL KNIGHT has a few accessibility options, such as disabling Screenshake and blood, options to make the cursor more visible, emboldening and making text clearer, and reducing UI flicker effects.
KILL KNIGHT ticks all the boxes you'd want from a top-down wave survival game. Tight controls, clear visuals, challenging but not unfair enemies, and unlocks to make you feel you are progressing. If you do find the game too challenging, there are 3 difficulty options, although all of them are on the tougher side, and even if you fail, you will eventually be able to unlock new upgrades to make it easier.
Performance on the Steam Deck is nearly flawless. There are some unavoidable frame drops here and there, but they are minor and aren't really noticeable unless you are staring at the frame rate like I was. The game controls well, and I can heartily recommend KILL KNIGHT for Steam Deck users.
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.
[REDACTED] was provided by KRAFTON, Inc. for review. Thank you!
[REDACTED] combines the top-down twin-stick shooter genre with the increasingly popular rogue-lite genre. Set in the Callisto Protocol universe, you play the role of a prison guard in the Iron Prison, where prisoners and personnel have been turned into crazed zombies and mutants.
[REDACTED] adopts the classic Rogue-Lite playstyle, where you'll need multiple runs through the game to succeed (unless you're very skilled). The game is split across 4 "biomes," and you'll be racing against certain other survivors to make it to the end, occasionally meeting up with them for a fight, which can be made easier by finding dossiers on the characters to discover their weaknesses as you do your runs.
The story of [REDACTED] is pretty much non-existent. The game offers short comic-book strip sequences to convey some story but doesn't explain anything. Essentially, the story is the same as The Callisto Protocol, based in the same prison where that game takes place, where prisoners are being experimented on, and a mutant outbreak has occurred. A story isn't particularly needed for this style of game, though.
This might sound like yet another rogue-lite in a long list of rogue-lites. But [REDACTED] manages to switch it up a little by providing a variety of ways to improve your chances on each run and a decent range of abilities you can unlock. You'll be able to collect different currencies to upgrade your suits and weapons, as well as general character abilities like max health, dash speed, and even the ability to revive during a run.
Combat is smooth and fast-paced. I've never played Hades, but it's probably not far off that play-style, where you must fire a few shots, then quickly dodge out of the way and fire a few more before the next enemy attack comes in. The game can also become quite bullet-hell-y later, with many enemies that shoot projectiles beginning to spawn.
Ultimately, the combat feels very well-balanced and fun to play. It rewards skillful and strategic movement, and you can regularly progress further each time you familiarize yourself with enemy movements and abilities, as well as the abilities you can unlock. You'll have access to a ranged weapon (Pistol, Shotgun, Assault Rifle, etc.) and a melee weapon. However, I used the ranged weapon 99% of the time, only using melee in an emergency if I had to reload and was overwhelmed. You can also do "slide kicks" by dashing and melee attacks and combo moves by stringing together melee attacks.
The game's main premise is to escape the prison, and you'll be doing so alongside other survivors seeking to get to the 1 escape pod remaining before you do. You'll advance from room to room in the prison, with each room you enter presenting you with a different reward at the end, clearly stated by a sign above each door.
Periodically, the other survivors in prison will trigger traps or upgrade the enemies you fight, adding more variety to the game, such as explosive barrels in the room, or all enemies will be shielded for that room. You can also do the same to your opponents, triggering traps to slow them down or damage them. Occasionally, you will encounter a door allowing you to enter a survivor fight against them, with the attacks you've made potentially making the fight easier. These are mini-boss battles and offer a good reward for beating them.
While there's good variety in terms of the upgrades you can get and the enemies you'll face, some parts of the game come across as repetitive. Namely, the world itself is fairly similar. There are 4 different biomes, but all of them are ultimately set in the prison complex, so you'll see a lot of metal everywhere. Aside from the enemies, you'll be facing; they also have little impact on the gameplay itself.
These 4 biomes in the prison complex represent the entire game, and even if you escape the prison by getting to the escape pod, that will just class as your "First Escape" and will unlock more upgrades to help other guards make their escape, you cannot upgrade your weapons until your first escape for example. So, while some rogue-lites may end when you reach the end of the map, you'll probably be at the end of the map of [REDACTED] in about 3-4 hours of playtime, but you're expected to finish the map multiple times.
While traveling through the prison, you'll unlock various abilities and upgrades for this run only, such as making your assault rifle shoot faster or making a lightning bolt follow your dodges/dashes so you can hurt your enemies by dashing through them. But in addition to these, you'll be collecting currencies such as credits, contraband, electronics, and more, which will allow you to purchase further upgrades.
Credits can be spent in Fabricator rooms mid-run, which often give you some health or potentially a decent weapon buff that's valid for that run only. Contraband is what you'll use to permanently upgrade your character, with buffs such as health regen between rooms or just more max health in general. Electronics allow you to alter more about the game world itself, so the "random" generation of the world is perhaps more in your favor. There are also other currencies for permanently unlocking and upgrading weapons and suits.
You'll also face a boss at the end of each biome. You'll probably fail these challenging fights the first couple of times as you learn their patterns, but they're a fun time, and I didn't get frustrated when I lost. It feels like a skill issue if you fail here rather than being the victim of some harsh RNG. Defeating a biome boss for the first time will grant you valuable currency, which can be used to unlock more permanent buffs for your character.
Plus, when you die, you can encounter your corpse again, allowing you to challenge your past (now zombified) self, complete with the upgrades and equipment you had, in a 1v1 battle for some special loot.
In terms of presentation, the visuals on [REDACTED] hold up; they're stylized, and I like how the game looks. Plenty of effects will be firing off in intense situations, so it's probably best they kept the graphics fairly simple. Audio-wise, I found some of the music a bit repetitive, as it tends to play the same or similar music in each area, but it eventually faded into the background while I was busy trying not to die. Sound effects also blended in
Really, [REDACTED] is one of the better Rogue-lites I've played in recent memory. It might not be the longest experience, but I reckon you'll be done with this one in no more than 10 hours or so with the current content. However, it's reasonably priced, and you'll likely get enjoyment from the hours that it lasts.
[REDACTED] is a breeze to play on the Steam Deck. The game defaults to 1280x800 and has great controller support. When entering the controller settings menu in-game, it'll even show a Steam Deck diagram with all the control bindings if you're playing on a Steam Deck.
As the game runs great on the Steam Deck, I'm only offering 1 preset. It's pretty easy-going on battery life and looks great. I set my SteamOS Frame Rate Limit to 60 FPS and then put on a TDP Limit of 8W.
Essentially, you'll max out all the graphics settings, disable the upscaling that's applied by default, put Shadow Quality on High, make sure your Bloom is on, and you should be good to go! Here are the settings I used for reference:
At these settings, the game maintained a pretty constant 60 FPS, with no stutters or drops during actual gameplay, just at level transitions. There's not really much else to say—it's flawless!
The power draw is also pretty low, usually in the 13W-15W range. Temperatures stay cool, around 65C-70C, with no particularly audible fan noise. You should expect around 2.5-3 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck LCD and about 3.5 hours on a Steam Deck OLED.
All the dialogue in [REDACTED] is subtitled. There is an option to auto-complete Quick Time Events and a "Guard Mode," which seems easier, giving you more defense against attacks and making you stronger each time you die. You can also disable screen shaking and enable a "High Contrast" mode, which will (very intensely) highlight certain objects such as enemies, the player, and interactable objects.
[REDACTED] is a game the developers should be proud of. The combat is fast-paced and smooth, and the variety of upgrades keeps the gameplay fresh, even though the world is quite repetitive. While I wish the game had more content so it lasted longer, it is a budget title and priced accordingly. I wouldn't say no to some DLC that added a set of biomes to play through, though that might be difficult with the game closely following The Callisto Protocol's world.
As far as how [REDACTED] plays on the Steam Deck, I can't offer any criticisms here. The game is basically flawless. The controls work well, the graphics can be run on their highest settings, and we can keep a modest TDP limit, all of which make [REDACTED] a great game to play on your Steam Deck.
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.
MechWarrior 5: Clans was provided by Piranha Games Inc. for review. Thank you!
The MechWarrior franchise had been on a bit of a hiatus until recently, with the last clan-focused entry having released in 1995, but now we are back. If you're like me, you may have only played the more recent MechAssault games, with 3 of them being released after MechWarrior 4. But MechWarrior is a whole different breed of game, whereas the MechAssault games are arcadey in nature, MechWarrior leans heavily into realism, presenting us with a Mech Simulation, something we don't get to see too often.
MechWarrior, MechAssault, and other assorted game series and novels are all set in the "BattleTech Universe." As such, many of the events happening have already happened before, and MechWarrior 5: Clans puts a new perspective on it. In this case, you are viewing it from the perspective of a Star Commander (essentially a Squad Leader) among the Snake Jaguar clan, one of the clans that are waging war against the 5 Houses of the Inner Sphere.
And if you have followed the other games in the series, this is the first to feature the Snake Jaguar clan as the protagonists.
A lot of exposition is left out in the game. Despite the story having plenty of cutscenes, these mostly focus on the interpersonal relationships of your squad and command. The overarching story is left barebones, other than the fact that the Clans left the Inner Sphere long ago to avoid a conflict but are now returning as they believe the Inner Sphere Houses have found them and will want to fight. I presume the developers expect you to be versed in BattleTech lore to fully understand the circumstances behind all of this, as it is not explained in the game.
The story's cutscenes are all pre-rendered and aim for hyper-realism. Unfortunately, while the technology used is clearly impressive, it leaves you with that sort of uncanny valley feeling about some of the characters' faces. There's something just not quite right about how they look sometimes, especially around the eyes, and it left me a bit disconcerted in some cutscenes.
Ultimately, the story gives me very Warhammer-esque vibes. With the Clans feeling like they are "righteous" and doing the right thing by invading the Inner Sphere Houses, you are left questioning whether that is the case. You don't get to hear anything from the Inner Sphere Houses, with nearly all dialogue being from members of the Smoke Jaguar Clan. Therefore, you are only presented with one side of the narrative, which is always a red flag. But, you're a soldier, you're there to fight, not think.
That being said, I did enjoy the story. The voice-acting may seem off in places, but there's also a "proper" way to speak in the Clans, and it's possible this stilted way of speaking was a direction the voice actors chose to follow. But in general, I give it a thumbs up.
But, strange-looking warmongerers with dubious reasons for fighting aside, MechWarrior 5: Clans presents us with fantastic Mech simulation.
The Mechs in the game feel heavy. This doesn't play like your average Third or First-Person Shooter (you can switch camera views); you will be sliding your mouse like crazy repeatedly across your desk to get your hunk of steel to look 5 degrees to the left. Movement is slow, which means you have to think strategically. If you're facing the wrong direction, that's valuable seconds lost where the enemy is striking you, and you cannot strike back. Even using your Jump Jets to gain height is sluggish and momentum-based.
This feeling of heaviness translates into the weapons, too. Whether you're firing your missiles, your Gauss Cannon, machine guns, or one of the many lasers on offer, each shot feels like it has an impact and does real damage, even if you miss half of your shots. Having your screen fill up with visual effects from your different weapons all firing off is pretty exhilarating.
However, firing weapons is where things get a little complicated. Your weapons are separated into Weapon Groups, and the first Mech you pilot has 4 Weapon Groups assigned: one for machine guns, one for a laser, one for missiles, and another for melee. Unfortunately, as my mouse has no side buttons that I can use, I only had LMB and RMB assigned to 2 Weapon Groups, meaning I had to use the 3 and 4 keys on my keyboard to fire my 3rd and 4th weapons.
This isn't too bad when you're using WASD to move, but it's probably a recipe to get RSI in the future. So I would recommend you get a mouse with some side buttons that are easily pressable for this game or another control method that has lots of accessible buttons. The game does have controller support though, so if you decide to use a gamepad, it should feel relatively comfortable.
The combat in MechWarrior 5: Clans is easily the game's biggest highlight. With destructible buildings and objects, plenty of different weaponry, a diverse array of enemies, and the ability to both lose your parts and destroy parts off enemy mechs, the game shines.
Most missions don't offer you a chance to repair during them, so you'll want to play to your strengths. Have a laser setup that's long-ranged? You're best off hanging back and picking off enemies before they close in to minimize the damage you take. But if you're equipped with close-range machine guns, use buildings and terrain as cover to get as close as possible before the fighting starts, ensuring a quick end to the battle. Either way, at the end of the mission, you'll end up back on your ship, facing the consequences of any damage your squad took during the mission.
And now it's time to play XCOM! Just joking, but seriously, the base mechanics of MechWarrior 5: Clans are very reminiscent of XCOM 2. Upon finishing a mission, you'll be able to use Technicians to repair your mechs, including hiring more Technicians to do more substantial repairs. Any damage that can't be repaired is carried on into the next battle. Alternatively, you can buy a new mech, swap it out, and leave the old one in the hanger for repair.
The same goes for equipment and weaponry, which allows you to buy new gear for your mechs and swap out different components so you can get your load out just how you like it. Want to fit loads of lasers and heatsinks so you can deal mass damage in one blow? Go for it! Or do you prefer to fit machine guns along with ammo reels? You can do that too.
On top of this, you have experience points for both your Mechs and squad members, allowing them to level up and enhance their abilities and skills, such as turning rate (much needed), weapon cooldowns, and evasion ability. You can also research new technologies with your scientists, who function similarly to the technicians, and you can upgrade things such as weapon range, cooldowns, heat dissipation, and more!
You'll also unlock new mechs as you level up and progress through the game, unlocking higher classification of mechs beyond the "Light" and "Medium" mechs you start with, which essentially allows for more "tonnage," meaning more equipment and weapons can be fitted to them.
In some ways, MechWarrior 5: Clans is an in-depth Mech sim. The game aims for realism on all fronts, aiming for photo-realism with its pre-rendered cutscenes, realistic physics for its mechs, and a comprehensive system of upgrades and equipment load-outs to back it all up.
The game also has a 5 player co-op mode, letting you play through the story with up to 4 friends taking the place of your squad members. However, if you are playing alone, you will have AI on your team. Unfortunately, the AI is sometimes as dumb as a bag of rocks.
This is particularly noticeable on a stealth mission near the beginning of the game. While the friendly AI seems competent at fighting, they don't seem so competent at anything else. They did not attempt to hide themselves, thus triggering the alarm and making everything more difficult. While they do make some attempts to steer clear of alarmed barriers, they will sometimes just walk through them and trigger the alarm. It was infuriating.
As it is, MechWarrior 5: Clans is a difficult game. I played the first few missions on Normal difficulty, but even then, my AI teammates were still sometimes destroyed, and I got to a critical level once or twice. Veterans of the series will probably still face challenges from the hardest difficulty, and newcomers should be able to get by in Story mode or Normal if they feel up to a challenge.
It's also worth noting that the Story mode is the only mode in the game. There are no multiplayer deathmatches or versus modes, just the campaign, which you can play solo or multiplayer with up to 5 players.
I also experienced some crashes on occasion. They were always at the end of a mission and generally increased in frequency as I progressed through the game. Fortunately, the game always saves at the end of each mission, and the crash seemed to happen directly after a save, so no progress was lost, but it did require a reboot of the game after some missions.
The game is brutally difficult to run on Steam Deck, and while it does boot, I never got the game to exceed 25 FPS on the Steam Deck, thus making it unplayable.
Even on my PC, which I played on to write this review, which has an RX 6600 XT and a Ryzen 5600, which falls just under the "Recommended" system requirements, it still dropped below 30 FPS on the lowest graphical settings with FSR upscaling from 860p to 1440p. In extreme circumstances in later missions, it dropped to single-digit FPS for a few seconds here and there. This is likely a VRAM issue, as the RX 6600 XT only has 8GB of VRAM, and the game seems to demand more than that at times.
I'm unsure if there are some issues at play here, as the performance seems pretty dire, but one thing is for certain, I don't think we'll be playing MechWarrior 5: Clans on the Steam Deck in the future.
MechWarrior 5: Clans doesn't have many accessibility options, but it does allow you to disable camera shaking, aim assist, and subtitled dialogue in both gameplay and cutscenes.
MechWarrior 5: Clans is a Mech game for Mech fans. If you want a game that portrays these mechs for the whatever-ton steel beasts they are, then this is the game for you. The storyline takes a bit of a backstep, but the characters are interesting enough, and the gameplay more than makes up for a somewhat vague storyline.
There are some issues, such as the friendly AI doing some things that will make your life difficult, and the performance seems far worse than it should be, but if you have a PC to brute-force through the performance issues, the game overall is solid. I would have given MechWarrior 5: Clans an 8/10 for gameplay, but the severe performance issues and crashes lower it to a 7/10 gameplay score for me.
Unfortunately, the above-mentioned performance means that the game is unplayable on the Steam Deck, and given how poor the performance is, I don't think it'll just be a case of "a patch will fix it" for this one.
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.
Akimbot was provided by PLAION for review. Thank you!
Akimbot is a third-person 3D Action Platformer, and it takes inspiration straight from the greats. If you have looked at Akimbot in the past and thought, "That looks like a Ratchet & Clank game!" well, you wouldn't be far off. Ratchet & Clank is clearly an inspiration for this game, but that's not bad.
Without delving too much into the story and spoiling it, this is your fairly standard plotline. It feels like it's taken straight out of an animated movie 2010. An evil scientist has gone predictably crazy and is trying to acquire a vaguely named "Artifact" that gives its bearer ultimate power, which he will use to rule the universe. The "Algorithm," essentially the ruling power of the galaxy, has enlisted our two unlikely protagonists to defeat the scientist and protect the Artifact. The voice acting is on point here, with the characters sounding perfectly villainous in that cheesy way and others doing their part to fit in with these aesthetics.
The storyline is mostly predictable, but despite you pretty much anticipating where the storyline goes at each twist and turn, the relatively carefree and cartoony atmosphere the game creates around galactic annihilation makes you forgive it for following established tropes.
Our protagonists Exe, a mercenary with a wide array of skills, and Shipset, a drone that has decided to follow Exe everywhere (probably hoping to get money), with his main weapon being his sarcastic wit. The dynamic between the two characters is pretty decent, although 90% of the funnies will come from Shipset, whereas Exe can be frustratingly serious and angsty, you'll soon get tired of hearing him preface every sentence with "tch". But having someone serious to offset the vibes from Shipset is a requirement.
Movement is a key part of any platforming adventure, and Akimbot nails this down pretty well. You can double jump, dash, and make a melee attack, gaining extra height as a "triple jump." The game fully uses this set of moves, and you'll be required to use them all to navigate the perilous planets you'll encounter on your journey. It's pretty satisfying to make some difficult jumps later on. However, there were some odd collisions involving tree branches at several points.
The combat is perhaps just as important as the movement for a game like this, and luckily, it doesn't disappoint either. There are 8 weapons to choose from in total, with 4 "less powerful" weapons that are available on-demand, such as an assault rifle or sniper rifle, and 4 more powerful ones that require ammo, such as dual pistols and a laser. You can only have 1 of these equipped at any time, requiring you to find a shop in the game to equip another.
The "less" powerful weapons aren't far off the power of the more powerful ones, and ammo is rather scarce, with you only getting a handful of shots from a full ammo bar, so I barely ended up using my more powerful weapons, reserving them mainly for boss fights or very difficult battles. The more powerful weapons can be upgraded in the shop, but I feel like ammo usage should have been lower, or at least an upgrade to increase ammo capacity should have been on the cards here.
Fortunately, the less powerful weapons are still fun to use, and with the movement system being good, it enables fast and fluid combat. Enemy variety is perhaps a little lacking, with many enemies on the ground remarkably similar to each other, mostly standing still and firing periodically at you, with shielded ones appearing later on. Flying enemies spice things up a bit when they are introduced, though, and tend to be more mobile, requiring you to maneuver out of their way more often.
Akimbot presents itself quite beautifully. I wasn't expecting this level of graphical fidelity from the game, but it makes good use of Unreal Engine's features and can deliver a very pleasant result. While we can't quite take advantage of all of this on the Steam Deck, the game still comes away looking decent despite the compromises we have to make.
The sound design also works well. The game is often quite busy, and the sounds help to immerse you in the world. The voice acting is also good most of the time. There are a couple of odd-sounding lines, but generally, the voice acting gets a thumbs up from me.
Akimbot feels like a Ratchet & Clank game that has stripped some of its non-linearity. The usual 15-hour adventure is condensed into a 6-hour one. It is very linear, essentially mission-based, with no free-roaming or choice, but because of this, it can keep the action and story always on the move, which works well for it.
While most of the gameplay is on foot, you'll periodically be put behind the wheel of a car, in the cockpit of various spaceships, or even just manning a turret. While these set pieces break up the gameplay a little, they sometimes feel like filler. The car physics is pretty awful, with the car stopping after every jump. The spaceship sections can be needlessly long. After 10-15 minutes of flying through asteroids, you'll begin to realize that these vehicle sections are largely here to lengthen the playing time, which is a shame.
Also, water damages everything. This is a robot civilization, but the first planet is nearly all water. Why has the robot civilization built a holiday resort here?! Heck, even dipping the car wheel in the water destroys it. It's a bit overzealous and led to at least a couple of deaths just from accidentally stepping into a puddle that went above my waist.
Akimbot had a couple of oddities on the first boot, such as the Resolution setting being set to "Value," but thankfully, changing the resolution fixes that. It does support 1280x800 as a resolution, so Steam Deck users won't get any black bars around the screen. The game also has excellent controller support, so you shouldn't have any difficulties controlling it.
There isn't a huge array of settings, but there's enough flexibility to make the game playable on the Steam Deck. This is a pretty intensive Unreal Engine title, which surprised me, but luckily, with resolution scaling, we can get a decent experience from Akimbot.
In SteamOS, you'll want to apply a Frame Rate Limit of 60 and no TDP Limit.
In the in-game graphics settings, we're keeping the resolution at 1280x800, disabling V-Sync, Anti-Aliasing, and HDR. We are setting the framerate cap to 40, the render quality to 60%, the post-process quality to low, the shadow quality to high (the lowest), and the texture quality to very high. I disabled the depth of field and motion blur.
Akimbot still looks pretty good at these settings. I feared the 60% resolution scaling would cause the game to look pixelated and rough, but it actually looks decent. You can enable TAA to smooth out the edges, which has a minor performance impact, but I didn't like the soft image it produced, so I kept Anti-Aliasing off.
The frame rate holds 40 FPS most of the time; however, there are occasions when it will drop. Walking very near foliage can cause drops into the low 30s, and vehicle sections where you go near explosions can drop into the teens, as do some cutscenes. There's a short stealth section later in the game that frequently drops below 30 due to the visual effects, but we cannot do anything about that. Fortunately, these represent a minority of cases, and general gameplay is fine.
Power draw varies quite a bit depending on the enemies and the environment you're in. If things are quiet, the power draw is usually around 15W, but it can go up to around 25W in very intensive situations. Steam Deck LCD users can probably eke out 2 hours. Steam Deck OLED users might manage 2.5 hours.
Temperatures are generally around 70-80C, but in intensive areas, expect them to reach 85C briefly. There's always some fan noise, but it ramps up when a lot of particles are on screen.
There are some accessibility options in Akimbot. For one, all dialogue is subtitled, so you can enjoy the story without sound. There's also some gentle aim assist and the ability to invert controls. There are also 3 difficulty levels to choose from. Playing on the middle difficulty, I found it just about right for someone with experience playing a Ratchet & Clank-style game.
As a side note, the combat music stops playing when all enemies are defeated, as it isn't always obvious. However, the game also briefly turns slow-motion on the defeat of the last enemy that has spawned, which is a good signifier for those with hearing impairments or just playing with the sound off that the last enemy in the area has been defeated and you can relax.
As I said earlier, Akimbot feels like a condensed form of a Ratchet & Clank game, and that's great. The game is short, and most players will be done here in less than 10 hours. While there are collectibles in the form of data logs, they don't add much to the game besides backstory, so I don't think this is the kind of game you'd play through more than once. However, the shortened length keeps the story going, meaning things are interesting.
Good, fluid movement backed up by a solid combat system means Akimbot is a game I can recommend to any 3D action-platformer fans looking to embark on a new adventure. The dynamic between our 2 protagonists is good, even if it does take some time for Exe to lighten up a little.
As for Steam Deck performance, we are kept to 40 FPS and will still get frame rate drops occasionally. We're also running on low settings with resolution scaling, so the visual fidelity isn't particularly great. Still, the game remains perfectly playable, and at no point did I feel I died due to performance issues or lack of clarity. So I can give Akimbot the thumbs up to be played on the Steam Deck.
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.
