Hitman 3 is the newest game in the rebooted hitman franchise. Taking the role of Agent 47, a man with a barcode slapped on the back of his bald head, you head to exotic places to assassinate elusive targets however you can. Feel like shooting them? Go ahead. Poison them? Be my guest. Throw a can of spaghetti? Oh you’ll be making Chef Boyardee proud. Using their new engine, each location is beaming with beautiful vistas and creative gameplay. And if you own Hitman 1 and 2, you can import the missions and campaigns into Hitman 3 for no extra charge! With all 3 games in 1 package, this is an incredibly fun game to screw around in.
Reviewing Hitman 3 was tough. This game actually runs really well on the deck out of the box, but there are a few caveats like high temps and battery usage. Through my testing, I found two efficient ways to play the game, a focus on temp/battery and one on quality. The main difference for these ways is the in-game FSR settings. Turning FSR on ultra quality blurs the resolution a little, but saves on battery a LOT while turning it off keeps everything sharp at the cost of battery.
The game can run 40 FPS pretty consistently at medium settings, 30 FPS lock actually kept temps and battery life down a chunk. This was most apparent when there are crowds of people. At 40, crowds could bring temps up to 80c and battery to 22W, while 30 would spike it to 70c and 17W generally. Medium in-game settings felt like a good balance of quality while still keeping temps and battery in check. I also found limiting TDP can mitigate some spikes, but it comes in most handy when shooting for higher framerates.
I didn’t experience any audio issues, but there were a few glitches I encountered. The mildest one would be some random black boxes appear when turning the camera too quickly, but they also disappear near immediately. When the in-game FSR is turned on, there is sometimes a visible halo around Agent 47 and there’s some ghost trails when walking.
I also have been noticing some framerate lag, but it isn’t picked up in the system so I believe it is the game’s engine and not the frames it brings out. I see this much more when FSR is turned off as well. I also noticed that, even though the game is verified, some steam deck button icons don’t show up in game.
There is a launcher for this game as well. You have to either use the touchscreen or set one of the trackpads to control the mouse. Though all of the settings from the launcher can be changed in-game, so I would just hit play and change settings after the game is launched.
Overall, the game runs surprisingly well. This is a new-ish release that still takes a lot to run, but the Steam Deck handles it like a champ. Being able to play Hitman 3 in a stable environment on the go, albeit with some compromises, still astounds me. This was a game I never imagined I could play on a portable device, yet here we are.
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Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Horizon Zero Dawn is an open-world action game taking place on an Earth recovering from a terminator-like event. Developed by Guerilla Games, you play as Aloy, the girl wonder with no parents, who has been tasked to save the world from a corruption taking over the rampant machines roaming the wildlands.
Throughout the journey, you will have to fight, craft, and explore your way to saving this world and figuring out who you are. With a beautiful setting, enjoyable combat, and a unique story, this game is definitely worth your time. I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic settings and open-world games in general, so this already checked so many of my boxes before playing. Just based on the game’s content, I would say it is a worthwhile purchase, but what about the performance on deck?
After my initial testing, I ended up feeling that 30 FPS was the way to go. While it’s possible to increase it, I felt a much more stable 30 still plays really well and keeps temps and battery further down than I expected. There were some drops still, but they were few and didn’t impact gameplay. Game settings wise, I ended up feeling a slightly lower than native resolution with low settings, shadows at medium, and FSR turned on in-game to Ultra Quality, was the best medium for stable performance and quality visuals. This also kept battery life around 2.5-3 hours with around 14W - 16W usage.
I did see some performance and battery spikes under certain situations though. The biggest one that spiked both was when traveling around the world fast. When running, the world would render more and this would cause spikes in battery, usually up to 17.5W, and some performance hiccups. The only other one I really noticed was when walking around crowded cities, but leaving the immediate area remedied that.
There thankfully wasn’t too many game-breaking bugs that I encountered, though there were two that stick with me. First, when loading into the game, I opened my quick access menu, the button with the ellipses, and it froze on that screen. The game kept playing in the background and I had to power cycle the device since no buttons worked to close it. Second, there was one time I was running around and fighting robots, but my right analog stick randomly stopped working.
I could still press down on it and it responded in game, but I could not move it around. I had to close and re-open the game to fix that one, and luckily, I had just saved the game. Both of these only happened once though and I don’t expect it to be a huge issue. There was some minor audio stuttering at a few points, but that could have been the speakers and wasn’t anything of significance.
Overall, Horizon Zero Dawn ended up running better than I anticipated. Getting around 2.5 - 3 hours of battery life while temps staying around 70c. Framerate was stable 95% of the time at 30 FPS and still looked wonderful with FSR on and resolution slightly under native. It was a blast to play this game as much as I did on the Steam Deck and I cannot wait to see how Horizon Forbidden West and even Marvel’s Spider-Man will fare!
Side Note: For those who have Power Tools installed through the plugin manager, make sure CPU Boost is turned off. When it is turned on, temps and W usage jump a lot due to the CPU overclocking. This is not necessary for the game though and just adds unnecessary temp and battery usage.
Need some help understanding how we got to our score? Check out our Guide to Steam Deck HQ.
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 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!
