Darksiders Warmastered Gets Surprise Patch That Improves Steam Deck Performance

If you haven't yet, follow us on X (Twitter), Mastodon, or Bluesky to know when we post new articles, and join our Reddit or Subscribe to us on YouTube to check out our content and interact with our awesome community. Thank you for supporting us!

It has been a long time since I heard about Darksiders. The third-person action adventure has this playing as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, who has been deceived into bringing about the apocalypse early. The first game in the series had a remastered version that was released in 2016, and after almost 10 years since its last update, it got a brand new, huge patch that makes the game significantly more playable on the Steam Deck.

This update really came out of nowhere, but it includes some big upgrades. We got a brand new photo mode, support for gyro aiming, and full Steam Input support. There were some bug fixes here and there, but the biggest improvement out of all of them is that the game now supports Vulkan rendering. Vulkan is a graphics API that is natively supported on Linux OS, which means that using it on the Steam Deck should result in some huge performance gains.

Most games use DirectX, which is exclusive to Windows OS. The compatibility layer, Proton, is what we generally use to translate Windows instructions to a readable format on Linux so we can play the game outside of Windows. This works well, but compared to games natively using Vulkan, it doesn’t perform as well. So, Darksiders Warmastered Edition should be running significantly better now that it supports Vulkan, and it really does.

Looking at the opening sequence before the patch, it would regularly dip below 60 FPS, with areas that went down to 45 FPS. And win the game could hit 90 FPS, it would immediately drop down to 60 to 70 once enemies showed up. After the patch, it was a smooth 90 FPS the entire time with the same battery drain. We could even lock the game to 60 FPS, which results in a lower battery drain and more stable performance. This is consistent across the board, and it is just wonderful to see.

Even in closed-off spaces, the new Vulkan version of the game is significantly better. There are still some very minor drops with big explosions, but it never goes below 60 FPS. This is a huge upgrade that came out of nowhere, and it’s pretty amazing to see. Hopefully, we will see updates like that for the other games in the series, because it will make them so much better to play on the go.

I also want to mention that I didn't have any cutscenes skipping, audio issues, or crashes during my time testing. This may still be an issue later on in the game, but from what I could tell, these problems have been fixed.

This update should also make it a better experience on the upcoming Steam Machine. The Steam Machine is significantly more powerful than the Deck, so this wasn't really a concern of mine, but if you want to push into higher framerates above 90, doing it with Vulkan is going to be much easier.

Darksiders Warmastered Edition can be purchased for $19.99 on Steam and is rated Steam Deck Verified.

If you enjoyed this article, check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that will 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 you covered!