The STALKER Enhanced Editions Are Great To Play on the Steam Deck - Preview

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A copy of these games were provided by GSC Game World. Thank you!

Tomorrow, the original STALKER trilogy will be getting enhanced editions, giving us a new and updated way to play the survival RPGs that blew our minds when they initially released. With this update, we have tons of visual improvements like improved lighting, upscaled textures, better skyboxes, and some great advancements on PC like mod support and controller support. It's also going to be coming with full Steam Deck support, and I had a chance to test it out and see if it's really ready for portable play, and I would say it is.

For full transparency, I have only had a key for the enhanced editions of each game in the trilogy for 1 day, so a lot of my testing is towards the beginning of the games. I did find a big stress spot to test, but performance may be better or worse in later sections of the games.

The new enhanced editions look much better than the originals and feel refined for gamepads. Just from the opening in Clear Sky, I could tell the improvements were there when I saw shadows looking clean and smooth with any graphical inconsistencies ironed out. It was like looking at a classic with some new paint over it, and I was loving it. However, these new settings have a hit on performance, but on the bright side, we can still get fantastic quality and high framerates with some compromises.

All the enhanced editions perform around the same at each graphical quality preset, so I felt confident about my initial stress tests happening in one game: Clear Sky. I chose this since you start off in a town where the framerate is worse than the other two games. At the highest quality settings, we get drops to 27 FPS, more than I saw for the other games in their starting areas. So, my testing was done around this area and tested on the other games to see if the results were around the same, and they were.

I tested every single graphical quality preset in this starting town in Clear Sky and found some interesting discoveries:

• Max Settings with no FSR dip under 30 FPS
• Max Settings with FSR on Quality mode stay between 30 FPS and 40 FPS
• High settings with FSR on Quality Mode stay between 40 FPS and 45 FPS
• Medium Settings with FSR on Quality mode stay between 45 FPS and 50 FPS
• Medium Settings with FSR on Balanced mode sticks to around 49 FPS to 55 FPS
• Low settings with FSR on Quality mode go above 60 FPS but under 90 FPS
• Low settings with FSR on Performance mode sticks around 70 FPS
• Minimum with FSR on Balanced mode gets around 90 FPS with some minor drops to 88 FPS

Other areas outside of this town performed significantly better, but because I wanted to be prepared for the worst, I decided to figure out the performance for this area. I also discovered FSR is quite important here. With FSR disabled, we have this very sharp, sparkly effect on all of the bushes and leaves, which is extremely distracting. FSR enabled fixes this and blurs them out a bit, canceling that shiny effect that I despised.

There's also a very detailed list of advanced graphical settings to change, so we can refine it even further. I didn't have the time to play around with the settings and test it out in-depth, so I stuck to the presets, but I am sure we can maximize our quality with the right combination.

With both in mind, I enjoyed trying to stick to 45 FPS, so I went with Medium settings with FSR on Quality mode. The game still looks great on Medium settings, and FSR being on gets rid of that shiny effect. It also caps battery drain in many other areas that aren't so demanding, which can increase battery life and how long we can play on the go. This was my favorite way to play with a game that looks good and feels smooth.

Controller support also works wonders here. It feels much more natural to play now, and I can't see myself going back to the old controls that relied on a mouse cursor. The only problem I had was I couldn't figure out how to throw bolts, which is important to find where dangerous anomalies are, but it felt much more natural to manage inventory, aim, shoot, and explore.

Overall, I would consider this a necessary improvement on the original. The graphical upgrades iron out a lot of the kinks of the original releases, while controller support is a necessity. It is playable on the Steam Deck and very malleable thanks to the very detailed list of all the settings that can be changed. I preferred to play at 45 FPS with decent quality since that's a big part of the enhanced editions of the game, but regardless, I can say this version of the game is well worth playing on the Steam Deck, and I highly recommend it!

The STALKER Legends of the Zone trilogy’s enhanced editions will be available tomorrow and will be free for those who already own the original versions.

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