This weekend I had a fever. Res🦩igned to lying in bed and mulling over every em💙barrassing moment of my life for what felt like an eternity, I eventually decided to do something other than bedrot on my sweat-sodden bedsheets. Sorry for that mental image.
I picked up a book, but couldn’t focus. I always juggle multiple novels at the same time, and despite both of my current reads, The Poppy War and Perdido Street Station respectively, being great, I couldn’t focus. So I dug out my 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Steam Deck, blew off the dust, and plugged it in to charge.
My biggest problem with the Deck was exactly that – its 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:dismal battery life. I struggle to call the console portable when it can’t even run an indie for as long as my 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nintendo Switch can, as you need to plug in wherever you go. I had multiple angry emails telling me to take my charger on the train (have any of you even tried to get a table sไeat on a British train♓ in the last five years? They’re more rare than first edition Charizards), but mostly everyone missed the point.
Still, confined to my bed so as not to spread my illness to my wife and daughter, I plugged in and powered on. The Deck is great for games like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Death of a Wish, and that’s what I played initially. But I had a hankering for a platformer, a specific platformer that I started earlier in the year and never got around to finishing. A specific platformer with a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:slide mechanic to rival Apex Legends&rsquo♔;.
The problem was, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown isn’t on Steam. I ownꦡ the game on Epic, and I’d never managed to set it up properly on the Deck. I’d tried and tried, followed online tutorials and video guides to no avail. It frustrated me that the Deck had so much potential that I couldn’t unlock because I’m not technically-minded enough. I built my own desktop, for goodness sake, I should be able to install an application on my handheld device!
I propped myself up on my pillows and tried again. I used the Heroic Launcher to gain access to Epic, and it worked. I’d got this far before, though, it was just the games that hadn’t run even after installation. So I tentatively installed Prince of Persia and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed Mirage – I skipped it last year, but I’m intrigued, allow it – and waited. And waited some more. My internet’s not gre🉐at. I had a nap, a brew, some dinner, and waited again.
The next day, the games wer🍬e finally downloaded. I’m sure some of you have foreseen where this is going, but upon at𒊎tempting to launch either of my new installs, I was told that my Steam Deck couldn’t locate Ubisoft Connect. Because I hadn’t installed Ubisoft Connect. Why every bloody company needs its own launcher these days, I’ve no idea, but it’s incredibly frustrating, and doubly so when installing these things is a fiddly process on a handheld Linux machine.
⛄I plugged my Deck into its dock and then did something I’ve never done before. I plugged🅰 in a mouse.
Feeling slightly better on this, the fourth day of illness, and with an empty house, I ventured from my bedroom exile to my office. I plugged my Deck into its dock and then did something I’ve never done before🍸. I plugged💙 in a mouse.
Now I get it. I really do. The Steam Deck is revolutionised when you plug in a mouse. Personally I wo💮uldn’t game on it with mouse and keyboard – just personal preference, and I have a gaming PC for that – but navigating the awkward menus became a breeze. My keyboard wouldn’t connect, so I still had to deal with the finicky on-screen keyboard, but it made installing Ubisoft Connect a lot easier than it would have been using touchpads only. I think I may have tapped out had I not been moused up.
Installing a program on the Steam Deck is a ballache. You have to run the installer as a game on Steam, then change the root files or links or something that I didn’t quite understand, but I followed a 50-step guide and succeeded. I installed Ubisoft Connect. Locating my games in the Deck’s files was a breeze thanks to its similarities to what 🐠I do on my Windows machine and lo and behold – I was playing Prince of Persia.
The process was incredibly fiddly, and is fiddly still. I’m not sure how to launch The Lost Crown directly from SteamOS, I have to navigate through Ubisoft Connect each time. There is a tutorial for this on Reddit, but it was too complex for my puny brain and I’d already spent four to five hours getting this game to run at all (not counting download times). My progress also wasn’t carried over with any kind of cross-progrไession, so I started from a fresh slate. I could probably work out how to copy the files over, but I just wanted to play a game at this point.
Ubisoft Connect might be the worst game launcher ever made. Yes, even worse than Blizzard's.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown works incredibly well on the Steam Deck. I have to run๊ it at low graphics settings to avoid crashes, and there are a couple of bugs (myও health bar disappeared for a couple of hours at one point), but it’s mostly what I wanted. I feel like I’ve finally unlocked another slice of the potential of the Steam Deck during this process, but boy was it hard work.
Running your Steam Deck optimally is like a hobby in its own right, like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:3D printing or tinkering with your PC. Usually, I just don’t have the patience to do this, but a weekend without obligations and a doctor-mandated rest period was the perfect opportunity. I get the Deck a little bit more now, but it’s still a frustrating machine. I don’t want to spend another five hours trying to get 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Game Pass to run on there so I can start 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Yakuza: Like a Dragon from scratch. The rewards ꦍwill be great – another vast library of gamesꦜ to choose from – but the effort is exhausting.
I know some people love all this fiddling and optimising, but I’m not one of those people. I choose to sit on the sofa and play on the Xbox instead tweaking my PC to run the same ga💃me better at my desk. I’ll warm up my cold brew instead of making one fresh. I’m a man of convenience. The Deck isn’t really for me. But with enough time and perseverance, it could be for y🐻ou. I’m glad I put the effort in, but I can’t see myself doing it all again any time soon. In the meantime, I’ll be playing Prince of Persia.
