Suggestions for slightly older AAA games for Steam Deck?

The Batman Arkham games

The Witcher series

Fallout series

FYI: the next major Steam sale starts June 29th- I got all those Arkham games for 8 bucks last year, so make a list and wait a few weeks. You can join the rest of us who have 100 games bought for 80% off and 10% played 🤣

Hey thanks for the tip!

I'll 100% get in on the coming sale, my first Steam sale...ever.
- Welcome! And say goodbye to your wallet :D
  
  But seriously, I'm curious why this is your first. Always stuck to console before? Finally got some extra spending money? New to gaming in general?
- Enjoy! Glad you're liking your Deck it's really an awesome device. I would highly recommend using the wishlist feature on Steam. Add any games in here that sound good to your wishlist, and you'll get notifications from Steam when those games go on sale. There are pretty frequent sales outside of the big ones too so if you can only get a few games on the upcoming sale, don't worry because another one will be here soon enough.

Prey - Steam Deck verified (https://store.steampowered.com/app/480490/Prey/)

Also: the old Prey from 2006.
- One problem: It is not easy to legally obtain Prey (2006) anymore. I wish more old games were still available on Steam :(
- Ooohhh there are two preys - the release date of the newer one always felt off to me because I played the original back then. Are they related?

Horizon Zero Dawn is pretty good once you get past the first hour or so, not sure how well it runs on the Deck though

Works great! I've been playing it ever since I got my deck
Horizon: Zero Dawn is one of my favorite games of all time. I would strongly second this one.

Don't worry with the sequel, though, IMO. I couldn't even bring myself to finish it.
I was kinda interested, but it's 100 GB. That's quite a lot. I'd have to check if I have enough free space for it.
It runs terribly and is one of the prime examples why verification is broken.

Depending on your definition of AAA and older

Red Dead 2
Persona 5
Remnant
Witcher 3 (runs okay)
Ori
Knights of the Old Republic (sometimes the audio gets messed up when pausing)
Half-life 2

Are you asking specifically for older AAA, or is that more a description for good games that have good battery life on the Deck?

I've been meaning to play P5, and didn't realize it would be good on the deck. I'm not sure if I need to play 1-4 first so I might just give it a go and set it aside to do the rest if I get lost.
- I only played a little bit of 4 before doing 5 and it's been fine, so I think you'll be alright. Only thing that doesn't make sense is the Velvet Room, but I get the feeling that it's supposed to be mysterious and isn't explained in previous games.
- All the Persona numbered games are pretty much completely self contained, so you can jump in to any of them in any order (except the 2 persona 2s iirc)
- https://www.protondb.com/app/1687950
  
  Works decently but has some minor issues. You should probably set refresh rate to 40fps to extend battery life, as well.
- I hadn't played anything from the Persona franchise and still really enjoyed P5. Didn't feel like I missed anything.

I finally got around to playing the XCOM reboot entirely on my Deck and it was a fantastic experience. Those missions are short enough that I could pick it up, play a mission, and then put it down and do something, and come back to it.

Thanks for mentioning that, I sort of assumed that they didn't have controller support but now I see that they do and it works quite well too!
- Well, a major focus of Valve for a while now has been getting PC-exclusive games working well with controllers. The original Steam Controller, Steam Input, and the Deck itself are all geared towards solving that problem.
- Yeah, they say it is unsupported but it is totally fine. I just used one of the community templates for the controls and it worked like a dream. Looking forward to playing the sequel later this year.

I've been playing Mass Effect lately and it certainly lives up to the hype.

I am currently playing through Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, both are excellent and play great on the deck.

You asked for AAA but I will mention some of my deck favorites from the indie side too: Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, Hotline Miami 1 and 2 and Monster Train.

The Tomb Raider 2013 reboot is great and works really well on the Deck.

Thanks for reminding me of that, picked it up long ago but never finished it. Perfect excuse to get back into it.

Big recommendation for Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Just finished it on the Deck and it played fantastic. Will be giving Mankind Divided a go shortly.

I could never get into Fallout New Vegas, but for whatever reason playing it on the Steam Deck made it infinitely more enjoyable! I couldn't recommend it enough.

Oh, and Mass Effect is perfect too.

I had the same experience! I’ve started New Vegas many times over the years, but never got very far along. Playing it on the Steam Deck was fantastic.

You try Shadow of Mordor? Game is really good and goes on dirt cheap sales all the time.

You can never go wrong with Dark Souls.

100%! Dark Souls is challenging but incredibly rewarding. They reward pattern recognition and give you a ton of build options. If you've ever played Elden Ring, you'll probably enjoy the third game, too. 😄

All of the titles work well on Steam Deck too, with gold or platinum rankings on ProtonDB.

I'm about halfway through Mass Effect Legendary Edition and I'm loving it. Plays great.

If you enjoyed Bioshock... Prey 2017 is a super fun game. Better, I think, outside of a bit of jank.

Ever played Bioshock?

I have, thanks.

As per the body of this post actually. I have played and replayed on my Series X, but downloaded the first on my Steam Deck a week or so back and loved replayed it!

So atmospheric. Infinite is my favourite of the three, though.

My grip on AAA is definitely weak. but Stellaris works very well both in terms of performance and ability to work the interface; using and customizing a community profile recommended.

Would you say any of the DLCs are a must? I’ve been enjoying the base game and can’t decide which ones to pick up.
- Utopia is pretty universally agreed to be the most important DLC. Past that, Overlord is a good pick since they've made vassals something you actually want beyond RP reasons and it makes them much more effective, plus it adds hyper relays. I like Galactic Paragons a lot, a lot of people think Federations and Apocalypse are pretty essential, and at that point you're into picking and choosing what you'd like to have more of.

I've had a good time with Elden Ring on the Deck, it runs without a hitch.

Dragon Age Origins is a great RPG with tons of choices and a solid story.

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Hitman 3 comes with the Hitman 1 and 2 content by default now. It used to be separate DLC, but they bundled them into the base game a while ago. Unless you can get them at a decent discount I wouldn't bother trying to get codes for the first two games.

I started the Batman Arkham series and it's super fun, holds up just fine! Regularly goes on sale for super cheap. I got the whole trilogy for 10€.

Are they playing well on the Deck? I see a lot of protondb posts say that the games have a ton of crashes. Which is why I have avoided trying them out.
- I've only played Asylum so far. Finished the game with zero issues. I may have used proton experimental (because somewhere on protondb it was suggested). I had zero issues!
- I beat all three on the deck and I don't think I had a crash. I used proton experimental.

"Assassin's Creed: Odyssey" plays incredibly well on SteamDeck, looks gorgeous and has (almost) none of the annoyances of other AC titles. It's considered the best AC by many. I use it as a Skyrim replacement because I couldn't be bothered to port & maintaine 1.300 mods + Vortex on the SteamDeck.

The "Crysis" Remastered series also plays very well and is a fantastic shooter if you're into FPS.

Maybe Skyrim? It can be pretty fun modded. Same with Minecraft.

I've been having a great time with Yakuza 0. It runs great on the deck.

I just played through Dishonored, which worked great! Also Assassin's Creed 2 was a fun one to finally finish from the backlog. It was the first game I completed on the steam deck and enjoyed messing around with configuring the controls to take advantage of the touchpads (used the left one to select from the weapon wheel)

Metal Gear Solid V runs beautifully on the deck and has been one of the best games I've tried playing on it. The gyro controls for aiming make it a very satisfying experience.

Seconding this! Sitting in a chair and turning to aim is pretty fun. Makes me want to try a flight sim with it.
I really need to revisit MGSV I remember it looking great at the time but running fairly well.

FFVII Remake runs really well. Doom, Fable, DMC5, Control, Nier: Automata, Titanfall 2, RE2 Remake, Spider-Man Remastered all run very well too.

Not that it’s old but I have been playing God of War 2018 on my Steam Deck and it’s been an absolute pleasure. The visuals are still amazing and the game runs really well. Get it during a Steam sale to save some cash.

Thanks for reminding me!

I played Horizon, and actually forgot GoW was available on Steam Deck. Hopefully the upcoming sale has a good deal on it!

I'm having a great time playing The Saboteur on my Deck. It's not on Steam but if you buy it on GOG you can run it through Heroic Game Launcher's Steam integration. You can also run the EA App (yuck) version on Deck but it takes a little more doing, or emulate the PS3 version.

A criminally underrated open world game from 2009 where you play as an ornery Irish man fighting Nazis in occupied Paris. It's well written and acted and nails the aesthetic of the time and place. Plus it's just fun blowing shit up.

Shadow Man is excellent!

As a father of 2 the steamdeck has been amazing for me! It's allowed me to get back into games for short sprints.

That said I've been revisiting:

doom
doom eternal (not so old)
the Wolfenstein series
days gone

Halo the Master Chief Collection, runs great, looks great, and the Halo campaigns are just super fun in general. Goes on sale for $20 often too.

Thought I'd update a lil. It's currently $10. I think it's a must buy at $10.