But what about the Asus ROG Ally?
With that in mind, we decided to look back at some of 2024’s biggest triple-A games.
Which games work well - and which are indeed “too big” for Steam Deck?
Image quality is solid with TSR and the game’s Lumen-powered lighting is perfectly intact as well.
However, outside of those changes - and some simplified water - it’s a broadly comparable visual experience.
A lot of other games run reasonably well, if not quite at that level.
It looks broadly like the console code, if obviously degraded in quality.
The game’s performance level is solid and relatively stable, usually reaching or exceeding 40fps.
It’s a reasonable, if unexciting, turnout for a cross-gen title.
Metaphor Refantazio is another title that basically works well enough on Valve’s handheld.
I ran the Atlus RPG with some pretty normal tweaks selections at native 720p.
Frame-rates though are reasonable, considering the game’s pedigree.
Frame-rates are sort of reasonable.
It doesn’t really drop beneath 30fps though, which is the metric we’re looking for.
Some games are borderline, likeFinal Fantasy 16where performance is a bit lopsided.
In lighter scenes with the onscreen controls, there’s a decent turnout, holding in the 40-60fps range.
However, more intense content - including most cutscenes - drop beneath 30fps.
Performance figures here aren’t great and as such, I’d deem the game basically unplayable.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is similarly fated.
Low configs with FSR 3 in ultra performance mode produces inconsistent gameplay with long stretches below 30fps.
That extends to a due or Unreal Engine 5-based epics from last year.
I wouldn’t expect good things out of either game though, even if they were running correctly.
Overall, the Deck just isn’t up to the task with a pretty wide range of current-gen software.
However, the reality is that ambitious current-gen titles often run very poorly, if they run at all.
I think testing on the ROG Ally in turbo mode gives us some positive signs.
There’s generally decent performance in the games I declared unplayable on the Steam Deck OLED.
More demanding games seem to like the Ally in particular, especially with its much larger CPU.
Unfortunately, a raft of modern PC games are indeed ‘too big’ for Steam Deck.
