How the Steam Deck Made Me Love Gaming Again

In 2022, Valve took the PC gaming community by storm with the release of the Steam Deck. A powerful yet handheld computer and console mixture that had only been done by smaller companies like GPD.

Since its release (website here), PC handhelds have been adopted by numerous large companies, including Lenovo and ASUS, with all handhelds having their own unique advantage over the competition. The Steam Deck LCD is best for the low price, while the OLED version is the best handheld for battery life. The ROG Ally X is the best PC handheld for performance, while the Lenovo Legion Go brings a Nintendo Switch feel with the detachable controllers.

My personal choice was the Steam Deck OLED, as I prioritized the battery life over the bonus performance the ROG Ally could offer. I sold an old gaming laptop of mine that was sitting around unless I travelled, and paid the difference. Little did I know, this was the best choice I had made in gaming.

The Deck arrived at the start of March, and from the unboxing experience, I was hooked. On first boot, I knew I wanted to do two things first that I knew the Steam Deck was good at from past research. First, try out Hades. Second, mod it.

Steam Deck OLED ‘sackboy’ game

Steam Deck OLED ‘davethediver’ game

Steam Deck OLED ‘bombRush’ game

The joke amongst PC handheld fans is that we mod the console more than we play it, and although I’ve spent way more than I’d like to admit messing around with game and console mods. The hours I have put into games because of this device cannot be ignored either.

I travel a fair amount, so being able to have a device that can run my Steam games that I’ve been purchasing since I was 11 was a huge plus. I could start a game at home, throw the Deck into my bag and resume it flawlessly on the way to my destination. But, even at home, I find there’s a charm to playing all your games on a handheld. I spent a lot of my childhood on a PSP, PSVITA, Nintendo DS, and 3DS, so the feeling of handheld devices was nostalgic.

The Steam Deck also opened my eyes to the world of emulation, where most of my hours on the Deck have gone to. Thanks to EmuDeck, emulation has been flawless on the device, and I like how I can pick it up and put it down whenever I want. Unlike on my desktop, where I have to exit out of the game so it doesn’t eat up my device’s power in the background.

With emulation, I’ve been able to go back to my childhood classics that I still own on disk, but don’t own the console for anymore. Games like Skate 3, NHL 14, and God of War raised me as a teenager, and thanks to the Steam Deck, I’ve had a new motivation to go back to these classics and relive the memories.

Before purchasing the Steam Deck, I was facing bad burnout; after all, I was one of those competitive gamers who couldn’t stop tilting in a solo queue in various titles. I had always used my computers for competitive gaming and handheld consoles for relaxing gaming. It’s a habit I’m slowly breaking, but I still enjoy my competitive games on the side.

But when I bought the Steam Deck and, after using it for a year, I can say it brought a newfound love for gaming. Since buying it and playing single-player games on it, I’ve been able to ditch some of the competitive games on my main desktop and play more demanding games, start to finish, like Final Fantasy 7. Without the Steam Deck, I would be staring at my large Steam library for hours every day before deciding to queue into a toxic wasteland.