Good recommendations so I’ll just add some specifics.
For whatever emulation route you choose, I recommend using a separate SD card just for emulation. Makes it really easy to just get it set up on an SD card, the games appear and they are ready. No SD card, no emulation finagling. Keeps your ROMs off main deck storage which even 512gb fills up fast.
I like emudeck, some don’t, ymmv.
I don’t think I saw SSH recommended. I use FileZilla to transfer files between my PC and steam deck - handy for emulation files, small-medium sized games. It makes the process of transferring and setup so much easier. I like FZ cause once it’s set up there’s a quick connect so you don’t have to remember the details.
Hardware accessory: I highly recommend the Deckmate, it’s basically a VESA mount for the Deck. I attached a battery pack, mini dock, and have mounted the Deck to VESA stands. Seriously, it’s worth it.
The suggestion on keeping a separate SD card just for emulation is great! I have an extra SD card, ready to do this. Do I just need to install EmuDeck (on the SD card itself) and then add ROMs to it and it’s that easy?
Also, as a follow-up question: do you know if using FileZilla/SSH is possible to transfer files between a Macbook and Steam Deck? I have a PC, but it is admin-locked via my work. But I’m trying to figure out the best way to use my personal Macbook to do file management with Steam Deck.
Indeed it’s that easy! Pop in the blank SD card, run emudeck setup and just make sure you select the SD card and not internal storage (it has a clear popup, hard to miss).
I believe FileZilla does have a Mac client, so it should work just fine for you! I just remembered though, don’t get confused with FileZilla Server, I think that’s unrelated for our needs.
FWIW, regular old SSH can to FTP/SFTP (internet file transfer, I just like having a good GUI.
A new Mario game blew the critics away? Who could have predicted this?
sarcasm aside, i’ve been sort of skeptical of scores on reviews of Mario games ever since the New Super Mario Bros series. Critics seem to be physically incapable of giving a Mario game a low score, as best immortalized by this videogamedunkey video.
totally. I’m sure that if you’re a reviewer reviewing the 3rd New Super Mario Bros game, and you come out of it feeling like the game was pretty mid, it can feel scary to post a review with the lowest score. It’s easy with something like an Ubisoft game, where the quality of their games has been in question for years now. But with a Mario game? We all know the internet is full of assholes that will tear you apart for giving a bad score to bad game from a beloved franchise.
I swear i watch more videos than just dunkey, but this recent vid of his actually captured this other side of the coin pretty well.
It's not even a Nintendo Curve (They might have a stronger curve), but the vast majority of the time these large review sites are all in the pockets of publishers (event invites, interviews, exclusive first looks, review copies etc) and in order to keep that gravy train going so their review company doesn't fold means to not bite the hand that feeds too much, even if you have to lie.
Eh, I don’t (Edit: corrected) think the big review sites can survive if they get blacklisted by one or a few publishers. It has happened in the past already. There are so many games getting released, that missing one game or even a whole publisher probably doesn’t really affect them. Same for the publishers, they get more eyes on the game, for pretty cheap probably, so it’s also advantageous to them as well.
From what I’ve heard over the years, the marketing departments on both sides know this as well, so most don’t take a bad review personally.
It’s the small, one or two-man channels that are probably more prone to lying about a game. If JohnNintendoFan69 on Youtube manages to get some early copies for upcoming games (or a sponsorship, whatever), they want to ride that wave for as long as possible, if their livelihoods depend on these things.
Eh, I don’t think the big review sites can survive if they get blacklisted by one or a few publishers.
Then those review sites shouldn't exist. It directly conflicts with their entire business model of "reviewing products objectively" when they can't review products objectively without fear of the hand that feeds getting mad at them for saying the truth
A review site that lies isn't a review site. It's advertising
I agree, which is why I think creating companies around subjective reviews by boiling things down to a score that people are expected to take objectively as a measure of a product's worth is entirely asinine and silly. ESPECIALLY when the general triat of capitalism allows these review companies to have their bias and subjections swayed by not wanting to bite the hand that feeds their comapny's existence
ESPECIALLY when the general triat of capitalism allows these review companies to have their bias and subjections swayed by not wanting to bite the hand that feeds their comapny’s existence
And my argument is, that a site like IGN, Gamespot, whatever, doesn’t care if they don’t get the latest Ubisoft game prior to release anymore. There are so many games coming out, that they are picking and choosing anyway. One less game on the pile, big whoop.
I mean, Kotaku apparently has been blacklisted by Sony, Bethesda, Ubisoft, and Nintendo at some points (not all at the same time), and they still exist.
Also, with how many freelancers run reviews for all of them, you’d have heard something credible over the years, that scores get artificially inflated to keep the publishers happy, but the only thing I remember is the Kane & Lynch thing at Gamespot, which lead to Jeff Gerstmann getting fired, because he didn’t change his score.
Review scores and review sites are dumb
You could argue that scores are outdated, because too many people just look at the number and don’t read the review and how this rating came to be. However, sites dedicated to reviewing games, still have a place out there.
For me I just don't get how anyone can realistically extrapolate a game's score to anything about the game itself. Reviews are fine, and people providng their own experience and interpretations of and pros/cons is fine, but then boiling that perosnal subjective into an interpretive score that somehow is supposed to convey they same information just makes no sense.
I do agree that most people just see a score and don't bother to look further past that, it's very annoying to see comment sections just talk about the score itself and how it might be "right" or "wrong".
That's the part I don't get, when people think that someone giving CoD a 6/10 is "wrong" because another reviewer gave it a 9/10. Like, seriously, who cares what the score is. I don't play games because the score is high, I play games because they sound interesting to me. I don't care that some website gave Death Stranding a 4/10 because they didn't "get it". I still liked the game and their review doesn't tranish that in any way, neither of us is right or wrong because not every game is made for everyone and people's own subjective tastes and stuff will obviously affect the kinds of games they like.
I just overall think people care WAY too much about some arbitary scores that ultimately don't mean shit. IGN giving a game I didn't like a high score doesn't mean I was "wrong" about the game, but too many people want to just use scores to argue with other people. Like bro, just go play the games that interest you, stop caring about scores
Scores are just too engrained in this whole review thing at this point, not even just in video games. There was a small movement a few years ago to get away from scores, but not enough big publications joined in, so it didn’t catch on.
just go play the games that interest you, stop caring about scores
Sometimes it’s not that easy, mainly if you can’t just afford every game that catches your eye.
Sometimes it’s not that easy, mainly if you can’t just afford every game that catches your eye.
I'm not sure how a review score will change that. The entire point of my discussion is that anyone who extrapolates a subjective review score as some objective quality measure is just wasting money.
It's better to play a game that interests you than play a game because it's scored high. "Scoring high" isn't a metric of what makes a game fun.
What I mean is even if a game looks interesting, but then I see it’s mixed on Steam or has a bunch of 5/10 reviews, I’d probably give that a pass. There might be a chance it’s some hidden gem or totally up my alley, but why risk it? I’d rather play it safe, and give the 9/10 game a chance, even if the premise isn’t that compelling.
Once you are able to just not care about the money, this can definitely shift. If it turns out that interesting game sucks to play, doesn’t matter, just buy something else.
What I mean is even if a game looks interesting, but then I see it’s mixed on Steam or has a bunch of 5/10 reviews, I’d probably give that a pass.
I don't see how letting other people's opinions on something you think looks interesting should matter. I play games for me, so I don't care if someone thinks something is a 1/10. If it seems interesting to me I'm going to play it, because that's what matters. Some of my absolutel favorite games are panned by reviewers and critics alike, and most of the games I can't stand are highly reviewed yearly rehashes. Scores meaning nothing.
There might be a chance it’s some hidden gem or totally up my alley, but why risk it? I’d rather play it safe, and give the 9/10 game a chance, even if the premise isn’t that compelling.
Because you're risking it with either purchase regardless, so why not pick the one that actually sounds interesting to you? Letting review scores bias your decision making on an entirely subjective medium of art expression completely takes the point out of art.
Once a generation you might get a Death Stranding 2 or something, and really enjoy it, but other times you’re stuck with the original Lords of the Fallen, because you like Souls-likes, and that’s your only game this month or quarter.
And yes, of course, just because a game is rated highly doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy it. Still, unless you have really specific tastes, the chance that you’re going to enjoy a highly rated game, compared to a mediocre one, is much higher, in my opinion, doesn’t matter if something looks interesting.
I’m also talking about a hypothetical, mainstream consumer here, because those are the ones that a review score is for.
A hypothetical mainstream consumer is the least educated person on the topic and is exactly the kind of person that gets swindled constantly by review scores. They're the ones that need to hear more than ever that following review scores as some objective truth is stupid.
Once a generation you might get a Death Stranding 2 or something, and really enjoy it, but other times you’re stuck with the original Lords of the Fallen, because you like Souls-likes, and that’s your only game this month or quarter.
And sometimes the original Lords of the Fallen is exactly what you want to play, even if everyone else says it's bad. That's entirely my point. General consensus of "good" and "bad" means nothing. Equating popularity and quality is dumb
Since I don’t agree with your initial premise, that review scores are faked or kept high to please the publishers, I also don’t agree that people are being lied to or swindled by them.
And sometimes the original Lords of the Fallen is exactly what you want to play, even if everyone else says it’s bad. That’s entirely my point. General consensus of “good” and “bad” means nothing. Equating popularity and quality is dumb
In a perfect world, where everyone has infinite time and money, sure, just do whatever. However, this world doesn’t exist, so most people probably want to avoid wasting their time or money. That’s why reviews exist.
I also think, most of the time you can equate popularity and quality to some extent. Not that the most popular are the best, but they’re usually at a decently high level. There are always going to be exceptions, of course, and not everyone will like everything.
I have heard (and I forget the source) that it is advantageous for reviewers to give a new game a good score, otherwise they might not be invited to review early-access games in the future. With that in mind, the best reviews might come after launch.
yeah this is an unfortunate part of the modern game review landscape. Probably the reason why many people just watch their favorite influencers for game opinions instead.
Pretty sure this happens a lot with the Madden franchise and their competitors. All of them are terrible American football simulation games, but if you want a free and early copy for your channel, better be nice to them, I guess.
I actually totally sympathize with that critic from your clip and don’t think there’s anything dishonest or otherwise cognitively dissonant about that review. There’s nothing I can spend more time complaining about than something I really enjoy because I naturally fixate on things that stand out about a given experience and the flaws are what stands out in something that’s overall very good.
I would never in a million years rate that particular game a 9.1/10 but that’s just me and the critic valuing different aspects of design different amounts.
thank you for your take! you make a valid point. Also dunkey clearly edited that down to every critical thing he said about the game and none of the positive things. The point stands that I have trouble trusting review scores on Mario games, and this is me speaking as someone that loves Mario games and is hyped for Wonder.
Chrono Trigger isn't much longer. Whatever; I'm not going to say this game in particular is worth $60, but 10 hour games are like an oasis in the modern games market.
Lol what. Chrono Trigger A is definitely longer at like 24ish hours for a playthrough, B has what 12 endings? Which adds replay value way past a single playthrough adding a lot more hours to it. C is selling for $10 on iOS, with updated content to extend the play time even more than the original including now a 13th ending.
HowLongToBeat has a median playthrough for Super Mario RPG at 17 hours and 24 hours for Chrono Trigger (rushed comes in at 12 and 16, respectively). Completionist times are coming in at about 25 to Chrono Trigger's 43. That's not 1/5th the length any way you slice it.
I didn’t say 1/5? I just said definitely longer. But I’ll say it doesn’t need to be 5x the price of Chrono trigger. I’m happy it looks nice and is a good remake but it should be like half that price at most.
Also, idk reviews saying 10 hours so idk if it’s easier and shorter with the remake or if they’ve already played it this time is shorter, or they’re exaggerating but 14 to 24 (which almost doubles if you want to play all the endings, and then idk how much the added content adds but it’s more than 0 hours.)
The person above you in this comment chain said 1/5. 24 hours to 17 hours isn't that huge of a difference, and you responded with "lol what" as though I indicated Viewfinder was comparable in length to Baldur's Gate 3.
They made a comment about general SNES RPGS, not Chrono Trigger specifically. Unless they edited it, I don't know if the fediverse has edit warnings for some instances.
Which is fair, most people tend to exaggerate on the internet. But the average does seem to be around double (or more) of SMRPG, and while that's not a metric you seem to care about, it is one that others care about.
Can you at least agree that it's short for it's genre/platform? Even if it's not by the hyperbolic degree one person has thus far stated?
The newest versions of chrono trigger also have additional maps, dialog, items, and side quests that weren’t in the original game. It doesn’t add a ton of play time, but it was nice to have some new things to do in one of my favorite games of all time that I’ve probably played through 15 or 20 times already.
Chrono Trigger is definitely longer than Mario RPG and twice that because of all the multiple endings.
Harvest Moon is 25 hours.
Earthbound is 30-35.
Dragon Quest 5 is 30 hours.
Final Fantasy 5 is 30+.
The list goes on.
The reviews for this game are saying it’s 10 hours.
Replaying large swaths of the game over again in order to get each permutation of how the ending can be different isn't adding as much value as you're letting on. That's not to say that Chrono Trigger did something wrong, but it doesn't turn a 20 hour game into 40 hours of value just because replaying the previous 20 hours can have a different ending. That's exactly the way that it's easy to make games "longer" and why I don't think a ten hour game should be some kind of pejorative, and we're still a long ways off from a 1:5 ratio in game length.
I think you alluded to this earlier, but I think we can agree that $6/hr is an insane amount to pay for a short game that’s just a remake, not a novel experience.
Imagine if Xenogears had a modern remake and sold for that amount. The original was about 50 hours to finish, so if we’re generous and say they streamline the experience down to 40 hours, that would be a $240 game if $6/hr is treated as an acceptable price.
Nintendo knows their fans will pay the nostalgia tax, though.
I think I'd say, in a world where games that used to be 10-15 hours are now 30-60 hours and much worse off for it, that dollars per hour is just not a metric I'm interested in using or setting thresholds for. So no, I don't think $6/hour is an insane amount to pay. I paid that for Resident Evil 2, and it was very good.
Chrono Trigger is at least double the play time If you go after all the endings and get all the secrets and do all the side quests, to say nothing of the opportunity for grinding to level your characters that you just don’t get with SMRPG since you max out at level 32 iirc. You can do everything there is to do in SMRPG in a day. A long-ish day, but a day nonetheless.
To each their own, but if you see an arbitrary grind to max level as offering more value, it's exactly why people like me find more value in games that don't have one, as that's the way that games can be arbitrarily made to be "longer" that I was talking about. I've played Metal Gear Solid so many times that I've easily gotten over 100 hours out of it, but that doesn't make it a 100 hour game. It's just a quality short game.
I’ve never actually made it to max level, I just grind until I can solo Lavos with Crono, which I can usually consistently achieve by around level 70. It’s not an arbitrary grind, I have a specific goal in mind.
But that's no different than me just replaying Metal Gear Solid or setting an arbitrary goal for myself in any other game. That's just you enjoying that game and wanting to replay it in some different way, which is fine. You can replay Super Mario RPG as many times as you like too. The arbitrary grind is more of a modern thing that developers derived from systems like Chrono Trigger's that have been around for decades that they weren't thinking of in Chrono Trigger, but they didn't add tons of content to Chrono Trigger by having a high level cap. You just chose to power level against the same content over and over again.
Right but there is in-game content that gives you an incentive to do so. If you want to get all the endings, you have to solo Lavos with Crono. And in my opinion it’s the best ending of the game, because you get to talk to sprites of the devs and it’s a really cool kinda 4th-wall breaking way to tie everything up at the end. Is it repetive? Sure, but so are 95% of the games that are coming out today.
For Steam in general: If you are not in a major hurry to get a game wait for sales. There are major sales a few times a year and smaller ones all the time. Add games to your Steam wishlist to get notified when it’s on sale. Check steamdb for price trends.
Check out protondb.com/ to see how compatible a game is with the deck (and Linux in general). The comments will usually have suggestions for getting the game to run well.
This (along with DK Country) was one of the games I was jealous of as a Sega Genesis kid growing up (then Nintendo from the N64 onward) and never really had much chance to play later. It’s nice to be able to finally play through it (legally) with a nice shiny modern coat of paint. As someone who never did play through the original, having this version be essentially 1:1 to it is appreciated, but I do also feel like they could have maybe added more for those who do know the original well. At least it’s not a Pokemon BDSP situation where the devs already had a much improved version to borrow from and just directly remade the poorly-received original versions.
I’m sure once us crazy fans get the chance to really dig into it, we’ll find lots of little things they did. The original game had alot of hidden easter eggs, no way did a new team spend that much time on it without adding a few of their own.
And some of the updates and refreshes of side content mechanics might make some of them a bit more accessible to a wider crowd than they were in the original, effectively adding content to the players that weren’t able to succeed originally. There was some pretty tough stuff in the original for people willing to endlessly practice.
Enable SSH access (but make sure it only accepts key-based logins - password based on a mobile device that might operate in untrusted networks is a bad idea).
If you enable SSH, you can transfer files from the PC over WLAN. (If you are on Windows: FileZilla is your friend.) Also, you can remote access the Steam Deck command line via SSH. (If you are on Windows: PuTTY is your friend.) That’s way less annoying than having to type longer texts (think: script files to launch emulators) with the on-screen keyboard.
I know next to nothing about PC utilization. I’ve mainly been a Mac user, but am familiar with PCs from using one at work. It’s not really admin locked so u typically can use it for personal things; but I admit that I don’t really know anything about SSH access or transferring files via FileZilla.
Is there a good guide somewhere that explains how to do this?
There are plenty on the web (for instance on handheld.quest), but I haven’t found a single one that contains all details…
So, I’ll just try to sum up the details here:
First things first: SSH stands for Secure Shell, and is basically an encrypted remote command line, but it offers much more features than just a command line, including, but not limited to, file transfer. The file transfer feature is also known as sftp, and generally considered to be the successor of the more well known ftp protocol.
The very first thing I would do on the Steam Deck would be to set a host name in the settings, such that you don’t need to use the IP address to address it over the network. Screenshot (I totally haven’t just found by googling).
The Steam Deck comes with an SSH server pre-installed, you need to enable it though. The following steps need to be done on a terminal, in desktop mode. The terminal that’s installed on the Steam Deck is called “Konsole” (if I remember correctly). Once you have a terminal running on Desktop Mode, you can enable the SSH server via the following steps (I’ll link the help for all commands I mention, so that you can verify that I’m not trying to trick you into doing something bad):
First you need to get administrator (“root”) access to the Steam Deck, what can be done by setting a password for the default user. Don’t worry, the Steam Deck won’t start asking for a password on startup, it’s just required in order to get admin access. The command to set/change the current user’s password is simply https://manpage.me/?q=passwd. While typing the password, there won’t be any feedback on the screen. This is normal.
Once the password has been set, you can use the https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/sudo.8.html command to run other commands as administrator. sudo will ask you to confirm your identity by entering the password.
To stop the SSH server again, you can use sudo systemctl stop sshd.
To enable autostart for the SSH server, sudo systemctl enable sshd (but I would not recommend this unless you disable password based logins - see below)
To disable autostart for the SSH server, sudo systemctl disable sshd
On the PC from which you want to connect to the Deck you will need some kind of sftp client. On Linux most file managers have sftp functionality built-in. On Windows and MacOS one needs a special program for this though (afaik). There are many, many alternatives here (just search “sftp client” in your search engine of choice), but the most well known one is FileZilla, which works on Windows, macOS, Linux and many other operating systems. I recommend FileZilla for two reasons. The first is that it’s open source (and free of charge), the second one is that I personally like it as a tool. At work I (have to) use Windows, and whenever I have to transfer files to a remote system like our webservers, our contractor’s cloud storage, or simply to copy a few music files from my phone to the office PC (yes, I am this old), FileZilla is the go-to solution for me.
If you have started the SSH server on the deck, you should now be able to access its contents via sftp. The default user on the Steam Deck is called deck, the password is the one you set earlier using the passwd command. If you are lost using FileZilla, there’s a user’s guide online.
Now, as promised, a few words on security and autostarting the SSH server. If you plan on auto-starting the SSH server on the Steam Deck, I would recommend to set up a means to connect to it without a password, and then to disable password-based SSH connections. The reason is that the Steam Deck, as a mobile device, will quite likely end up in insecure or otherwise untrusted wireless networks, and passwords are really not the most secure way of user authentication… Since SSH is a full remote access protocol, anyone who guesses your password and can reach the deck over the network could do anything on it. Given that the deck’s battery runtime is already short enough even if there is no bitcoin miner running in the background, you probably don’t want password based logins via SSH enabled permanently.
That’s where Public-key authentication comes in. You can configure the SSH server to allow users to connect without a password, if the users have access to a private key for which the corresponding public key is known to the server. To enable this, all you need to do is to create a public/private SSH key pair, and upload the public key to the SSH server on the Steam Deck. The exact process of creating those keys is again depending on the operating system. Here’s a guide about SSH key generation that includes instructions for macOS and Windows. On macOS or Linux the instructions are actually identical. You just need to open a terminal, and, if they don’t exist for your user yet, run https://manpage.me/?q=ssh%2Dkeygen to create the keys. Then you can use https://manpage.me/?q=ssh%2Dcopy%2Did to upload the public key to the Steam Deck. Once that is done, if your system uses https://manpage.me/?q=ssh%2Dagent, connecting via public key should “just work” - also in FileZilla. If you don’t use ssh-agent, you can try these steps in FileZilla.
Once you have confirmed that passwordless public-key logins are working, you can edit the file /etc/ssh/sshd.conf on the steam deck. You’ll need admin access, so the easiest way to do that is probably to run sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd.conf on a terminal (nano help). The relevant change is to replace the line #PasswordAuthentication yes by PasswordAuthentication no (here’s the help file for sshd.conf). In order to apply these changes, you probably need to restart the SSH server: sudo systemctl restart sshd.
KF1 was a huge part of my childhood, and I actually went back recently and started grabbing HoE achievements for the first time. Looking forward to 3 as well. :D
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