It ran incredibly well on my machine and looked amazing. This is not a poorly optimized game in my experience. Could it be that it also ran fine on the machines of most reviewers?
Couldn’t have happened to nicer people. Reap what you sow.
If you’ve ever had to deal with a Gamergate dogpiling campaign, you are probably high as a kite on schadenfreude right now. You are probably knocking back a huge mug of crocodile tears.
As a more portable and budget-friendly alternative, consider a small emulation console. I’m very happy with my Anbernic RG35XXSP. Since the screen folds like on the original GBA SP, it’s absolutely tiny and fits into any pocket - without having to worry that the screen might scratch. Configure it correctly and you can close the screen to suspend games.
This kind of system would also make for a great first gaming device once your kid is around five years old.
Not quite. For starters, going by open bug reports and various forum comments, suspend and resume appear to be unreliable and buggy, especially with Proton - and based on developer reaction to at least one of the bug reports, there aren’t even any plans to fix this. This is an essential feature on a handheld gaming device, which means that this OS might not suitable for this device category at the moment.
Bazzite has potential, but it’s nowhere near as mature as Steam OS on the Steam Deck - and it might never be, because it’s meant to work on anything, lacking the close hardware-software relationship that Steam OS on the Deck has.
Also, since it’s using a different flavor of Linux as Steam OS as its foundation (Fedora vs. Arch), I would expect random games to not work or exhibit bugs that aren’t present on Steam OS. With Valve’s Steam Deck verified label, you can be reasonably certain that a game will work, but you can’t with other Linux distros. I’m basing this on reports on ProtonDB and from developers who have released games for popular distros, but then got notified of bugs that only appear on less common distros (read: not Ubuntu or Steam OS).
This doesn’t mean that you can’t have a great time with Bazzite. It might work just fine on your hardware, but there’s no guarantee this will be the case for everyone.
There is a life hack, which is so effective it might result in you lying down too much: If there is a wall right next to you, you can attach a basic monitor arm to it. I then added a tablet VESA mount, which allows me to either use it with a tablet or a small portable monitor that you can plug anything into, including games consoles, a normal desktop PC or the Steam Deck through a single USB-C cable - it’ll also get charged through the screen. Add a controller or mouse and keyboard combo and you’re golden.
This is also by far the most comfortable way to read ebooks, using a tablet with an OLED screen, ideally, with white or grey on black text and brightness set to near zero (in a dark room) and a mouse for scrolling.
Key to this is perfect placement of the monitor arm on the wall, since you can’t easily change it after having drilled the holes, so make sure it’s exactly where you want it to be. If there is no wall next to you, there are also various significantly more expensive articulated arms that attach to the bed, but they tend to cost hundreds instead of the ten bucks or so I paid for the wall mount.
The uncanny valley remains, but as a palette cleanser, I do enjoy looking at expensive games every once in a while. It’s like walking through a film set that clearly took months and lots of blood, sweat and tears by the artists who created it. For as much as I have always loved scrappy Indie games, this kind of splendor is one thing they can rarely provide.
I should warn you, the Steam Deck is incredibly bulky and heavy compared to the tiny 3DS - and even in my large hands, it never feels particularly comfortable, despite the good shape of the grips and with a thin rubber case I added to it. Definitely not the right system for you if you have weak wrists, simply due to its substantial mass. Using it for longer periods of time without resting it my your lap is not very pleasant, but resting it in your lap means I have to look down, which can result in neck strain. Lying down meanwhile, it’s a bit too heavy for the weight to rest on the elbows as well. Placing it on a pillow or bag (while making sure that none of the vents are obstructed) helps though, to the point that you can get fully immersed in playing, not thinking about the device at all, even on a busy train.
For an hour to an hour and a half, none of this is problematic, of course. There are also workarounds: Connecting it to an external display that has the right height can circumvent the issue, including those USB C display glasses that create a large virtual screen in front of you (haven’t tried those, but heard good things in combination with this device).
There are also much smaller, thinner and lighter alternatives to the Deck, but none of them have the advantage of being a fully integrated design like the Deck, where every aspect of the hard- and software was developed together and tuned to compliment each other and none of them have the complete backing of the largest game distribution network behind it. Most of them are running Windows, which, while having superior games compatibility, is not suited for a portable gaming device at all, lacking for example the ability to reliably suspend and resume games. With the Lenovo Legion Go S as the first, expect there to be more and more devices running Steam OS, but those are unlikely to have the same level of compatibility as the device this version of the OS was created for.
If emulation is what you’re looking for, the Deck is a powerhouse (up to and including Nintendo Switch is no problem), but not the only game in town. Older console games in particular run well even on very basic devices. Maybe all you need is a controller cradle for your phone, if you don’t already have one, or a cheap and cheerful emulation console like one those tiny things Anbernic is having a great deal of success with lately.