I will admit that I have never been a fan of game streaming, I think this stems from the fact that in its infancy (and I believe it’s still very much in its infancy) the structure wasn’t stable enough, coupled with internet speeds where I am not being great, it didn’t really make for an enjoyable experience.
I’ve always been sceptical of streaming my game, especially since my early experiences of it weren’t great. I always had connection drops, the game would go blurry, it was just frustrating.
When Sony launched the PS Portal, which was a pure streaming device for your PS5, so not a separate system like the PS Vita (Wheres my Vita 2 Sony?), it was more of an accessory, to start with you needed a PS5 before they added the streaming beta from PS+ Premium to it.
I have to admit, I had my serious doubts about, my experience with streaming hadn’t been good and I couldn’t see (for me anyway) the benefits of having one. However, my wife decided to surprise me with one, as I had been trying out Xbox Cloud Streaming as well as streaming my PS5 to my phone, and the smaller screen doesn’t really make for good longer sessions of gaming.
The Steam Deck is a very flexible device and one of the things that you can do with it is install Windows onto it.
Now, I'm going to get right into the meat of the article and give my pros and cons behind having Windows installed on the Steam Deck.
Flexibility is one of the main pros for me, when Windows is installed on the system it allows a lot of freedom. You can download and install other game launchers such as Ubisoft Connect, BattleNet, Epic Games etc. I liked this, because of the free games which I've picked up over on Epic Games store. However, there is a way to download these games through desktop mode on SteamOS using Lutris or Heroic Games Launcher, but I have to admit, I haven't had much joy with getting games launching or working smoothly using this method.
Having Windows installed also allows you to play games which might not be possible through SteamOS due to Anti Cheat not being compatible with Linux, so games like Destiny 2, Modern Warfare 2, FIFA 23, are all playable on Steam Deck when Windows is installed.
Ever since the Steam Deck was announced it had always piqued my interest, the ability to play my steam library handheld and wherever I wanted was a massive draw. Another draw for me was that games tended to be cheaper on steam and there wasn’t a subscription to pay to play online. Win win I thought. When the Steam Deck eventually launched I didn’t have the funds available to be one of the first in the queue to get on, so I put the idea on the back burner until I did.
When the original Dying Light was released back in 2015 it quickly became one of my favourite games, I played countless hours of it, had the DLCs and I even bought the game again on the Nintendo Switch (Which I will say is an absolute gem to play in handheld).
So, you can imagine my excitement when Dying Light 2 was announced and they showed that first glimpse of the game, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it and when it was finally released it was pretty much everything I hoped for.