I have written a bit about my time with all these handhelds, and one thing has become clear to me: I am not nearly enough of a handheld gamer to have much care or concern for them in the long run, and I should save my money going forward. My limiters on enjoying handheld games boil down to, in no particular order:
You Need Lots of Leisure Travel Time: I travel a reasonable amount in state, but even when traveling rarely have the sort of free time it takes to pull out a handheld gaming device and play with it (and hey, I imagine every time I will have that sweet, sweet free time, but it's not nearly as often as I would like, it turns out); most of my travel is consumed by work related connectivity, it turns out.
This problem is not fixed by handhelds, but it does mean your handheld experience only needs to be as convenient as the actual time available. That means that, for example, if you only have 10 minutes free to play something light, you only need a device that accommodates short and easy play.
When it comes to quick and portable, any of these consoles could be loaded with short quick-play games, but the king of the pack is either the Switch lite or the Backbone (a device that turns your phone into something approximating a handheld console), with the Switch OLED being a solid contender as well. Hauling a Steam Deck or Asus ROG Ally around to play Asteroids or Pac Man (or if you're hip and modern, then Dead Cells or Blashphemous) seem like overkill.
Tiny Screens are for Young Eyes: My eyesight as I get older is just not as good with tiny screens. This does mean that really good tiny screens with clear resolution, readable text, and decent colors are more important to the experience, though. I know of others my age with distinctly bigger eyesight issues than me, so I imagine some of these handhelds would border on useless.
Of the devices I mentioned, I would say the Steam Deck and Switch OLED are great, chiefly because most games designed for the Switch account for small screen play (there are a few obnoxious exceptions). Steam Deck requires good judgement on what you load, but also has that magnify feature that is AMAZING. Switch Lite is an eye strain unfortunately, even though I love my tiny Switch Lite for its portability. Asus ROG Ally actively hates your eyes, but its higher resolution is very nice. If it had a magnification option like the Steam Deck does that would be much nicer....but its real problem is the tiny Windows 11 interface that is a pain in the ass.
Get a Grip!: Form factor is super important; third party products such as Hori's Split-Pad Pro attachments capitalize on this because they know plenty of adults have Switches and need something that feels comfortable to play with. To their credit, both Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally are very comfortable. So the Switch models lose out here, as they sacrifice ergonomic grips for portability and other features.
It Needs to Be Easy: the handheld is essentially a mini console, and its not something most people want to troubleshoot the OS on when you are flying of traveling somewhere with spotty internet. I am specifically calling out the Asus ROG Ally here, as its Windows 11 operating system has caused me no end of trouble diagnosing random crap that only Microsoft could be the cause of. The Backbone one is also a bit of a problem, unless you pay for their optional but useful Backbone app which helps make the product more useful, especially for streaming. The fact that so many ioS and Android games don't always play nice with it is a downside. So for Easy look to the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck (unless you do a lot of modding in Linux on Steam Deck, in which case Nope.)
It needs to not Overheat: The Asus ROG Ally overheats. A lot. It's bad enough that it impacts performance at times, and its placement of the MicroSD slot is adjacent to a major vent, so sometimes the device works fine unless you are trying to run a game off of the MicroSD slot. This is just bad design, and after two months with the Ally I've decided that problem alone changes my relationship with the device from "I love it despite and because of Windows 11" to "I grudgingly put up with this dysfunctional relationship because its the device I can play Destiny 2 and my Epic Game store products on with the greatest ease." I have never had an overheating issue on the Switches or Steam Deck. FYI I have had an overheating issue on my iPhone 13 Mini but that's pretty rare.
Final Verdict:
Asus ROG Ally is not worth it, unfortunately, unless you are willing to put up with its many problems with Windows 11 being suboptimal, its overheating, and its lack of a coherent user interface for travel (it tries with the Armoury Crate thing, but fails).
Steam Deck is worth it, as long as you don't dive down the Linux rabbit hole too deeply. or if you like doing that, then its a must-buy!
Switch OLED remains the most versatile device, as long as you don't mind being stuck in the available library of games. Rumor has it a new Switch will come out next year, so YMMV though.
Switch Lite wins for the ultra-portable element, but it loses for being hard on the eyes and not ergonomic. It also can't be modified like the OLED as the controller portions are not joycons, and are permanently attached.
BackBone One wins as being most portable, but I find the entire "gaming on my phone" experience, even with a decent controller, to be suboptimal and disengaging; it just ain't fun for this old guy.
That said, I still find simply pulling out the old gaming laptop to be a perfectly viable solution, especially if you expect most leisure gaming time to actually be in a hotel room. So....yeah.
A Brief 8/20 Update Since I wrote this: Everything I said above is still 100% valid, but I feel it worth mentioning that in the last 9 days I have done most of my handheld gaming on the Asus ROG Ally and that is primarily because the games I am currently focused on are either best to play or can only be played on its handheld environment (Destiny 2, Diablo Immortal, Diablo IV, Outriders...which I owned on the Xbox store and not Steam). I also have been dabbling in Assassin's Creed Odyssey on the Ally. I can't play any of those game on the Steam Deck, for the most part, without diving deep into the Linux environment and spending a lot of time trying to make some of them work. So...for purposes of my own circumstance, I guess the issues with the Ally are worth putting up with just for the broader range of games I can access alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment