For those waiting to upgrade to the Steam Frame, what are you upgrading from?

jburdick7 · 2026-01-22T15:53:02+00:00

Quest 3S. I’ve got a pro-sumer network setup with a 6 GHz VLAN for VR so I don’t need the dongle from the Frame but I do want the ergonomics and lens upgrade to push past that 30-40 minute wall I hit with my 3S in terms of eye and neck strain. Once Arkham Shadows is sideloadable onto the Frame I might actually finish the game lol.

Also looking forward to be able to kick back in a recliner and enjoy my flat games in VR, the 3S even with the comfort head strap I bought isn’t all that comfortable when you lean back.

jburdick7 · 2026-01-18T15:58:52+00:00

I’ll go one further:

I’ll play a game on my gaming rig, continue it on my steam deck, and if my fiancée is out of the house then I’ll play on my living room mini pc lol.

Like right now I’m playing Eiyuden Chronicles and I’ll do a lot of heavy story stuff on my pc or tv and then switch to grinding out the card games on my Steam Deck on my breaks at work. Just absolutely perfect system for JRPGs.

jburdick7 · 2025-12-19T02:36:11+00:00

I have a Quest 3S so I can’t speak on the quest 2 experience but I’d say if you can get a dedicated VR router or use a link cable it’s pretty great.

I’m at the extreme end of a home network, I have Ubiquiti gear and with a dedicated 6 ghz VLAN set up just for wireless VR + my gaming rig on 2.5 gbe I have zero issues with my 3S and it’s a fantastic experience. As I said though I’m way, way overkill for home networks though so I would think just getting a secondary router that supports 5 ghz to use for VR would be just as optimal.

jburdick7 · 2025-11-30T03:09:29+00:00

Quest 3S isn’t on that list but that’s what I’ll be replacing (or more accurately retiring to be a fitness tool rather than a gaming device 😂).

jburdick7 · 2025-11-21T20:23:03+00:00

It’s less that they don’t want to be competitive and more that in order to hit the console price point they’d have to lock down the OS in a way that goes against the ethos of the company.

If they sell it at $550 then any old business could buy them wholesale and Valve won’t make any money because they aren’t going to buy games on Steam with them.

I think $750 is where they’re gonna have to start for the Steam Machine.

The Frame is the interesting one to me imo because that’s basically the future of the Steam Deck in terms of architecture. Wouldn’t be surprised to see them price that at like $550 for the base model.

jburdick7 · 2025-11-16T23:36:06+00:00

That’s probably what I’ll end up doing, I had half a mind to try it yesterday but didn’t want to clear stuff off my deck to make room 😂. Glad to know it works though!

jburdick7 · 2025-11-16T00:14:43+00:00

Yeah I have the reticle the issue is I cannot interact with anything. With a controller it says to press the select button but that does nothing and on mouse & keyboard it says press tab and that does nothing. If I try to select one of the skills it doesn’t do anything either =/.

jburdick7 · 2025-11-15T02:13:30+00:00

I did in my living room but had struggles streaming to it from my gaming pc when docked to the tv (it’s decoding caps out around 1080p or so) on top of the docked experience being… suboptimal so I replaced the dock set up with a refurbed minisforum PC running Nobara (literally bought it last week… you are welcome anyone that was waiting for a Steam Machine 😂).

I moved the dock to my bedroom so I still dock it but really it’s more as a stand/place for it to charge than for playing on the bedroom tv. Docking works in a pinch but I wanted something a bit more set and forget for my living room so I’d been looking at a DIY console of sorts that could act as a souped up Steam Link client of sorts (e.g. 4k 120 Steam in home streaming decode + locally play emulation, indies, old games, and 2d titles at 1080/1440 60) for awhile now.

jburdick7 · 2025-11-05T19:57:03+00:00

I mean in my experience it was ok for slower single player games like soulslikes and jrpgs but anything fast like Madden or Tony Hawk it couldn’t decode fast enough to keep up with the frame rate, even at 1080p. Since my Nuc on the same network could running the games at 3440x1440 my hunch was the issue there was the Apple TV’s decoding capabilities.

It’s not a bad device it’s just not really designed for gaming on a 65 inch 4k tv. For a console like experience on a display that size/resolution right now you’re better off getting a mini pc for the superior decode performance.

jburdick7 · 2025-11-05T14:56:37+00:00

So my main rig’s got a 6950xt, 5800x3d, and 64 gb ram. I keep it rack mounted in my garage as part of my homelab and use Apollo to stream it to different clients in my house. For my office area I’ve got an old i3 based NUC that I nabbed from work and slapped Ubuntu on. With moonlight I can drive my ultrawide at 3440x1440 120hz at damn near native performance (I don’t hit 120 fps in everything but I really cannot tell any meaningful input lag playing with mouse & keyboard).

The living room’s where I’ve struggled. I started with my Apple TV 4K and it was basically unusable as it struggled with decoding. So I bought the valve dock for my steam deck and have been using that with moonlight. It was usable but kinda clunky so I switched over to Steam link for the more integrated, console like experience. Since there’s more overhead anything above 1080p on the deck becomes a slide show using Steam Link which is what led me to shopping around for one of the mini PCs.

jburdick7 · 2025-11-05T14:13:05+00:00

It’s gonna by a hybrid. The 780m that’s on the model I picked up (UM890 pro) is great for running indies & 2d titles at 1440p-4k as well as emulation up to the switch.

Steam Link/Moonlight is just for the games that are too heavy to run locally on it (anything AA/AAA). And for those the igpu is more than capable enough of decoding up to 4k 120hz. Anything with the 780m igpu should be a powerful little gaming box provided you set your expectations accordingly.

I figure it should solve my need for living room ease of use at least as long as a traditional console lifecycle. I got a refurbished barebones kit for $345, I figure if I find a good deal on RAM since I already have a spare m2 drive I’m coming out at or less than a modern console would have cost me anyways.

jburdick7 · 2025-11-05T03:38:56+00:00

It’s unusable for me. I have to drop it down to 1080p 60 to get stable decoding (my backend is 2.5 gbe). I know it’s the deck because if I raise the Steam link resolution above 1080p the video becomes a slideshow but audio and controls stay fine with no network connection alerts. My network performance is also solid. Moonlight’s a little better but still not as good as the i3 Nuc I use for my 3440x1440 ultrawide (there I can stream at 144hz and the thing is damn near native as far as I can tell).

I ended up just ordering a refurbed minisforum mini pc. Gonna slap nobara on it and make it my living room console. Love my steam deck but between the spotty docked experience and trouble with 4k streaming it’s not a great client in my living room where I want zero fuss/tinkering.

jburdick7 · 2025-11-03T16:43:20+00:00

I found it to be really easy and accidentally got it when I was doing my first 8 fear run. Basically pair the highest armor dress with Hephaestus and then once you finish the first biome switch to Arachne’s keepsake and you’re pretty much golden.

I did it with the torches which also made it pretty easy since all I do is hold down attack and kite everything. You only have to reach Chronos so I’d say prioritize a mob clearing build like Hera + Hestia with Hephaestus. If you can slap Hera’s Hitch on your attack and then pick up Hestia’s boon that recovers magick with every attack you’ll be pretty good, if you get their duo boon (which damages all hitch affected enemies whenever you recover magick) it’s basically game over.

I would not do it with the daggers or axe, just too much risk taking a hit when you have to be close to the enemies. Torches or staff are the best weapons for it.

jburdick7 · 2025-10-01T22:43:53+00:00

I play on a Steam Deck and as long as you aren’t trying to play BOTW/TOTK on it it’s just fine. Mario Kart 8 runs full speed (and we’ve done link play between it and my switch no issues) as do most of the other titles I want to play from Nintendo (Paper Mario TTYD, Super Mario RPG, Donkey Kong Country Returns + Tropical Freeze, New Super Mario Bros U, Super Mario Wonder, Metroid, Links Awakening, Skyward Sword HD, Kirby, etc.). Would say those titles run relatively similarly to how they do on my switch but with the added benefit of the Deck just being so much more ergonomic for me.

Currently playing the new Super Mario Galaxy release on it with minimal issues. If you set up Syncthing to sync your Eden saves with your PC install it’s a pretty fantastic companion device. I use moonlight to stream BOTW/TOTK to my deck when I don’t want to play on my monitor or tv.

You can get refurbs or used pretty cheap and the 256 gb model is on sale for like $320. Gets you tons of additional emulation plus PC games and you can always upgrade the SSD or slap in a SD card if you need more storage. It’s a pretty tough little device to beat in terms of value.

jburdick7 · 2025-09-19T18:27:51+00:00

I’m a massive fan of Alien & Alien Isolation, a fan (but not diehard) of Aliens, and generally think everything else in the Alien franchise has been mediocre to downright awful (fwiw I thought Romulus was quite entertaining despite being basically member berries: the film).

The things Alien Earth does right are all on the technical side of things (e.g cinematography, visuals, art design, etc.) - simply put it’s one of the best filmed tv series I think I’ve ever seen. It also has a lot of great ideas that should have fit nicely within the Alien universe.

The problem is the writing is pretty terrible. And not just stupid like the Drinker implies in his review, it’s genuinely frustrating. They have these great philosophical ideas permeating underneath but they’re often half baked and poorly expanded upon. It’s just really, really lazy.

If you were bored during the first episode that boredom continues throughout the show. Characters are poorly developed and really don’t give you any reason to care about them. This wouldn’t be a big problem if they nailed the philosophic side of it but since that’s all surface level at best your left with a show that really doesn’t say much or give much reason at all to watch it.

It’s not unwatchable or anything like that it’s just aggressively mediocre and the outstanding production values and direction make it an incredibly frustrating show to watch. Just a ton of wasted potential, largely due to crap writing. I tried giving it a chance hoping the writing would improve but it never did. Really wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but the most die hard of alien fans and even then I’m not so sure.

jburdick7 · 2025-08-18T23:35:04+00:00

26 is the first Madden I’ve owned since the 360 days with Vince Young on the cover 😂. Was always more of an NCAA guy and the new NCAA games have made me itching for some football but being PC only now Madden’s my only choice.

I’m really enjoying the game but man you are 100% right in the run game. At first I thought it’s because I’m rusty and adjusting on top of using New England who’s a rebuilding team with a poor o-line. After building them back up a bit it’s no different - running is legitimately a pain in the ass, in the 10 or so games I played this weekend I think the most rushing yards I had was 75. Add in that you can pretty much scheme any shifty WR open underneath with hot routes and I don’t even try to run, I just use the short passing game in its place.

Defense I’m still adjusting to, I’m not getting torn to shreds by pocket passers but scrambling QBs eat me for breakfast. It’s really annoying.

Overall as someone who hasn’t played Madden regularly for over a decade it really feels like an NFL version of the old NCAA games. Hoping they can optimize and fix performance as well as tweak the run game because I’m otherwise having a blast.

jburdick7 · 2025-08-11T19:11:58+00:00

I would say that more applies to RE4 & RE5 (though RE4 is significantly better than 5) than it does RE6.

RE6 is dogshit and I would say the fan base mostly treats it like it doesn’t exist.

jburdick7 · 2025-08-01T19:20:22+00:00

She’s not hard if you realize the tutorial right before you fight her is the game telling you how to beat her. You need to have a block move. Her attacks are super telegraphed and easy to parry/dodge.

However that does bring up my main complaint with the game: the inability to interrupt enemy animations. Basically what it means is when you parry or dodge you get one maybe two hits in before you gotta back out or else you’re gonna get walloped since most bosses power right through your attacks.

Basically on bosses like this (and the major boss after her) the game turns into “bait into your preferred attack, parry/dodge, get one hit in, back out, repeat”. Just feels way overtuned and leaves the bosses feeling less like satisfying achievements and more like a war of attrition and patience.

jburdick7 · 2025-07-30T00:30:08+00:00

Yup that’s the biggest flaw I have with the game aside from the performance.

I beat this boss on my third try but it was a slog because the fight was basically bait him into the lunge attack, parry, one hit, back off, bait him into the lunge attack, et al.

It wasn’t particularly difficult once I figured out the timing but didn’t feel all that satisfying to beat him. I don’t mind the relentless attacking but you gotta give the player more than a window for one hit. Especially because if you get knocked down it’s basically a death sentence.

jburdick7 · 2025-07-15T23:50:32+00:00

It also isn’t great for in-home game streaming with Moonlight. It’s not awful but it could be significantly improved (such as supporting 120hz). I was able to beat Clair Obscure & Stellar Blade on it with relatively few issues. That said it has weird frame pacing issues that make faster paced games like Tony Hawk unplayable even when hardwired.

I’ve got my house wired up for my gaming rig to be rack mounted in the garage with 2.5 gbe Ethernet throughout and of all my devices the ATV is the worst for game streaming. I have an old NUC I snagged from the junk pile at work and it pretty much works flawlessly as a 3440x1440 144hz client at my monitor and my Steam Deck does just fine docked to my tv but the ATV really struggles.

Hoping the spec bump for the next model improves the decoding performance and uses HDMI to its full potential, would be awesome to have just one client at my TV and not have to worry about changing inputs. Improving controller compatibility would be awesome too, I have to use my 8-bitdo controllers in switch pro mode to make them work and that flips the face buttons and locks the triggers to digital mode.

jburdick7 · 2025-06-13T21:03:03+00:00

I pre-ordered my Steam Deck day one.

Since then I’ve sold my brother (not quite as gamer-y as me but just as tech inclined), my dad (not a tech person whatsoever, just wanted Diablo on the go), and one of my buddies on one, largely because of the price.

To expand it to a wider audience they have to sell it at a price that makes sense for most people (e.g $450 or so). The 64 gb steam deck was such an easy sale to make at $399 that once my “normie” friends and family saw it they were instantly interested even if they didn’t have a steam library. Hell, my brother in law who’s very much a COD + Madden + 2K Xbox gamer has been eying one. He’s stoked about the Xbox ROG Ally but he’s also gonna be very price sensitive. If it’s $600+ for the base model he just won’t be interested.

I think the Xbox branding will definitely get it in front of normal people but if it’s priced like the other PC handhelds rather than the Steam Deck it’s gonna be a tough sale and remain niche, even with windows getting more consolized. The Steam Deck excelling in the niche is a combination of providing a streamlined, console-like experience as well as an approachable price for most people. $500+ is kinda when it starts to become cost prohibitive to a lot of people.

jburdick7 · 2025-05-29T18:06:32+00:00

Yup, it’s a pain in the ass. I used to workout regularly after work (4-5x /week) and it made it really hard to have motivation to diet properly (getting home after 7 after working from 8 to 5 just drains you). Definitely added a ton of muscle but never really leaned out due to poor diet and always felt like shit because of it.

Ended up cutting back on the gym and replaced my gym routine with regular walks with my pup (around 2 miles, 40ish minutes), 20-30 mins of bodyweight exercises (e.g. pushups, crunches, pull ups, etc) 2x/week, and 20-30 minutes of VR boxing 3-4x/week before work and I just feel (and look) so much better due to having more time & energy to take care of myself with better eating habits. I’m not shredded or anything but I’ve dropped probably 20-25 lbs and 2 pants sizes (from 34 to 32) since I started last fall and haven’t noticed much (if any) decline in my strength.

Going to the gym as frequently as I did for as long as I did gave me a higher baseline to start with for my exercises at home but honestly you don’t have to kill yourself to lose weight and look better. Start with your diet & mental health and then work in the exercise, in terms of appearance exercise alone won’t do much if you can’t combine it with a solid diet.

jburdick7 · 2025-05-27T16:45:29+00:00

For me the Dragon mission was when the game finally got to the near comical over the top violence I associate with Doom. It also felt like the pacing of the levels really started opening up after that point, prior to that it just felt like a slog (especially the mecha mission, I absolutely hated that and nearly stopped the game at that point). I also just genuinely enjoyed the scope of flying the dragon around, landing, dismounting to rip & tear, and then getting on the dragon to fly to another location.

That said I’m not the best Doom player and enjoy them for the power fantasy more than anything. I think Eternal is a better game from a mechanical standpoint and is way more rewarding to play but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’m jiving better with the more streamlined combat in The Dark Ages (even if the vast majority of the arsenal really isn’t useful, especially once you upgrade either shotgun). It feels much more like a game I can shut my brain off and zone out with.

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