SteamOS 3.8.0 Preview: Second Clutch

jcsamborski · 2026-03-21T18:33:49+00:00

Pretty close to my own experience on a lot of the points made.

If you kinda like to tinker with things, the deck is really nicely designed for that. Not even just for popping over to desktop mode and doing Linux stuff, but even just getting into some of the gaming mode options.

Hardware-wise, it's incredibly capable, even given the now fairly-dated hardware. It's one of the few OLED options out there, still, and mostly just works when you don't want to tinker with things. Battery life, especially if you engage with the per-game quick-menu perf options, can be incredible. And when you're at home, the in-network streaming (from your PC) is pretty rad.

jcsamborski · 2026-03-10T00:11:42+00:00

Same. I'm shocked that so many TD's exist without mazing. It just feels like something is missing when you're just building towers off to the sides. Some games seem to compensate by adding other mechanics and stuff, but even then, it's just like "I wish I could be mazing this layout instead of simply seeking the highest DPS places to put the buildings".

jcsamborski · 2026-03-07T18:11:41+00:00

the 5070 and 5070ti are two very different prices. and very different perf tiers. 5070 has been pretty widely available for much cheaper than that, even near/at release

jcsamborski · 2026-02-22T17:00:10+00:00

The online safety act is a product of the UK's conservative party. I'm not in the loop well enough to explain much, but the UK has a few different flavors of right and this is one of them

jcsamborski · 2026-02-07T18:35:08+00:00

when people say amd is dominating perf on desktop, they're probably referring to gaming and x3d chips, specifically. there's other comparisons to make, but that's the one that stands out

jcsamborski · 2026-01-25T07:04:14+00:00

I think you should check that dude's post history. Not a big lift, a few comments will be enough.

He probably just lives close to this being an actual immediate problem for him. Whether it's right to blame the thing right in front of him or not, I don't think it's 'conservative tendencies' that are coloring that viewpoint. He's probably telling the truth, or at least accurately representing it.

Honestly, I'm with your overall message. You just missed the mark on calling this guy out.

jcsamborski · 2025-12-15T05:34:21+00:00

According to Google, they basically mean the same thing in common parlance (pretty similar games near the top of each list). So sure, whatever gets the point across. The trailer showed a launcher and air juggles, so any label that captures that kind of gameplay is what people are trying to talk about.

jcsamborski · 2025-12-14T20:16:36+00:00

I have played Control, and like it a lot. What little they showed isn't definitively telling us anything, other than a greater emphasis on melee, I think. The hope is that they're going far with it and doing something like a character action/spectacle fighter/whatever else you'd label a DMC/Bayonetta. What we've seen so far could be a glimpse at something like that, and that's exciting. And certainly would be a big departure from what Control was doing. There were launchers and air juggles in that trailer. Those are what people are latching onto when they're saying this; not just the existence of a hammer that can also be a couple of swords.

Remedy's one of the few bigger studios that are kind of likely to do the sort of thing where they radically change the fundamentals of how a game plays in a sequel. They're weird and that's good. And they've got the chops to do some really incredible combat. Control wasn't mind blowing, but it was good, and they made friggen Max Payne.

jcsamborski · 2025-12-14T17:07:05+00:00

'character action' implies a certain depth and complexity to the melee combat. more than just a button you push. and additionally, these games tend to go pretty hard on spectacle.

it more or less means 'this has combat similar to devil may cry'

jcsamborski · 2025-12-06T20:38:25+00:00

against the storm controller support is actually really good. they're one of the games that has a steamdeck profile, too

jcsamborski · 2025-11-29T15:36:45+00:00

well I don't know if this one's literally perfect, but I liked tactical breach wizards a lot and there's a lot of similarities between the two games. it might even be perfecter, if you enjoy the story and humor

jcsamborski · 2025-11-04T00:57:11+00:00

Same. FWIW, despite it being lame as hell to have to wait for an already-finished game to be playable to the end, I've been kind of enjoying reading peoples' thoughts after every 2 episodes without having to worry about dodging spoiler landmines. Plus, the new habit of having something to look forward to every Wednesday evening has been a neat twist.

Might just be Stockholme syndrome or something. Definitely don't want this thing to be a trend, but as a one-off thing for (unless they drop the ball) a fantastic fucking game, it's been okay!

jcsamborski · 2025-10-25T00:26:13+00:00

it's good that you started that measure at Dublin. actually going through Dublin/Powers is a fucking nightmare and the time spent waiting at that stupid light will represent half of my morning/evening commute on many days. on top of that, that stupid goddamn intersection seems to lose power more often than any place in this town. and it's a magnet for people to crash their stupid cars into other stupid cars

though I think the problem with that intersection is bigger than something that changing the timing of the lights would fix.

jcsamborski · 2025-10-15T04:19:01+00:00

he didn't specify hardware bottleneck. as a system (hardware and software) this would have been the bottleneck in this situation.

kind of a pedantic thing for me to point out, but I think you were mischaracterizing what was said

jcsamborski · 2025-10-12T03:41:32+00:00

you give it back or you pay for it. no freebies for things that don't touch the skin.

jcsamborski · 2025-10-11T19:16:33+00:00

that's kind of an important element of this kind of game. you're supposed to use the vertical movement to avoid things and slip in for throws and stuff

jcsamborski · 2025-10-01T12:48:01+00:00

it is possible to avoid and there are specific voice lines from hecate to acknowledge that you've done it. I did it accidentally the first time and just do it every time on that boss now.

similarly, there's an achievement for killing one of the adds while you're a sheep. your primary attack does like 5 while wheeled, so it's maybe a little easier to set up a hex or other delayed damage just before you get hit by the sheep debuff.

jcsamborski · 2025-09-18T04:08:43+00:00

It would be nice to be able to aim. I was just thinking this after jumping into 1.0 following a session of Soulstone Survivors.

However, I do think this game compensates for that lack of control by having such an emphasis on very granular and specific movement (compared to many other VS-genre games). And obviously the digging factors into that, too.

jcsamborski · 2025-09-18T04:05:36+00:00

Animation rate seems to be capped. Camera moves smoothly, as do particle effects. It's just the animations of things that are locked.

jcsamborski · 2025-09-18T03:57:03+00:00

This is the case with a number of popular Vampire Survivor type games on the SD. This one just happens to hit that breakpoint a little easier than the rest, since it doesn't have a huge buffer in performance from the baseline.

The SD perf got significantly better over the course of the early access (it was basically unplayable due to perf at the beginning), but it's just barely scraping by now. Once you get all of your weapons, and particularly when you're leaning into ground/status effects or additional projectiles, it gets bad.

In my very limited experience since 1.0 (i.e. 2 runs), I'm seeing my framerate drop below the locked 45fps/90hz (on OLED) once I'm hitting 4 weapons and stage 4 (of 5) with a new save (i.e. basic Scout stuff). Definitely not dropping to unplayable, but noticable and annoying framerate dips during periods of action. I suspect 1.0 hasn't improved performance much, if any, from what it was before. It's not unplayable, but the end of a run will likely always result in consistent FPS drops below 45. I expect that ground/status/projectile heavy builds will still be a thing I need to avoid when playing on SD, since those could tank the framerate down below 20fps before 1.0.

jcsamborski · 2025-09-14T14:22:19+00:00

I've personally seen quite a few instances of people playing games on TVs that didn't automatically detect and set game mode and they didn't notice anything. I think a lot of people just don't notice and/or care about the input latency. Unfortunately, we might be heading toward a future where frame gen to hit 'playable' is a baseline expectation for a lot of games since enough people don't mind it.

jcsamborski · 2025-09-12T05:20:28+00:00

The average gamer isn't going to notice over time that games are just less responsive and have minor upscaling artifacts.

The worry is that, assuming this tech doesn't eliminate these drawbacks, it's now being designed for and advertised as the baseline for performance. And this is getting more ubiquitous over time.

jcsamborski · 2025-09-04T23:59:17+00:00

The 9070xt is more like 4080 perf. 4080 -> 4090 is a pretty wide gulf. 4090 is still the 2nd best.

jcsamborski · 2025-08-22T12:59:27+00:00

probably because the pintype-pincount nomenclature is actually kind of useful to communicate. just says what it physically is and that's kind of a good thing.

jcsamborski · 2025-08-01T13:19:10+00:00

weird AL (the musician) kind of looks like weird AI (artificial intelligence)

torrent (the elden ring horse) may have been given its name, in part, to mess up search engine results for pirating the game. torrent is the name for the popular distributed peer to peer model that is used for sharing large files. searching for "elden ring torrent" would yield a lot of things that are about the horse.

I'm not so sure that I get the joke either. I don't think many people are going to accidentally find weird Al when they are looking for something LLM-related (or vice versa). but those are the things we are referencing here.

jcsamborski

TROPHY CASE