h0m3
Published
Locked FPS to 60, Half-Rate Shading and CPU to 3W.
This is a mouse driven game. Unfortunately I coudn't find any keymaps for this game but you can play it with the default layout and the right touchpad no problem. But the city started to get smaller and I didn't figured out how to zoom in and zoom out if its possible.
This game works really fine on the deck. Uses very little resources so you can play for hours. I set my deck to the lower 3W TDP and yet the game was locked at 60 FPS. Its a very lightweight game. The game does default to kb+mouse layout, which is perfectly okay but the controls are not clear anywhere, luckly they are very simple but some controls are still unknown to me since I've yet to play this game on a regular PC. Unfortunately theres no keymap that I could find, in game or otherwise. Its a shame that the game will not be sold after April/23 :(
Locked at 60 FPS and set TDP to 8W
You can even get a little more battery life from this game by setting it up to 8W which is plenty for a stable 60 FPS experience. This game has no graphical settings and nothing else needs to be changed for a great experience. Start to finish without a single issue.
Entered Ubisoft Connect in offline
CPU limited to 12W, medium settings without AA. Locked at 40 FPS / 40 Hz. FPS very stable. Good graphical quality and about 3 hours of battery life.
Ubisoft Connect will ask for your password EVERY SINGLE TIME and thats a bug. This issue affect Windows users the same way and for what reported on Ubisoft forums thats a "security feature" so they won't fix it. Anyway, to fix that once you've installed the game and open for the first time, the game wont open right away and you'll be stuck at Ubisoft Connect, before opening the game again do set Ubisoft Connect to offline mode, that way you can open the game without a password. Cloud saving also doesn't work even online so there's no downsides staying offline (recommend to backup your saves).
Cloud saving doesnt work
Randomly at the start of cutscenes the game will crawl to a halt and you need to do a force shutdown on your deck. But once opened again the same cutscene will keep playing normally. That happened to me about once every hour.
Once you "Quit to desktop" in the game you will go to a blank screen and need to force close the game trough steam. I suspect that Ubisoft Connect is open in the background preventing steam to understand that the game is closed but I cannot confirm.
Unfortunately Ubisoft DRM makes very anoying to play this game on any platform. There a quite a lot of commentaries on both Steam and Ubisoft forums complaining about DRM issues like having to type the password every time and cloud saving not work and Ubisoft doesn't seem to care much. Passing the DRM stuff the game itself runs very well with only some minor stability issues.
Lowered the TDP to 10W and set the game to High with 2x AA
Some text in the Pipboy is difficult to read
The game crashes once every hour. Then you go back to your last save. So, saving frequently is important. Downgrading to Proton 6.3 didnt fixed for me.
Honestly the harder thing is playing Fallout with a controller, i've tried to keep on third person but the game is design with mouse in mind and playing with a controller requires some getting use to. Im using VATs way more than im used to. Otherwise the game crashes every hour back into the steam deck UI. You can relaunch and it will load your last save but that may be a dealbreaker for some. Performance wise is very good, being an older game the Deck has no problem running on higher settings. Ive put on high with 2x AA and fixed the TDP to 10W. Got 60 FPS locked and more than 4 hours of gameplay on a single charge.
Set to low / medium, set screen refresh rate to 40 and lowered the TDP to 8W.
Played about 1 hour of Lost and Danmed without issues. This game engine is better suited to between 30 and 60 FPS, the same as the consoles that this game was focused. So i've compromised at 40 FPS / 40 Hz although looks perfectly playable at 60 but it will eat more battery. Settings where set mostly to low (again, to conserve battery) but the Deck has the firepower to go way beyond those settings at the expense of battery life but I don't think thats worth with this game, it doesn't look that great at higher settings even on a powerful system. At those settings total system draw was about 11W and it was very stable.
Crashed a couple times in my 8+ hours gameplay
I installed Epic version trough Heroic and it worked without a single extra step (besides installing Heroic itself), even the controller just worked. You have to login to your Rockstar account like any Rockstar game but it just worked and even cloud syncing is fine.
I've played about half the story on the deck, on low settings with only FXAA I get from 40 to 60 FPS and about 2 hours of battery life. Since its a 10 years old game I dont think its a good performance on the deck but its playable.
The game crashed for me about 2 or 3 times in a 8+ hour gameplay freezing the image and playing only the Radio song on the background. You can open the Steam menu and close the game then open it again.
Heroic Games Launcher version wont work
The game will run out of memory and crash the deck
I have the Epic Games Store version of the game, I've used to run on Heroic Games Launcher but recently a update in the game broke the compatibility, you get Error 134, there is a fix for that error but it gave me a different "Authentication Error". I've tried with Lutris and due to having a different setup process it did worked. But I've ended up manually installing Epic Games launcher directly through Steam and installing the game that way.
The major problem I had is the Steam Deck running out of RAM and completely crashing. The game starts at about 10GB of RAM used (thats combining SteamOS, Epic and Rockstar Launchers and the game) and slowly creeps when hits 14.2GB of main memory and completely lock and eventually reboot the deck. I could confirm that behaviour with my main system which has more memory and the game keeps using memory.
To solve that, i've disabled every feature on Epic Game Launcher settings besides Offline Browsing, including Cloud Saves because Rockstar does the cloud saving for you. That reduced Epic usage. I've also learned that two things make the game creep memory way faster, higher FPS and vsync on. So, i've disabled vsync and relied on SteamOS framecap to lock at 60. That seems to solve it. But for safety I've increased my Deck Swap Space from 1GB default to 8GB. That made the game behave at around max 13.6GB and I have a happy 3 hour session without issues. I think it will eventually leak to 14.2GB but if that happens I recommend you to just reboot the game every 4 or so hours to make sure.
Besides that the game run fine at most of the time locked 60 FPS (if you unlock it will run at around 70 to 90 actually and crash hahaha) with FXAA and all settings to normal at native 800p, going lower than that does not seem to increase performance. I have the occasional dips to 45, 50 with heavy open conflicts but that seems to happen no matter the settings. I had about 2 to 2:30 of battery life.
Set CPU usage to 5W
Small craclking in the audio
Without GinputVC the gamepad didn't worked correctly and I was unable to look in any direction but forward.
Most of the problems of this game are related to gamepad support, you can fix most of them using GinputVC but i've also installed other mods to make the game better playable. I've mostly followed this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2621513855 plus added Vice Cry texture pack. Runs perfectly locked at 60 FPS on maximum settings with 5W. 3W has some minor slowdowns (maybe because of the mods). Great battery life.
I've changed some keymappings for my liking, this game support Steam Input mapping which makes things very easy
Set the CPU to 5W
Runs perfectly fine, set the CPU to 5W and the graphics to High without AA. Start to finish with a single charge and still left 35% of battery remaining. This games is adapted to the Steam Deck so input and substitles are easy to read and work perfectly fine
Disabled gyro and change some macros. This game support Steam Input so its easier. The default layout is not bad at all but you can customize it if you want
Set the CPU limit to 5W
Works pretty flawless. Start to finish in about 10 hours, the battery lasts about 6 hours in this title. Ran at locked 60 FPS with High no AA settings. Set CPU to 5W to conserve power, more than enough. The default controllers are okay but i've done some customizations.
Mapped L5 and R5 to keys, they where unmapped on the start and changed some mappins ingame to better suit my gameplay. The oficial layout should be enough to play the game if you don't want to customize anything.
Locked to 60 FPS and set thermal power limit to 8W. You can play most parts of the game on only 3W but some more demanding parts like Ravenholm will require a little more to get 60 FPS stable.
Subtitles where hard to read sometimes but sometimes they where clear.
The game crashes ocasionaly while opening, once it crashed the deck UI and the deck started rebooting but nothing crucial, there was no crash during gameplay
I've ended HL2 on the deck for about 25h playtime. The battery lasts about 6 hours in this game with High settings no AA. I've set the CPU TDP to 8W to get a locked 60 FPS on all areas. Most area can run as low as 3W but some are more demanding like ranvenholm and can drop to 40 FPS on high. I've remmaped the controller but it wasn't necessary, just to make it a more FPS consistent gameplay, the default controller should be enough. I've had some crashes when the game was loading but never ingame even after sleep and wakeup.
Set the game to medium settings with FXAA at 2x,
Rockstar launcher installation process is very slow. It would look like its stuck but it isn't, you need to give it time. The second time i've open the game rockstar launcher got installed again.
Minor stuterring, its worse if you lower the TDP so i've left unlocked
Set the graphical settings to medium with FXAA 2x, this game can be totally playable at max settings but it will use more battery. On medium it uses about 12W. You can gain about 1W by playing everything on low but some graphics dont look awesome even on the deck screen. This game plays at 30 FPS so i've set the refresh rate to 40 Hz to save more battery.
Set to low 30 FPS locked
This game doesn't work with "Half Rate Shading". You need to turn it off
The default gamepad selected by steam is inresponsive making impossible to start the game, i've needed to select "Gamepad with mouse" to start the game. Also the buttons wont show on the screen, that issue happens on every Mafia game and its a known bug, overriding "gameinputmodule.pf" didn't work for me. You can play with some controllers references from the internet but its anoying.
This game is very buggy and i've have a share of corrupted save games where i needed to reload the checkpoint, abandon the mission or reload the game to continue.
This game is extremelly unoptimized, thats not a Steam Deck issue but the Deck can barelly maintain 30 FPS on low settings and the GPU is constantly at 90%+ eating your battery very fast.
The game crashed some times after recovering from sleep
Unfortunatelly on this game mission bugs are common, thats not a linux / steam deck issue but a game issue. Sometimes you need to do some workarounds to continue and other times you wont be able to finish the game or specific missions.
Unfortunatelly this game is riddled with bugs that even after 9 years aren't fixed, the game crashes, has save issues, mission issues, controller issues and more. You can play it (most of the time) but you may not enjoy it as much because you'll be fighting the bugs while trying to have an enjoyable time. Thats not a Linux / Steam specific issue but a buggy game on every platform.
Set the framerate to 40 FPS
The controller was detected but any button for action on the screen was represented by a white square. Sometimes made difficult to find what key to press and I had to press the steam menu and go back to control settings to check out what to press.
As a history driven 3rd person you can play it but the deck cannot maintain 60 FPS even on lowest settings but it can maintain 40 FPS (barely). I've set the framelimit to 40 FPS and could play the entire game stable but it eats the battery fast, should last 2 or 2:30 hour at most. I didn't messed with FSR or any upscale technique, maybe that would help. Anyway, even at lower settings this game is pretty beautiful on the deck screen.
This game is very lightweight. Ran on low with TDP set to 5W and FPS locked at 60. Native res and no VSR.
Beginning to finish without a single issue. Ran with about 8W total system draw using 5W TDP at low settings and framerate limited to 60, or better, locked to 60! No dips whatsoever. Ran flawless, looks good (even on low) and uses very little power.
Changed CPU TDP to 10W
Audio volume is low
About 4 hours of playtime. Its a older game so graphics are not amazing but managed to play on highest settings with 10W TCP and locked 60 FPS. Used about 50% of the battery for 2 hours of gameplay on those settings. Audio is a little on the low side but otherwise runs pretty fine.
Running GOG version with Heroic
I've built a custom layout based on the default
Since its a 4X game i just lowered the refresh rate to 40Hz and put the CPU on 4W. Manage to get about 6 hours of gameplay.
Since i've installed GOG version with Heroic from flatpak i've had to create a custom layout for myself. Nothing fancy, the trackpads to guide the mouse and the screen, A to pause, B to switch between system / galaxy view and triggers to left and right click. I could get fancier but that was enough to enjoy more than 15 hours of gameplay.
Changed L5 ad R5 to zoom in and zoom out
You need to setup the EA launcher in order to play this game
Crashed the whole SteamOS while customizing the controllers two times, then never crashed again.
When the game closes it keeps suspended on a black screen, i suspect the problem is the EA launcher keeps open in the background. But you can safely force close the game trough Steam.
I recommend you to play on the Steam version, even if you have DLC and Expansion packs on other platforms once you install and open trough Steam you will have to setup and link your Steam account with your EA account and that will bring all your DLC and Expansions to Steam. After setting up the EA launcher I just played the game without issue. I didn't changed graphical settings and on the startup default Ive managed from 3 to 4 hours of battery life and a good performance. Connecting online to download assets works fine.
This game runs very well on the Deck, almost as well as Valve own games. Set to High settings with FXAA and got most of the time 60 FPS with about 3 hours of battery life. Some specific scenes have FPS dips and you can lower the settings a little to compensate but honestly the game is totally playable at High settings, maybe even Ultra but I focused on a balance between graphics and battery.
Changed the right trackpad to mouse
Unable to go to DirectX setup screen due to lack of mouse controls by default
Played some singleplayer rounds no problems with performance, at max settings locked at 60 FPS and very low CPU / GPU usage. It was a breeze performance wise. On the first launch it will install DirectX, PhysX, Visual C and OpenAL which most will need a precise mouse control that may be difficult with touchscreen, but it was okay with trackpad. On the first boot it will ask for your CD KEY thats available on 'Manage' option on Steam, you need to take note of it and type using the virtual keyboard. Also the menu works with controller but its not designed for it, some options had no feedback or where unselectable, needing a hybrid between trackpad and controller inputs on the menu. Once ingame you can totally play with only the controllers.
Although this game was not very praised it was one of my favourites growing up, its awesome to play it on a portable device like the Steam deck and even boost settings to max, something that my PC at the time just couldnt do at all.
