Occhioverde
Published
The game starts, and the main menu is correctly loaded, but once a level (in story or challenge mode) is selected, the Loading interface freezes on screen, forcing the user to terminate the program from the Steam UI
I played this second chapter of the BioShock series on the Steam Deck some months after having finished the first one on the PS4. The performance was absolutely on par with that of the Sony console, with the added benefit of being able to play lying in bed. I walked through the game from start to finish, including the "Minerva's Den" DLC, and I didn't encounter any problems whatsoever. The only issue that I can report was the inability to launch the game after an update, which I managed to quickly solve by cleaning Proton's data and restarting the game.
By default, the game will launch with all graphics settings on "Ultra," so you'll have to adjust them for the game to run smoothly on the Steam Deck.
I tested the first few areas of the demo version of the game and had no problem whatsoever. The game launched correctly with the Steam-suggested version of Proton, and everything worked essentially out of the box without any anomalies.
When the game launches, the player is required to interact with a launcher that only accepts mouse input. This, however, will not happen if the game is modded through Nexus.
Some action scenes with many enemies and flying bullets caused a little framerate drop. This, however, may have been caused by the upscaled textures and improved game assets I was using, which did not play well with the ancient game engine.
The game crashed a couple of time without any apparent reason. This behavior, however, seems consistent with the experiences of players in native environments.
I played the vanilla version of the game the first 15 minutes and then I went ahead to mod it by using the Nexus Mod Manager in order to have upscaled textures and improved game assets. Everything went as expected in both cases, with only some minor performance issues in very specific game phases (i.e. during the Hoover Dam battle). All in all the experience was absolutely enjoyable and I can assure that anyone will be able to play this game on Steam Deck with no major problem.
When starting the game for the first time the resolution is set to 4:3; when switching to and back from an external monitor, moreover, you'll have to manually readjust this setting
The game does not display the correct button names (or icons), but shows some placeholder names that make it difficult to understand how to do some tasks; when piloting the helicopter, moreover, the controller mappings shown in the settings do not match the one effectively loaded
The game froze when the battery of the Dualshock connected via Bluetooth ran out
Played the whole single player campaign on the Steam Deck (tested both in docked and detached mode). Overall it was a good experience with just some minor inconveniencs with the resolution and the controls' setting and labelling.
Played the game start to finish on Linux (first 15 minutes on a PC and the rest on the Steam Deck) without any issue
Played all the story start to finish on the Steam Deck (both in detached and docked mode). No issues to report, besides a strange glitch in the Trolley Battle that made the controls unresponsive but was quickly solved by uninstalling and reinstalling the game.
Being the game quite demanding in terms of computational power, the battery life was a bit poor and I resorted to play in docked mode for the biggest part of the time. Leaving this predictable caveat aside, however, the graphics were good, the frame rate stable and the overall experience absolutely satisfying.
Played with 2 DualShock 4 controllers via Bluetooth; no issue to report
Tested in detached and docked mode; played both the single-player levels and different matches in Local Multiplayer without any issue
