The Future is Here/Near

With so many stellar games and gaming experiences being available on a variety of systems, I realized that the gaming world is moving at a dizzying pace with dozens of games being released every week nowadays, it’s hard to keep up on it all. I definitely can’t play every game that comes out but I try to catch as many as I can, regardless of genre and platform. I recently paused, stepped back, and thought to myself: “What have been the best gaming experiences I’ve had in the past few years and what am I looking forward to the most?”.

I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I first strapped on the headset and played Half Life: Alyx on the Valve Index VR system. Even though I’ve played all the Half Life games to death and have been playing VR games since the very beginning, it truly was one of the most immersive and captivating moments I’ve had and as I said back then, it changed everything about gaming experiences in general. Although a lot of VR games have been cool to play, fun, and impressive, Alyx is where the VR dream all finally clicked.

Now, looking forward, what am I most excited about? After more reflection, there is no doubt the Nintendo Switch has had a massive influence on gaming hardware and the flexibility of gaming on the go or at home docked and connected to a TV. To be fair, there are several PC game ports that work just fine on the Switch but more often than not, the graphic fidelity and controls of said ports are not up to snuff. Truly though, what options are there for us who are mainly PC gamers, without lugging expensive laptops around with subpar GPUs and temps hot enough to prevent any future childbearing? Not many currently.

With the Steam Deck, a lifelong dream of mine is about to come true: The ability to play quality PC games at any time or in any location on a handheld device. Offline gameplay similar Steam on PC? Check. Same performance for handheld and docked mode? Check. Expandable storage via SD cards? Check. There are so many other exciting features such as other OS options with multiboot, streaming possibilities, external device connectivity, access to the BIOS, I’ll just say it right now: After Half-Life: Alyx and the Index, I have full confidence in Valve to deliver the right device at the right time with the Steam Deck. With a handy guide recently announced, at launch, you can even see which PC games are best suited on Steam Deck bringing the possibility of thousands of games at your fingertips.

Enough about my excitement though, check out all the juicy details on Steam Deck on the main product page. Reservations are live for a December 2021 shipping window.