A quick Steam Deck OLED performance test Darksiders III
There is a lot of videos on YT with various games tested on Steam Deck. Most of them present the footage of the screen and how the game looks ON Steam Deck. Some people, however, use their Steam Deck as a desktop PC or a regular console. My tests intend to show how the game looks and performs on an external screen, in full HD (not in 4k for performance reasons) with certain scaling options.
Here is another test: Darksiders III - an slightly unusual part in the series because it introduces a female protagonist (pretty unique for the Horsemen of the Apocalypse) that uses a whip (chainwhip?) as her main weapon (Castlevania style). Another quick observation would be that the game borrows several mechanics from Soulslike games - we lose our souls (in-game currency) on death but have a chance to reclaim them; the combat is much more strategic and requires patience. The game is pretty hard even on the normal difficulty. When you create a new game, there's an option for the style of combat. The second option is for regular "Darksiders" experience. I would recommend the second one, if you want to hack'n'slash through demons more smoothly :) Apart from that, the general presentation, style and atmosphere remains close to the previous games in the franchise. I really like the Fury's character design and her more "edgy" attitude compared to e.g. War's.
The game is marked as "playable" on Steam Deck but works fine and out-of-the-box. One thing that I actually noticed is that graphical options seemed to reset each time I restarted the game. So there might be a need for you to tinker with the settings after you start a new game to find yourself the solution that works for you. The game is FORCED to launch in full HD. So, in this video, you do not see the effects of FSR upscaling but the game actually works in FHD. I recommend using the forced FHD setting rather than the upscaled alternative. The upscaled game looked too washed out on my TV, like an oil painting. The FSR works wonders, but it's a bit of a hit and miss in case of some titles.
NOTE: Always bear in mind that these tests are mainly for gaming on a TV/external screen. Games will always perform better and seem to look better on the smaller screen of the Steam Deck.
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