Touch Arcade

In its current state, WWE 2K23 is an excellent wrestling game with tons of content, but one that is let down by its online servers.

There’s certainly a decent bit of content here for a shooter of its era. But it just isn’t very enjoyable. Your plane is too slow and your firepower too plain, making the core gameplay feel dull. It’s all very repetitive thanks to the limited assortment of enemies and unimaginative stage designs, too.

In its current state, Company of Heroes 3 is an easy recommendation with the caveat about nonstandard controls. While you could always use a mouse and keyboard to play it on Steam Deck, I’m impressed with the community layouts and have enjoyed Company of Heroes 3 quite a bit thanks to one specific layout I used.

Samurai Shodown III probably shouldn’t be anyone’s first Samurai Shodown game, especially in the ACA NEOGEO mobile line with its limited multiplayer options. But its quirky qualities do make it an interesting choice for a second Samurai Shodown game. Because of how much it divided the fandom, Samurai Shodown III saw a lot of its rough edges sanded down or completely cut away in successive entries in the series.

Punch Kick Duck is a blast to play, and a wonderful treat for the eyes and ears. It’s great to see Shaun Coleman take on another genre and put his unique spin on it, and the results are as good as I could have hoped.

Despite its difficulty in explaining its complex systems, Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society is a fantastic RPG that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys the genre. Its systems are immensely satisfying to learn, its labyrinth floors a treat to explore, its encounters challenging and interesting, and the story is outstanding. It is, to an extent, a game that gives back the more you put in, but the patient player will find a bounty of rewards here for their efforts.

Sengoku 3 is a spectacular effort. The best in its genre on the hardware by some measure, one of the finer games on the system full-stop, and a beat-em-up the system can finally put up against its competitors with pride. It plays really well with touch controls, and you can always make use of an external controller if you prefer.

In its current state, Returnal perfectly suits the Steam Deck, and it runs quite well given the hardware, with visual cutbacks. While it isn’t as nice as playing on PS5 of course, I’ve found myself enjoying Returnal on the go quite a bit thanks to the suspend feature and sublime core gameplay.

It wasn’t a great experience around launch on PC, but Marvel’s Midnight Suns is well worth your time right now, and a joy to play on Steam Deck. It already felt like a perfect fit for Steam Deck from the start, and it has finally been fixed for Valve’s portable system with a recent update.

It has all the polish of the developer’s prior releases, but a completely new style that showcases how talented the developer is. Even with its short runtime, I have no regrets recommending Happy Game to any fans of horror and puzzle games who are up for trying something different.