RPS has acquired criticism just lately for overlaying Arc Raiders, an extraction shooter, utilizing writers who don’t usually like extraction shooters. Permit me to rectify this, by as an alternative bringing you an appraisal of Arc Raiders on the Steam Deck as somebody who would not know the best way to intention with thumbsticks.
My precise excursions into these robot-conquered wastes have thus been going terribly. And but, it’s nonetheless abundantly clear that Arc Raiders is about nearly as good a match for the Deck – and, by extension, most handheld PCs – as you might realistically count on from a contemporary, high-fidelity, Unreal Engine 5-powered multiplayer lootshoot. Even when, at first, it doesn’t seem to be it is going to even launch.
Fortunately, that’s a straightforward repair. On the time of writing, Arc Raiders wants Proton Experimental – probably the most cutting-edge model of Valve’s SteamOS compatibility software program – to run. However that’s only a matter of opening the sport’s Properties menu, scrolling to the Compatibility tab, and choosing Proton Experimental as a pressured compatibility device. Exit the menu and it’s able to roll with no harm completed, except you rely having to repeat “compatibility” 3 times in a single paragraph.
When you’re in, it’s simple goings. Arc Raiders mechanically units itself to the Steam Deck’s native 1280×800 decision, ensures a playable begin by defaulting to the Low high quality preset, and regardless of some keyboard-specific glyphs within the preliminary setup course of, refuses to make an afterthought of gamepad controls. Good use of contextual enter modifications and radial menus compensate for the dearth of keys, and it readily employs each the Deck’s touchpads: the left is a D-pad mirror, wealthy in shortcuts, and the appropriate gives an alternate aiming methodology to these of us who suck with sticks.
Crucially, it beats the UE5 odds to carry out fairly decently on these default settings, often flitting inside the 40-50fps vary on Low high quality and TAAU. There are some technical blemishes: traversal stutter is fleeting however frequent, and on just a few events, tinkering with the graphics mid-match despatched me crashing again to SteamOS. Arc Raiders additionally will get fairly a thirst on, draining my unique, LCD-screened Steam Deck’s battery from 100% to flat in a comparatively brisk 1h 21m.
Nonetheless, the upside of needing a dependable on-line connection to a lot as boot the sport – which is in any other case hardly a mark in Arc Raiders’ favour, particularly for handheld play – is that you simply’re most likely by no means going to stray too removed from mains energy. And the ache of crashing is at the very least dulled by with the ability to reconnect to misplaced periods, saving your loot so it may be stolen off your corpse later, as meant.
Arc Raiders Steam Deck settings information
Ideally, a few of these are the sorts of foibles that may be smoothed out with patches, although you may fine-tune Arc Raider’s Steam Deck efficiency proper now. I recommend going for a ‘prettier but upscaled’ strategy, whereby the framerate headroom afforded by switching to speedy AMD FSR 3 enables you to bump up among the particular person high quality choices to their (usually a lot better-looking) Medium settings. Right here’s the complete checklist of what I’ve settled on, following some dwell testing:
- Decision scaling methodology: AMD FSR 3
- AMD FSR 3 High quality: Balanced
- Movement blur: Disabled
- Nvidia RTX World Illumination: Static
- View distance: Medium
- Anti-Aliasing: Medium
- Shadows: Medium
- Submit-processing: Low
- Texture: Medium
- Results: Low
- Reflections: Medium
- Foliage: Medium
- World illumination decision: Low
I’ve opted for FSR 3 over TAAU or TSR upscaling as a result of though its antialiasing might be crisper, it nonetheless appears higher (to my eyes) than TAAU’s blurriness, whereas TSR appears sharp however persistently runs 5-6fps slower. All instructed, these settings ought to get you an identical 40-50fps because the default Low preset, typically squeaking into 50-55fps in much less demanding areas – and all with a noticeable element improve.
Once more, that’s not unhealthy in any respect, given the better-performing UE5 video games on Steam Deck nonetheless have a tendency to want flattened high quality settings and much more aggressive upscaling tech to hit 30fps. Arc Raiders sails previous that baseline, and even when its on-line requirement and battery slurpage imply it’ll by no means be the perfect handheld extraction shooter, it makes a pleasant break from the bellowed {hardware} calls for of different modern motion video games. As long as you keep in mind to place Proton Experimental on it, anyway.
