8 of the Best Steam Deck Games to Play

The Steam Deck is a portable gaming PC on which you can install Windows. It is a handheld that places some of the very best Windows PC games in the palm of your hand. The Steam Deck gaming library is a vast. To help you identify the top games for Valve’s handheld, here are eight of the best Steam Deck games to play.

Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a masterpiece RPG with outstanding quest design and an immersive world. This game puts you in the shoes of Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter on a journey to find Ciri throughout the war-torn Northern Kingdoms. With more than 100 hours of content and multiple alternative ending sequences, Witcher 3 offers terrific replayability on the Steam Deck. This is also one of the best Steam Deck games because of its dedicated handheld graphics preset with an optimized SD settings profile.

Elden Ring

Elden Ring is an action role-playing game renowned for its open-world exploration freedom. This is among the best Steam Deck games because of its no-hand-holding, unrestricted player agency, deep combat, build variety, and unique environmental storytelling. You might need to tinker with graphical settings for a higher frame rate, but Elden Ring still looks stunning on the smaller Steam Deck display.

Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 is another of the best RPGs for the Steam Deck because of how it mixes the Dungeons and Dragons ruleset into a reactive fantasy world where your decisions shape the narrative. The unprecedented player freedom and choice, compelling companions and narrative, and high replayability value of Baldur’s Gate 3 make it one of the best Steam Deck games to play. This game also works better on the Steam Deck because its slower turn-based combat style has minimal frame rate drop impact.

Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 might be an olden goldie, but it’s still one of the best first-person shooter games in history that you can play on the Steam Deck. This FPS masterpiece blew players away with its groundbreaking physics (showcased with the Gravity Gun), immersive world-building, masterclass City 17 atmosphere, and unbroken immersion. With an aggregated Metacritic score of 96, Half-Life 2 is one of the most highly-rated PC games for the Steam Deck.

The fact that Half-Life 2 is an old title also makes it one of the best Steam Deck games because of its minimal system requirements. Half-Life 2 will run flawlessly at a 60 FPS (frames per second) rate with graphical options set to maximum on the Steam Deck. Valve has also optimized HL 2 for the Steam Deck with native Vulkan rendering support, expanded maximum field of view, and HUD scaling. Note that Half-Life 2 now includes the Episode One, Two, and Lost Coast expansions, giving players considerably more HL 2 content to play beyond the base game.

Persona 5 Royal

Persona 5 Royal is a stylish Japanese RPG that truly shines on the Steam Deck. This is among the best Steam Deck games because of its engaging duel gameplay loop that balances deep dungeon crawling with social choices. It is a game with a vibrant, stylized anime-style graphics that shine on the Steam Deck. The snappy turn-based combat in Persona 5 Royal is also ideally suited to the handheld Steam Deck, and the game will run at a smooth 60 frames per second with out-of-the-box default settings.

Portal 2

Portal 2 is another classic Valve game that runs flawlessly on the Steam Deck. The hilarious, yet gripping, Aperture Science facility robot story, top-tier level design, ingenious first-person puzzle mechanics, and great co-op mode in Portal 2 make it one of the best Steam Deck games to play. This is also a stellar game to play on the Steam Deck because it runs at a high, stable frame rate with maximum graphical settings and minimal battery consumption.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Although Red Dead Redemption 2 has more demanding system requirements, it is still very playable on the Steam Deck and showcases the handheld’s graphical capabilities. Red Dead Redemption is one of the best Steam Deck games to play because of its incredibly detailed Wild West open world, stunning design, and realism. RDR 2 also has one of the greatest storylines in gaming history that puts you in the shoes of Arthur Morgan for an unforgettable Western adventure.

Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium is a renowned game for how it reinvented the RPG genre with its brilliant narrative and unique skill system. This is a narrative-driven, detective-oriented RPG in which players must solve a murder mystery and piece together Harry Du Bois’ lost identity. It is a slower-paced game with a stunning art style ideally suited to the Steam Deck as a portable interactive novel.

So, take your pick from these best Steam Deck games to play. Those games showcase the immense versatility and raw gaming power of Valve’s handheld device. They are also some of the most highly-rated Windows PC games in history.