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Gamers, how complicated is it to play games? (setup question) (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 2 days ago by user224@lemmy.sdf.org to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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People often find it odd when I say I don't play PC games, but it seems rather complicated (and also expensive) to me.

I mean, I enjoyed it back when I had friends with PS, but I never had to set up anything myself. Searching around it seems rather... overwhelming, and I don't know if it's actually the case.

PC seems most versatile, and with the prices, I considered piracy, but I would need a separate computer for security. Hell, I wouldn't even trust the device firmware on it afterwards.
So I considered maybe paying the amounts, but I went to check some games and lo and behold, kernel-level anti-cheat. Great, so pirated games might even have less malware in the end.
Since I'd need a separate device anyway, how about getting a PlayStation. With a disc drive, I want to be able to go future proof and fully offline. Well, about that... apparently it needs to verify the disc drive online. For what? It's a BluRay drive, either it works or it doesn't. And then I heard another shitty thing, "most games are released almost unplayable and need updates right away". So they just release Alpha quality software on the most permanent medium???

So that just sounds like shitty experience no matter what. How is it actually? I'd expect consoles to be least buggy and fully future proof.
The only thing I ever had was a $4 NES bootleg console from AliExpress, Contra was glitched out and Battletank unplayable because they forgot the select button, but ok, $4.

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[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

I think the first question you should answer is which games do you want to play, the answer will be vastly different if you say Astro Bot or Factorio. So for this I will try to base it on my own gaming preferences, which is mostly single-player games. Answering your points:

You don't really need a separate PC, there's no reason to be that paranoid.
Most games don't have kernel level anti-cheat, only competitive multiplayer games, and those you can't pirate, so they're irrelevant to your other solution.
Yeah, long gone are the days of popping a disc and playing.

Ok, so, this is my personal opinion, but as long as you don't care about competitive multiplayer games it should be a valid option for you as well.

Get a Steam Deck. Pros:

It's plug-and-play for most stuff, so while you will need to download the content it should just work without fiddling.
Pricewise is very good, you might be able to build a desktop for cheaper, but that would require a lot more effort than going to steam and clicking buy.
It's a separate device, also it's portable, and while that might not be important currently, it's nice to be able to pack a gaming rig in your backpack when you have to travel for some reason.
With some minimal setup can run emulation of anything up to ps2 era very comfortably. It's a very simple setup with just running one script to set things up.
It can (if you're willing to jump through hoops to set it up) run and even download pirates content, although with the ease of access of games on Steam I hardly think it's worth it.

Cons:

It's Linux, so it can't run games that actively try to prevent you from running Linux, e.g. some online competitive games, in short anything that would require kernel-level anti-cheat.
It's a lot more expensive than running games on whatever laptop/desktop you have with you.
It's not that powerful, because it's portable it's very low power, so while it can run Cyberpunk, it won't look good or flow nicely. If this is your only deal breaker, you might want to wait a bit because very shortly Steam will launch Steam Machines which are the same thing except trading portability for power.