Remedy built something genuinely good with Control Resonant, a skewed, paranormal Manhattan of a game that had every chance to buckle under its own weirdness and mostly doesn't. Rock Paper Shotgun's review, The Steam Machine handles Control Resonant capably, but the promised Steam Deck support is a letdown, says it delivers almost everything they wanted from a Remedy game, on a proper PC or on Valve's bigger Steam Machine box. That part of the story is fine.

The Steam Deck is where it falls apart. Valve and Remedy talked up Steam Deck support for this game ahead of launch, the kind of line that gets you picturing yourself running black-site paranormal business from the couch instead of a desk. Translate that promise into what actually happens when you turn the Deck on: it means the game needs to render just a bit too much of that warped, corridor-heavy Manhattan for a handheld chip to keep up. Rock Paper Shotgun found exactly that, and noted there wasn't even a public SteamOS compatibility rating a day before release to warn anyone off.

The channel NotAGameAddict backed that up with actual numbers, testing a Steam Deck OLED on SteamOS 3.9 across FSR 3.1's performance, quality, and native presets, then digging into how the city itself tanks the framerate and whether frame generation or LSFG-VK upscaling claw any of it back. That's two separate looks landing on the same wall: gorgeous on a full rig, a fight on the handheld.

None of that is a knock on the game Remedy built. It's a knock on saying "Steam Deck support" in a sentence before it was actually true. That phrase means something specific to anyone who owns the thing: play in bed, play on a bus, play without booting up a whole desktop. Digital Foundry's tech review of the game already found the sequel leans on PS5 Pro's muscle, which tracks with a game built for real horsepower first and a handheld footnote second.

Valve and Remedy can patch drivers, tune settings, chase a few more frames out of the thing. That doesn't undo a promise made before the hardware could back it up. Ship the compatibility badge, hit a framerate that doesn't feel like a slideshow, or stop putting the Deck in the pitch at all.