Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is now verified on Steam Deck, all thanks to one small change made to the texture pool setting. Unfortunately, though, this is another example of a game having its rating incorrectly changed, as the game doesn’t have the performance to justify the green tick of verification.
Not every game runs great on the best handheld gaming PC, as the now aging hardware inside the Steam Deck is starting to struggle with new, triple-A games. The Indiana Jones and the Great Circle system requirements gave us plenty of warning that the game would struggle on the Steam Deck, but this new update aids performance, just not enough to be worthy of any rating other than Playable.
The update in question has created a new profile within the texture pool size slider named “Steam Deck.” This new option prevents the game from exceeding RAM limits and crashing the game, while still leaving the rest of the graphical settings open to change.
Sadly, while this new setting prevents crashes, it doesn’t improve the overall performance to the point where the game deserves a verified rating, in my opinion. Hitting 30fps is still very difficult, and loading times feel like an eternity.
This update gave me hope that Doom The Dark Ages could share in the success on Steam Deck, as the only other game using idTech 8, but my hopes have been very quickly shattered.
It’s become somewhat tiresome watching games be awarded unjustified ratings on the Steam Deck, just like with Clair Obscur Expedition 33 and Oblivion Remastered, but it appears as though Valve has no intention of listening to fan feedback on the topic anymore.
The result is a rating system that is now difficult to trust, and time will tell if this has ended up being damaging, especially for gamers who use the Steam Deck as a primary console and expect the rating system to tell them which games are worth buying for their handheld.
If you want to know which titles are truly worth playing, regardless of their rating, check out our list of the best Steam Deck games, where we’ve assembled a list of 30 fantastic entries for you to try out.
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