Steam Machine is stacked

[00:00:00]How's it going everyone? As always, my name is Jimmy Champagne. This is Deck Ready, my channel all about Steam hardware, and this is one of my favorite videos to make on the channel because Next Fest is currently running. So, I went through pages, like so many pages of demos, and I picked out a bunch of them, and I whittled my list of favorites down to just seven games that I think will be great on the Steam Deck once they eventually release. But now, I also get to say they'll be great on the Steam Frame, and of course the Steam Machine when those are out as well. So, even though those devices will be out after this Next Fest is over, if you add all of these games to your library while it's currently running, you'll be able to download and play the vast majority of them because sometimes these developers go back and remove the demos, but I haven't had that happen in a long time. I just need to cover myself, and if you want to see more videos of me talking about games, go check out my Instagram Champagne Ready. I just posted one about the new Halloween game, which is a really looking interesting, and it could be the one that outlasts all the other asymmetrical horror games. But with the intro out of the way, let's get into the first game. I was so excited when I saw that this one finally had a demo. It's called Silver Pines. I can't even tell you how long it's been on my wish list. It's a 2D Metroidvania version of Resident Evil, and that should be all you need to hear to go wish list it and download the demo immediately. If you're into shows like Twin Peaks, if you love Alan Wake, if you're watching that new show on Apple Widow's Bay, which is amazing if you haven't seen it, and you just want more of that like sleepy stormy either New England or Pacific Northwest vibe, this game is going to scratch that itch perfectly. But it's not just derivative of that stuff, it's definitely telling its own story, and the cool thing is right out of the box, it runs at pretty much a locked 60 FPS on the Steam Deck, which you guys know goes a long way with me. It's very well optimized. So, the game takes place in 1993, which is the year I was born, which is not really relevant to what I'm talking about. I just wanted to share it, I guess. And you play as a private detective who's sent to the town of Silver Pines. And it's weird from the jump. Like no one's around, there's a storm rolling in, the town's been evacuated, and you're looking for a singer. You're hot on his trail, and you've got to find him before terrible things happen to him. You actually don't know why you're looking for him, but he doesn't really seem like the greatest dude in the world.

[00:02:15]Regardless, if you've ever played a Resident Evil game, you know exactly what you're signing up for, except this one's 2D. So, you find a key that's for a car, you go outside the building you find the key in, there's a car with a locked trunk, you find a key item that'll be like a knife or a box cutter, you can cut down plastic sheeting, and that opens up the world as you make your way through it. But, everything is so meticulously hand-crafted in this game that it's just hard not to stop and just stare at the beautiful environments you're seeing as you make your way through this world. It's 2D, but there's a lot of work that went into the art.

[00:02:47]It's very layered. Like there's multiple layers of background, foreground, and middle ground, and it looks like they just poured so much time into making sure this felt and looked like a believable world. So, like I just wanted to grab my in-ear monitors as soon as I booted it up. And since I was playing so many demos, I had to set time limits.

[00:03:05]This one just broke through the time limit. I ended up playing through the entire demo, and it took me like an hour and a half. So, I hope it wasn't the big chunk of the full game that you get sometimes with like Square Enix games because I could play this game for a hundred hours and never be satisfied.

[00:03:19]It's just like so up my alley that I cannot describe it. And if you've been watching the channel for a while, you know my least favorite type of horror game is these walking sim type ones. You know, the ones that are like derivative of Outlast. But, if this one didn't have combat, there's so much going for it in every other department that I would have been fine with it. But, then very early on in the demo, you get a box cutter, and you get to put belt to ass on one of these crazy ass monsters. And the combat feels really good, but if you don't want to fight, you can escape because there is weapon durability. So, in that first fight, your box cutter breaks down. So, I was like dodging monsters left and right until I was able to find better weapons. I'm not going to spoil anything because you got to play this demo, but yeah, I want this full game to come out soon and I just I feel like it's got to be right around the corner because it was so well optimized, but right now, they just have 2026 as the release date and I don't envy them because there's so many horror games coming out this October and it's an indie game, it's 2D, it's short. I bet it'll be like 20 or 20 bucks. And with every game coming out at the end of September as well, I wouldn't be shocked if they delayed it into 2027 or if they could get it out early in September or even late August when you're just starting to get into the Halloween season. There is a perfect time in 2026 to release this game and I hope they figure it out, but I should have put this deeper in the video because this was by far my favorite demo I played, but I was just so excited to talk about it. So, we started off really strong with Silver Pines. I'm I could gush about this for 20 more minutes, but I'll move on to the next game. And the second one is another one I've been looking forward to, which is Valor Mortis. It comes out on October 13th, which again is a game that would be competing with Silver Pines, but this one I don't think is going to have any trouble because this is a big step up from the developers' first two games, Ghostrunner and Ghostrunner 2. I'm sure you've seen this game before because it's been at State of Plays. I'm pretty sure it was at the Summer Game Fest Showcase. That whole weekend blurred together for me. Regardless, if you haven't heard of it before, imagine Napoleonic France with demons where Napoleon's the bad guy and it's a first-person Souls-like. It runs pretty well on the Steam Deck, which makes sense because the developers have been pretty upfront about the fact that they want to support the Deck. It needs a little bit of work, like the finishing animations always break down and drop frames. When you're loading into new areas, you'll see a lot of stuttering, but I just want to point out that it's like 90% there and in the demo, like on the title screen, it says pre-alpha footage when you boot it up. So, I think they'll get there with this one because even though it's like graphically amazing-looking even on low preset, it still looked and ran solid. I was able to get mostly locked 30 FPS with some drops. I'm not using it in the Reddit way. I'm just saying straight up the lowest I saw it go was 27. It was just happening a little too often for me to say that this game is 100% playable. I just wanted to shout it out because, you know, it will be optimized I'm pretty sure for the deck by the time it releases. And if you're interested in buying a Steam Machine, this is a demo you should 100% add to your library so you're ready to go to try it out because it encourages exploration. So, I feel like you could get a lot of time out of this demo just exploring these beautiful dense forests with battlefields with like smoke and fog. It kind of reminded me of The Patriot with Mel Gibson. If you've ever seen that movie, like very similar sort of aesthetic and vibes going on with this one. As far as the weapons go, for being a first-person game that's inspired by Souls-likes, believe how well it works. Like you've got the lock-on system. If someone's attacking from behind, there will be an arrow pointing to like the closest way to turn towards them. So, I never really got hit in the back and the parry window is extremely generous with the sword.

[00:06:59]Like I'm playing at 30 FPS with drops to 27. I was nailing parries left and right and it was really cool that there are enemies that of course do the red attack they have to dodge out of the way of.

[00:07:09]And if you dodge at the perfect moment, it slows down time and you can just whip the [ __ ] out of them with your sword and it feels great. You also have a gun which was shown off in trailers. I was wondering if it was just going to be a parry mechanic thing, but no, it's a gun you can free aim. And when you kill enemies, they'll drop bullets for it.

[00:07:25]You reload it. And some of the enemies have these like orange growths on their head or in their heart. And you get more experience for blowing that up with the gun. And the gun does pretty good damage. So, like if you can get some range between people or you're fighting a group of enemies, it's easy to just pick one or two of them off with the gun and then one-v-one the third guy. Like, the combat flow is excellent, and it's weirdly fast despite being a Souls-like.

[00:07:48]It's like somewhere in between Bloodborne and just regular old Dark Souls 3 if I had to try to pin it down.

[00:07:55]It's really tough because it's first-person, and it feels new and interesting, but they're marketing it as a first-person Souls-like, so that's what I'm going to call it. This is one of those games where despite the fact that it runs well on the Steam Deck, I would want to play it on a TV because so much work went into making it look as good as it does. So, yeah. This is one of my most anticipated games for the rest of the year. I'm a huge history buff. I have a quarter bust, I think is what it's called, of Napoleon made out of bronze in our living room, and I love Napoleon. So, seeing him turn into this like goblin-esque big giant demon just sounds so damn cool. So, yeah. If you weren't aware of this game beforehand, you should definitely look it up and 100% add the demo to your library.

[00:08:36]Speaking of Souls-likes, that brings us to the third demo that has an insane amount of content. I can't believe how much content is in these demos, but Mortal Shell 2 is coming out in 2026, and this game I didn't love the first game, if I'm being honest. It was a little floaty. It was a little animation-heavy. I didn't like that you couldn't cancel your animations, but it looks like they hunkered down and really worked on what wasn't working in the first game, and just took every idea to the next level. So, the way Mortal Shell works is you're this like fucked-up looking worm guy. I don't know how else to describe it, and you can like inhabit the soul body or something of different warriors who have died in this world.

[00:09:15]So, you start out with like the classic longsword knight, but as you make your way through the open world, you can find other shells. And when you die in this game, you get booted out of the shell.

[00:09:24]So, you're just the fucked-up worm guy running around with the longsword, and then there's like a little progress bar when you kill enemies, which is much harder as the worm man. Uh once you get that to 100, you can regenerate your shell. And I haven't found any other shells, but it seems like there's a boss mechanic. Like you'll find these corrupted versions of fallen knights or different classes, and then you'll kill them, and then you'll get to add their shells to your repertoire. Another cool thing that this one's doing different than other Souls-likes is uh to kindle a bonfire, you've got to go through a dungeon and solve a little puzzle, usually fight a boss or something like that, and then that's a new checkpoint where you can sit down, heal your guy up, replenish your health items, and then push forward your ass absolutely beat by the low-level ads that roam this open-world land that they've created. I went into this one not expecting much because, you know, I didn't love the first game, but I was consistently impressed throughout the entire demo. It sets itself to medium with TSR set to balanced, and you could get a pretty much locked 30, but if you just set it to low, you'll never drop below 30 outside of like moving between areas because it's Unreal Engine 5, but again, big shout-out to Unreal Engine for just being good this year between Lego Batman, Legacy of the Dark Knight, and plenty of other games. Like this is yet another one that I could play 100% of the game on Steam Deck and have a great time, which again bodes extremely well for the Steam Machine. And I I can just already tell that this is a game I'm just going to sink hours and hours and hours into. I'm a huge Souls-like fan, but this one is more in the vein of like Lords of the Fallen or Diablo 4 in terms of its art style. You know that Excalibur look, the '80s movie, or like, you know, Swords and Sorcery, like it's a little bit darker than what you'd see in like Baldur's Gate or something like that. It's more my style because I like horror, as you can tell from my background featuring John Carpenter music albums, Michael Myers, the Stranger Things house, Michael Myers' hands, which I can't show on video. Like I love horror movies, and that's the kind of vibe I look for in my dark fantasy games. While FromSoftware is cooking on exclusive Switch 2 games, we can rely on the devs of Mortal Shell 2 to keep their torch going. Funny story about this game, the developers actually sent me two steaks if I talked about the game. They didn't pay me. It's not a sponsorship. They just like had a campaign going where if you talked about this game, they'd give you a key and two strip steaks in the mail and those steaks were amazing. I'm showing video of them right now. The game is really good because I would have had egg on my face if I took these steaks in exchange for talking about a crappy game. So if you've played Far Far West or Risk of Rain 2, you kind of know what you're getting into with this one, but there's one killer feature that really just makes it one of the most unique games I've ever played. So it's called Swap Meat, but it's not Swap m e e t, it's m e a t because your legs, your torso, and your head are made of different forms of meat and when you kill enemies, whether they're bosses or ads, they will drop their body parts and you can live like in action swap out your body parts on the field of battle and they are disgusting in the best way possible. So like you can get bug legs that make you walk slow, but they give you a higher jump. You can get four bug legs like a spider and you'll run fast and scuttle everywhere. You can get extra arms. You can get eyeballs that shoot homing beacons. Like the level of disgustingness that this game went to like the lengths to be as gross as possible needs to be commended. Like everything is just wet and slimy and meaty in this game and I feel like that's what really makes it stick out, but another cool thing about it is that it's deck verified on launch. Launches with a Steam Deck graphics preset that actually works. I would lock it to 40 FPS. Yes, I didn't see it drop once. And once you drop into the battlefield, it's very similar again to Risk of Rain or Far Far West. There's like randomly generated boss fights and different areas to clear. It just gets you in that addicting gameplay loop where you're going around these vividly colored worlds destroying beautifully disgusting creatures and stealing their body parts, which is, you know, a really good sales pitch and it's made by former Diablo developers, so it's got all the great loot angles and stuff like that. I will be playing more of this game, so it was nice that I got the steaks, but it's one of those happy moments where, you know, I would have talked about the game anyway because it's right up my alley, but I ended up getting two strip steaks out of the equation, which I'm not going to complain about. The next game joining the crowded year that is 2026 that I played a demo for was DDOD, which is not a good title because it does not convey what this game is at all. Imagine Stalker, but it's top-down, so something like Zero Sievert, but it's full 3D.

[00:13:56]It's got roguelite elements where if you die, you can go find your body and pick up all your crap. It does have permanent upgrades, but, you know, if you die, you're going to lose most of your good loot, so you have to make your way back through the open world, find your dead body, and re-loot your body. It's a typical twin-stick shooter, but it has really good gun animations and realism in terms of the way its guns are modeled. The first mission in this game is to explore a bunker and end up finding an SMG and a shotgun, and getting through that bunker was awesome because while the gunplay is great with the initial starting pistol, the melee combat is visceral, it's heavy, it feels really good, and it's one of those twin-stick isometric shooters that isn't impossible to play on the Steam Deck. I was really excited to see that right when you boot it up for the first time, it's like, "Hey, this game would work well with a controller." It seems like there's a ton of content in the demo, and I feel like even though I played around 45 minutes to an hour, I just barely scratched the surface. It feels good to play. It just feels like I've seen most of what it's offering before, but maybe I just didn't get far enough to see what's really new. The thing that got me interested in it, other than its bizarre title, is the fact that in the promo image, there's like a giant mutant snail with like a tank on its back, like the top half of a tank with a gun, and I just I want to kill that thing. So, I was like, "Oh, I'll play the game. Maybe I'll be able to kill it." I think if I fought that snail with my current loadout that I was able to save, you can save between runs, thankfully, that snail what eat me alive. So, I got to work my way up to fighting the tanks now, but that was a good teaser. And uh if you haven't seen this game cuz it was kind of low down on the list and you're into stuff like Zero Sievert or like Metro or Stalker, I would definitely give this one a look. It seems like it could be pretty addicting. And it has gamepad support out of the box unlike something like Escape from Tarkov. So, if you're not interested in that, but you want a game that's going to play nice on the Steam Deck and eventually the Steam Machine, can't recommend this one enough. And for the last game, I wanted to talk about something special.

[00:15:52]So, let's talk about Over the Hill. So, I've been looking forward to this game for a long time. I saw it advertised to me by the developers on Instagram like a year ago. And if you played Art of Rally before, it's the same developer, so you know that these guys care about, you know, car culture, the cars themselves.

[00:16:08]And it's basically a love letter to a specific era and a specific type of driving. I'm sure you guessed because it's called Over the Hill, but this one is a love letter to off-roading. So, it puts you into these big open area maps.

[00:16:20]And the objectives are nothing special.

[00:16:23]You find camps, you find meteorites, you use the winch to pull them out of the ground. They really want to emphasize that the journey is more important than the destination. So, it's just a big playground that's kind of like the best parts of Snow Runner where you're exploring the map and not doing the jobs, but that's the whole point of the game. It has four-player co-op, it has car upgrades, it has a bunch of different types of trucks and off-road vehicles you can command in this game.

[00:16:46]Unfortunately, the one disappointment is that it runs horribly. And like just like looking at the art style, I don't want to be that guy. This game should run a lot better than it currently does.

[00:16:57]So, while they have a release date of 2026 on it, I hope that, you know, once they get content complete, they really take a long hard look at the performance of the game, get some PCs, get some Steam Decks, get some lower-spec machines in the office, and make sure it runs well on a handheld because this game was made to be played on a handheld. I can see myself in front of my fireplace in the middle of the winter or in my backyard in front of the fire pit. It's a good chill out style game that just feels good to play outside.

[00:17:25]Like that's where I played it in my backyard. I had a great time. So yeah, this next fest is going to be tough to beat. I went against YouTube lore and I went in order of favorite to least favorite. Favorite being Silver Pines.

[00:17:37]Least favorite because of optimization being Over the Hill, but all of these games were above an eight for me from what I played of their demos. If you like Souls-likes, you've got Mortal Shell two and Valor Mortis. If you're interested in Metroidvanias and Resident Evil, you've got Silver Pines. Swat Meat was awesome. I'm going to sink more time into that and I hope Over the Hill is able to be optimized by the time it comes out. But yeah, if you have any more to share, put them in the comments below. Check me out on Instagram at Champagne Ready, but that's all I've got for you in today's video. As always, my name is Jimmy Champagne. I'll see you in the next one. Thanks for watching and shape up.