It's lightweight, which makes it feel cheap, but it's actually quite durable. Then again, I seemingly experience drift way under the rate that the internet would have me believe that I should.
ampersandrew
Personally I've never felt compelled to use the left touchpad, and I've never found a problem worth solving that the left pad would solve.
Track pads and gyros are major features of the first Steam Controller that were brought forward to the Deck, and they can be game-changing for certain genres that have typically never controlled well on traditional controllers.
Honestly, I think the Steam Deck has worse ergonomics than that last Steam Controller, but at least it has a d-pad and a second analog stick so that there's always a way to play a game with no configuration.
Asset reuse happens all the time even between sequels.
It's bigger than lots of full games and has a proper beginning/middle/end. In the old days, it would have just been a sequel.
Quality or sales, I meant it the same way.
The state of AAA gaming is that releases slowed way down, resulting in way less output, which means you're going to have fewer winners, by the numbers. Not every year can be like last year.
Black Myth: Wukong would surprise me, but the other 5 all have a real shot.
Yeah, it's no Baldur's Gate 3, and I do hope they learn more lessons from contemporary CRPGs, but I'd say it has other strengths. I liked the combat, and I liked the story, characters, and world-building. Open worlds in most open world games are pretty shallow, and I'd say both this and The Witcher 3 follow that same template to the same ends, but at the very least, it allows you to approach an objective how you'd like after scouting it out, which feels satisfying. It's RPG-lite, which manifests as a pretty good action game with some story branching, and I'm not upset about that, as much as I'd prefer they lean into the RPG stuff harder.
One might argue this kind of thing is inevitable when your solution to everything is "the cloud".