This thing, this portable personal computer, meant to be used while you are away from your gaming space... It's actual reason for existence has now been revealed to me. The Steam Deck is the best way for one to play horror games whether it's in your gaming room or otherwise. Well, at least for me anyway. You know that these days, my tolerance for horror games is extremely low. I get too scared way too easily. Gone were the days when I would play the original Silent Hill, which to this day is still one of the scariest games ever made, in the middle of the night, in the dark, in the living room of my apartment because nowadays, even in a secured, well-lit Game Room, every moving shadow on the big screen in any horror title would force me to wail out a dying scream. Well, that's exactly the problem, isn't it? The big screen. I have now noticed that one of the factors - the other being a personal trauma, which I would guess have more of an impact on me than anything else - was the screen size. I started cowering from horror games around the same time that my gaming display started getting larger in size. I mean, everything is scarier and more impactful on a large screen, right? And everything is just downright unbearable in virtual reality!
Last week, while doing more performance tests on games for the Steam Deck, I downloaded The Forest. Yes, the one about being stranded on a remote island inhabited by nasty cannibals - which performed wonderfully on the Deck by the way. Usually, as soon as the game starts at the plane crash site, I would already be in a panic. I would just grab what I can from the passenger luggage strewn about the area and run for the beach because I want to be able to see these crazies coming for me from a mile away as much as possible. On the Deck, I found myself staying at the starting area, messing around with construction around the plane. Sure, the urgency of the situation is there but something about the small screen takes away a lot of the tension. I know that those darn cannibals can show up at any time, but I suppose on a physical level, I am aware that something that pops up on a small screen will not overwhelm me that much. It's funny though, all that time I spent messing around the starting area and the cannibals never showed up even though I was darn sure that they were watching me from a distance. I didn't play the game enough to get to the horrific parts but the difference in the dread level is like night and day. I plan to continue to explore this newfound revelation by installing more horror games on the Deck. I will provide further updates here if anything changes but it looks like to have some good time with a horror game, I just need to go to the bedroom, strip naked, get under the blanket, grab on to my Deck and play with it.
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