The losses just keep coming for Valve and the Steam Deck rating system, as now the Oblivion remaster has been Verified for the handheld, but its performance is far from worthy of the green tick. That’s not to say the game should be deemed unplayable, but its rating is not reflective of the experience.
The best handheld gaming PC is struggling to run this surprise release, and the Oblivion Remastered system requirements certainly suggested that it was going to be an uphill battle for the console. This latest Steam Deck ratings issue comes hot off the heels of Spider-Man 2 having its rating changed because it wasn’t worthy of verification, and I can see the same happening to Oblivion.
I’ve made my feelings very clear about how Valve can improve the Steam Deck game rating system, and the verification of Oblivion Remastered just further reinforces the need for a community feedback feature.
Booting Oblivion Remastered on the Steam Deck will see its graphics settings pre-configured to the low preset with XeSS set to Balanced. However, this isn’t ideal, and further tweaks are needed to achieve a playable frame rate. This alone should mean that the Verified status is off the table.
Worse still, the game is a struggle to run at a stable 30fps without aggressive upscaling, and aiming for any performance above 30fps requires you to use frame generation, which introduces its own issues when the starting frame rate is so low, such as input lag and extreme image ghosting.
If you own Oblivion Remastered and only have a Steam Deck on which to play it, I recommend instead forgoing running it natively on the handheld and instead using Nvidia GeForce Now. This way, you’ll be able to crank the settings as high as you wish, and the image quality will be far better on the handheld.
Of course, you’ll need a subscription to use the best rigs available on the service, but it’s a better alternative to the questionable experience you’ll get running it natively on the Deck.
For games that are worthy of their ratings, or in some cases have no rating, yet still run great on the console, check out our picks for the best Steam Deck games, with 30 entries listed in total.
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