You can now make your Steam Deck games look even better for free, thanks to a brand new mod that can radically change their appearance in just a few clicks. The LetMeReShade plugin lets you apply custom filters and shaders to your games to tweak how they look.
LetMeReShade can help elevate the appearance of a game, especially if it’s an older title, by letting you change the colors, illumination, contrast levels, and visual effects in your favorite games by making it easy to use a tool called ReShade, as long as you have the processing power to spare. As one of the best handheld gaming PC options out there, the Steam Deck continues to see regular improvements to its feature set, thanks in part to user-made plugins such as this one.
Initially shared in the Steam Deck subreddit by the creator SnooOranges3876, the plugin makes it easy to install ReShade visual upgrade mods for supported games. Before now, installing these mods on the Steam Deck required a deep-dive into the installation folders of each game to replace and edit certain files.
Once installed, gamers can then access the ReShade tool’s overlay to enable or disable various preset options to improve the visual experience of the game they’re playing, and set up their own custom configurations.
In a video, the modder shows off how ReShade mods can be quickly applied to games including Cyberpunk 2077 and Heavy Rain using LetMeReShade. In Cyberpunk 2077, the modder is shown applying custom bloom shaders to add a glow to light sources in several games, along with other mods such as chromatic aberration.
While I’d be wary of using mods like these in games with an anti-cheat system enabled, given that certain filters can be classed as cheating, installing ReShade mods for older, single-player titles could help to enhance those games even further.
However, be wary of pushing your Steam Deck too far. While it might sound appealing to switch on a huge number of different enhancements for games, keep an eye on your frame rate to make sure you keep the Deck above 30fps at a minimum, and ideally well above that, during gameplay.
LetMeReShade is currently awaiting approval to join the official Deck Loader plugin list for easy installation, but in the meantime, you can download it from the LetMeReShade GitHub page and install it manually.
Thinking about a handheld upgrade? Check out our Asus ROG Ally X review to read our verdict on this powerful Deck alternative, which uses Windows instead of SteamOS.
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