Times are hard for patch note readers everywhere. CS:GO seldom gets an update, and if it does then
it's some bug fixes on a map that even the mappers themselves have forgotten the specifics of.
OR, it's to ready the game for the steam deck, by improving controller support and by featuring lots
and lots and lots of circular menus everywhere. Which nobody cared about because the steam deck
hadn't been released. And because nobody communicates in cs go anyway. But now, all
these updates have finally paid off, because the Steam Deck has finally been released, I eventually
received mine, and now i suppose i should be grateful for all the many tweaks and optimizations
that CS:GO has had to run on it. So what's it like? In short, it's probably the worst supported
Valve-made game on the Steam Deck, bar Ricochet. And Team Fortress 2, but no one cares about that
one. But another reason I consider it to be one of the worst supported Valve-games on the steam deck
is because it's CS:GO: it's a twitch-shootery thing where speed and precision are paramount.
And while the Steam Deck is an awfully clever little device, I still think, given the option,
most gamers would still choose to use a mouse instead. And I'm not just saying that because
this video is sponsored by ASUS ROG, who are hosting a competition that you can enter. If
you're the arty type and think you've got an idea for a mouse design that people would love to see
slapped across a mouse, AND you have the ability to pull it off -design-wise- then why not submit
your design to the ROG Gladius mouse competition? All of the artworks get voted on and the winning
entry will be made into a real mouse skin, meaning that gamers will be able to buy a limited edition
Gladius 3 mouse with your design on it. And as if that isn't enough you also win a load of things
including a £1,000, a £100 Games Planet voucher, ROG merchandise and, of course, a
Gladius 3 wireless gaming mouse in your own design. This mouse lasts up to 85 hours between charges,
has an optical sensor that supports polling rates up to 1000 hertz and supports exclusive
hot-swappable buttons to let you kustomize your kliks, and to extend the lifespan of the mouse.
You have until june the first to submit a design, so GOOOO. Here's the twist, though: I'm also entering...
...with THIS design! With my username, I feel it's been inevitable destiny that I eventually become a
mouse design. If I win, though, the prize money goes to a charity of my choice which i've chosen to be
the PDSA because i've seen first hand the service they provide and all of the hard work and kindness
that they invest into the well-being of animals being treated there. Including mice. So if you have
a great idea for a mouse and would like to see it potentially become a real thing for people to buy,
or if you just like the idea of getting your hands on my design so you can literally facepalm every
time you KLIK at your PC, then check out the link in this video's description. You can plug a mouse
into the Steam Deck using a dongle like this, but in case you don't want to, it does have its
own alternatives. And there are several. One way it can imitate a mouse is with its touch screen.
Or it can be done by flicking this knob with your left hand. Or -my favorite- by gently caressing this
patch which quivers and vibrates like an excited hamster though oddly this one isn't supported in
the options menu for CS:GO. Valve please fix. Of course, none of these are as good as a mouse at
being a mouse but it's not like you'll be stranded on the options menu. We all know
how Counter-Strike's menus work already, so let's skip that and dive right on into the game itself!
What's playing csgo on a Steam Deck like? You won't be short of controls that's for sure.
It seems like there are three different buttons you can use for every in-game action
and one button can also serve several purposes: you could tap it for one action or hold it down
for the other. The left arrow toggles burst fire, but holding it down inspects your weapon. But
doing this also triggers the burst fire mode first, which isn't that good. Another example of
this is the L2 button, which is apparently used to crouch, to walk, and to scope! And I've tested this
several times just to make sure i wasn't being stupid. But no; it's the controls that are stupid
because I actually can't find a way to scope without also crouching. The moment you let go of
the button, the scoping ends. I've racked my mind for all the ways this could be a 4D move by Valve.
But I don't think it is, because it's far from ideal to have your vision jolted downwards every
time you go to aim, especially if your character is stood in front of some waist-high cover that then
proceeds to obstruct your view of the target. I'll only be discussing the default controls in this
video, but just know that you can configure them to be whatever you want them to be. I just feel like
I shouldn't have to do that. They should work the way that valve has configured them, shouldn't they.
So I'll be talking you through my experiences with them in this video. The movement's nice;
you can choose the exact speed you wish to move at by varying how far you push the joysticks,
which allows for all sorts of sneaky silent attacks at movement speeds
slightly higher than walking pace. And something else that keyboard players are missing out on
is the ability to move in the exact direction they want to. I honestly consider joysticks to be
superior to keyboards for any kind of movement... except for straight ahead, at maximum speed.
The R2 button acts as mouse button one, so for L2 to be mouse button 2, as well as being for crouch
and walk seems like a glaring oversight. But what about this: L2 is crouch, but so is the B button.
And so is L5 which is one of those weird paddle buttons beneath the device. Like I said, buttons
everywhere. Are these randomly chosen, or is this a big brain thing to keep the game as accessible
to as many new steam deck players as possible? Or is the theory behind this added redundancy just
in case your primary crouch button is too awkward to press when in conjunction with another button?
I don't know, and all those circular menus that valve featured simply for the steam deck I thought
were going to be intuitive on this device, but they're not because they all seem to work in
subtly different ways. I was unable to figure all this out mid-match so I had to boot up an empty
server just to confirm that they are a mess. Which they are. Say you want to switch weapon. You press
the Y button to show your inventory, then flick the left knob in the direction of the thing you wish
to equip. It sounds simple enough, but there's a bit of a delay to doing this- you must hold the
inventory button down for a split second before it activates. And you have to wait for this delay,
because if you flick with a left stick during this delay then your character begins moving. Normally
back and to the left, since that's where your weapons are situated on this circular menu. So expect
novice Steam Deck users to do a bit of a dance whenever they switch items in their inventory.
So that's how the inventory menu works. Now, you need to unlearn all that for the chat button!
this is triggered by R1, yet you must operate this one with the right knob. Not the left, like you do
with the menu. And to make matters worse, this one isn't just flick and forget- you move the knob in
the direction of the thing you want to say, then to trigger it, you must let go of the R1 button.
But because both of these buttons are being triggered at the same time by the same hand,
letting go of one of these will destabilise your grip on the device, so expect novice steam deck
users to shake a bit whenever a chat option is chosen. Luckily, the R4 button beneath the steam
deck also triggers the menu button, and I found that pressing and unpressing this one interfered
less with the fingers that you're actually using to stabilise the device with. You can also jump and
crouch with these paddle buttons, and I actually liked using them for these purposes in Source
based games. When the round first starts and you need to buy some weapons, you hold the X button, flick your
knob in the direction of the category you wish to buy from, it will instantly transition to that one,
and then you must hold your knob over the weapon and let go of the X button to initiate
the transaction. It isn't immediately intuitive, but it works. But you don't care about that, do you. The
thing you really care about is the aiming, because historically controllers have been terrible for
this. So what's it like on the Steam Deck? You'll be surprised to learn that there are like, three ways
to do this as well. I've always wanted to use a touch screen in a first person shooter game;
to be able to see an enemy, to tap on their face, and for my player to insta-spin and kill them with
a shot that would get you immediately overwatch banned. Sadly -or maybe happily- this isn't how it
works on the Steam Deck. How it DOES work depends on whether you've booted the game from the Steam
Deck's built-in interface or from the linux desktop. If you've loaded it from the steam
interface like any normal person, then it treats the top left corner of the screen as being the
middle, so tapping anywhere else on the screen moves your aim relative to the top-left corner.
This could be intentional to prevent touch screen cheating, but since valve hasn't even
bothered making the team-select screen work with the controller buttons I'd say this is probably
just a lucky oversight. But if you've loaded CS:GO from the desktop, then it treats any bit
of the screen as the fire button, so it's touch to shoot, but not touch to aim. Shame. And as you might
have noticed, it isn't the most sensitive of touch screens. I do have a protector on it, granted, but
I also have one on my phone and that still works fine. The way we poke at our phone screens is the
golden standard for how we interact with touch screens, while the Steam Deck's feels too hollow,
too plasticky, and it doesn't always register the inputs from your sausage-like fingers. And the idea
of typing stuff out using the on-screen keyboard on this device strikes fear into the heart of me!
So yeah, while it's nice to have the feature, it's not so nice to have to use it!
So the touch screen's out of the question. But what about the touch pad? This is... surprisingly
good! But it's a touchpad; there's an upper limit to how good it can get. The default speed is FAST!
you're not going to be slow to move your aim, that's for sure. But you probably won't be that
accurate once you get to within the general vicinity of your target because, like i said,
it's highly sensitive at stock settings! Something that is interesting though is that if you flick
your finger across it and then let go, your vision will continue to move in that direction, rolling
gradually to a stop. So it's great that with this touch pad, Valve has successfully simulated what
would happen if you let go of your mouse at high velocity. I don't think this feature makes sense
at the default high sensitivity setting, but I can see it being useful at lower sensitivities where
you may intend to get to where you want to aim via big sweeping movements much like low sensitivity
mouse users do. But i'm not sure if you'll ever get as good with it as you can with a mouse...
...though i'm sure there's someone out there who's willing to prove me wrong about this! So we get
to this knob here, which now does as you'd expect from any console-based FPS: it moves your aim in
the direction you push, at a speed relative to how far you're pushing. It's boring, it's predictable,
but probably what most people will default to. And that's a shame, because while I was doing
all the research and work involved in making this video, there was another control system in place.
Then, this update came along and changed a load of things about how the Steam Deck works with CS:GO, one
of these things being to change the knob controls back to the boring old familiar style instead.
But BEFORE the update, it was using something far more interesting. Far more fiddly and experimental,
called 'Flick Stick' and I suggest you give it a go because, I believe -eventually- you will be
able to become more proficient with this than you ever would have done with the standard touchpad.
Flick Stick makes it NOT behave like your standard joystick -sorry that sounds rude-
your standard KNOB.
What it does instead, is to instantly spin you in whatever direction you flick it, with
up being the direction you're currently facing. Want to look right? You flick it to the right.
Want to spin 180 degrees? You flick it down. Want to look just very slightly to the left? Flick it up
and very slightly to the left and so on. Once it's been flicked, you can then roll it around clockwise
or anti-clockwise to pan your vision left or right just to refine exactly where you're looking. At
this point it's almost like you're steering a ship with one of those big wheels! At first, this
control system goes against any muscle memory that you've ever acquired it will feel wrong... and
yet it feels so right! This is the future of first person shooting on a controller. It's fiddly and
it's terrifying, and it is going to take you far longer than I spent testing in this video before
you get proficient with it. But I can see that it has potential, IF you have dozens of hours to burn
just getting accustomed to it. But wait: if this knob only controls the direction you're looking,
then how do you look up or down? Well, for this you rely on ANOTHER Steam Deck control system.
That being the gyro feature. You literally move the controller about. Kind of like how you used to when
going around corners in racing games. Only, doing this with the Steam Deck actually does something.
So once again, you end up using a hybrid of several different control systems on the Steam Deck,
further increasing how long it takes to learn it, but I will give it credit: I can see potential with
it... but I might leave it to somebody else to master this device, since I have a mouse and a desk and
I'm quite happy using that instead. Sorry. Actually, I have just thought of another way that you could
control it. You could just stand in the middle of an open space and use only the gyro to aim!
You'd look like a nutter, but they won't be laughing so hard when you beat them while looking
like this! Doing this is surprisingly intuitive, once you stop trying to lean around corners. All
you need to do now is to strap the steam deck onto your face and connect up some knuckles controllers,
and you'll have yourself a pretty decent ghetto VR rig. But how does the Steam Deck perform in CS:GO?
Very well! The Steam Deck is probably the best performing 15 watt device the world's ever seen,
especially since it's coupled with a fast SSD and RAM. The problem is, it's still only 15 watts.
This limits how fast it can potentially get. For instance: while it has four cores and eight threads,
it isn't like a desktop PC that can power all of them at maximum speeds.
With 15 watts, it can't even drive one of these cores as fast as it potentially could, which means
the maximum frame rate of the Steam Deck will be limited. But it's very well equipped to drive CS:GO.
It is, after all, a Valve-designed game, running on a Valve-designed Operating System, operating on a
Valve-designed computer! Running about inferno, I got about 150 to 200 fps at low settings.
And you're not going to believe this- but ancient ran EVEN BETTER, averaging maybe 200 fps. On an
empty map, admittedly. But why is this? Isn't this meant to be the most demanding map to run?! I think
that Valve has been evolving the way they've made maps to make them more GPU demanding and less CPU
demanding, and with the Steam Deck the way it is. I feel its processor is going to be holding it back
more than its gpu is in this title. Of course, once you add other players and especially bots, then the
demands on the CPU will increase, and since it's a shared 15 watts between the processor and the
graphics card, it may also impact performance by reducing how much power the graphics card has
to play with. But still... 200 fps on ancient, on a handheld system. Not bad! Increasing it to high
settings and with four times anti-aliasing, this dropped down to somewhere between 80 and 130 FPS.
This is all at 1280x800, which is the resolution of the Steam Deck's screen. And you should like it,
because the 16:10 aspect ratio is closer to what most of you are using already! The steam deck
supports FSR, which allows it to upscale from a lower resolution which could potentially give you
even better performance. But no Valve-made game supports lower resolutions in the aspect ratio
that the Steam Deck runs atanyway, so I wasn't able to use this. Bit of an oversight if you ask me,
even if -in my opinion- there's no reason to drop the resolution any lower than native when playing
CS:GO on this thing. I think the best way to play CS:GO on the Steam Deck is to cap the frame rate
to 60! I'll show some footage of me playing deathmatch against spots while I talk about this,
which is probably the most demanding scenario you could encounter in this game. Also, from making this
video, I concluded that there is no easy way to record Steam Deck footage, since when using
screen-capture, I'm viewing it on an external monitor, which makes using the gyro unintuitive.
And when filming me gaming like I am here, firstly I can't really use the gyro feature, and second,
I'm viewing it through a camera screen to ensure it's in focus and in frame so that's my excuse for
why I'm so rubbish in all these clips. But like I was saying there are a few reasons for why capping
the frame rate to 60 makes sense. The first is the battery-life. Running at 150 fps is all well and
good, but it's really wasteful when you're gaming on a battery. Setting it to 60 will make the device
run cooler and last much longer. Everyone online seems to insist the Steam Deck only lasts 90
minutes on battery, but from my experience that is an absolute LIE! All these people must be pushing
it to the absolute maximum, on an unconstrained frame rate, because I'm yet to exhaust the Steam Deck's
battery in a single sitting. I'd say it sits somewhere between three and six hours depending
on what you're playing, but it lasted me a train journey from London to Devon! Another reason to
cap it to 60 FPS is because doing that doesn't seem to degrade the experience, from what i could tell.
Let's be honest here: the Steam Deck isn't designed for high level competitive play.
Faze isn't going to rock up at the next major all gaming on Steam Decks as their preferred device!
60 hz on a mobile computer isn't going to beat playing on a high refresh rate desktop pc, so let's
kill that notion now, rather than having to repeatedly remind ourselves of it after
every point. For a device like the Steam Deck, 60 hz is FINE. 40 hz would be ample in most
games, even. But CS:GO isn't one of those- 60 is definitely where it's at in this title, and i'm
encountering the same phenomenon here that I did on my old 4k 60hz screen, where capping the
game to the monitor's refresh rate -if anything- makes it feel more responsive than playing it
uncapped in the 80-150 FPS region. This footage on ancient is showing a number of stutters, presumably
where it falls just short of pumping out a new frame every refresh, but if these stats weren't
on screen, I wouldn't have known that because the game doesn't feel juddery or laggy or stuttery, bar
a few noticeable stutters when a map first loads where I guess it's all buttering everything in.
After that, it runs Counter-Strike. It may fail in every benchmarking metric people judge the game by,
but the general experience of playing it is GOOD. There are much more demanding titles where the
Steam Deck only just has the power to handle them acceptably, but Global Offensive is not
one of those. I need to say all this, because in the rest of the video I will show gameplay where the
frame rate is left UNcapped, and this is for your benefit, but it isn't how you should play the game
on this device. But first, I've got to show you the Steam Deck's instant resume feature, which lets you
put the device to sleep and then to resume the game you were playing almost instantly. And this
is great, because it means you can carry on where you left off without having to wait for the game
to load again. It's one of the Steam Deck's best features, but obviously you're not going to be
using this in CS:GO. You can't exactly go to sleep mid-match, plus resuming it again causes CS:GO to lag
unacceptably for about 15 seconds, presumably as it loads everything back into its memory again
or whatever. This is one thing that got the game to lag for me, so as long as you don't press the
sleep button mid-match, you should be okay. I did encounter one bug with this game where this menu
got stuck on-screen and refused to disappear again. I've seen that other people have had the same
problem and there is apparently a way of fixing it via an intricate series of button presses.
I'm hopeful that the recent update has fixed it though, as it hasn't happened to me again since.
I didn't dare go into a competitive match, but I did play on a deathmatch server.
I'll be showing clips from that as i talk about my other observations about the device.
And I have one last worry about the Steam Deck, and that's overwatch! Say you get decent at using
Flick Stick aiming. say you get better than that and become a really good player. Now, say an enemy
reports you for cheating! What are overwatch judges going to think of somebody with an aim like THIS?!
Flick Shooting, when done right (as in, not the way i do it) can look awkwardly similar to an
aimbot locking on, or skipping straight to the target in a way that can't be done with a mouse.
I know that if i saw somebody aiming like this, I'd assume they were cheating in some way. So that's
another problem that I'll leave for Valve to deal with for now. So in conclusion: yeah, you can play
csgo on the Steam Deck, but the big question you probably have is: WHY? Why would you want to play
CS:GO away from your desktop anyway? And the answer to that is... I probably wouldn't. There are games far
better suited for the Steam Deck than CS:GO that I would be playing instead. And unless you're going
to play CS:GO with bots (and I do know some people who do that) then you'll need a decent internet
connection to play this game. And that tends to go against everything the Steam Deck stands for,
being all portable and stuff. I have made this video because i have a Steam Deck, and because i play CS:GO,
and I suspect those of you who have found this video to be the most interesting are likely those
of you who have no intention in ever trying out for yourself. It is a bit of an adventure, driven by
curiosity. And yes, it is a lesson in pain to pick up and to try and learn a brand new control system.
Or two! Especially when you have one that works perfectly well already. Is it worth learning a new one?
I don't know. I haven't invested enough time into learning the Steam Deck's controls to
give them a fair chance. I don't know how long I'd need to do that! Dozens of hours? Hundreds?! Solar
Light has a great video about the Flick-Shooting control system and he appears to have invested
enough time to get good at it. Good enough to go up against opponents wielding mice and keyboards.
So it can, and will, be done. It might just take a while longer before other people reach that level
of familiarity with the Steam Deck. As for my deathmatch game, as you've probably seen, it was awkward.
The Flick Shooting and gyro were two control systems intended to work together, but quite
often they ended up going against each other, my efforts with one were cancelled out by the other,
and i ended up doing some horrible silver level sprays which missed the enemy by a wide margin!
Once the muscle memory kicks in, things will start to improve, but I feel it's important to show what
it's like when you first start out with it. As for my score, it was bad! I don't know how
bad, since I forgot which button it was to show the scoreboard. But it was bad! ...but not the worst!
'HOW DO YOU PLAY?!'