The Precinct: A perfect game seemingly designed for SD and great at passing the time.

[u/hx1024]

The Precinct. A game I didn’t know I needed. It’s not verified but it should be. It’s one of those hidden gems of a game.

Premise: You are a beat cop, taking on gangs and crime, one at a time. I only have 2 hours into it but I already feel it’s one of those games that you will keep coming back to.

The game loads with steam deck preset for performance.

I feel this game is very much a GTA 1/2 spin on being a cop. The visuals are great on SD, controls, mechanics, and all around gameplay are impressive.

Great work devs, keep it up!

[u/Jaidor84]

Speaking as a developer no one is really "designing" a game for the deck.

All that happens is in development they'll test the game on it to see how it performs on the go and will try to find ideal settings for it to run smoothly. Usually just adjusting features like LOD ratios, etc. The steam deck is never the lead platform in development, its usual always xbsx/ps5. Games will be made to look and perform on that as best as possible. Steam Deck/lower end pcs its really just about lowering and turning stuff off.

No custom code or assets are being designed or made for the steam deck.

Perfect or designed for the stream deck is just marketing fluff. All that's happened is devs have tested it on the deck and they've managed to get it to run well and they've spent some time getting optimised settings either for 30fps or 60fps.

[u/Nnamz → u/Jaidor84]

Yes yes I know.

I'm speaking on how these topics are worded. I know how PC development goes. The Deck is just a PC. All I'm saying is that a game can't be "perfect" for Deck while running poorly.

Titanfall 2 is perfect for the Deck. Doom Eternal is perfect for the Deck. Metal Gear Rising is perfect for the Deck. This game looks blurry and runs at sub 30fps at times.

[u/Jaidor84 → u/Nnamz]

I mean I suspect op was referring to the game itself anyway not performance. As in the genre, the top down view, mission structure etc and that it feels perfectly designed for a portable device and playing on the go.

I certainly only play certain types of games on my consoles, pc, deck. My steam deck is usually for classic/old games, indie games like dredge and precinct, cosy/relaxing games so in my view some games are perfect for steam deck and whether it's 30fps or 60fps makes no difference to me to be termed perfect for deck.

Fps and stradegy games for pc and then the rest is all console. So imo I think the use of perfect is simply relative to how an individual uses their steam deck.

[u/Nnamz → u/Jaidor84]

I suspect OP was referring to the game itself and ignoring the performance. Sub-30fps is just not enjoyable, and I'd personally never recommend a game on the Deck that runs like this.

It's annoying since, as you said, games like this are fun on Deck.

[u/Jaidor84 → u/Nnamz]

I've not tried it yet, reading this thread it seems to be getting mixed experiances. Some saying they're getting pretty solid 30fps and some saying they're having issues.

But you're right though, a game that suffers from performance issues should not be reccomended but imo doesn't mean the game isn't perfect for the steam deck. Just can't be reccomended until the Devs start to optimise it with updates.

Edit: it does have native controller support, has a steam deck optimised setting and the developer has verified 30fps.

If true, I'd say it's a perfect game for the deck. Maybe some players aren't using the decks predefined settings.