Steam Deck HQ recently tested the shooter DOOM: The Dark Ages on Valve’s portable PC, the Steam Deck, and found that the device struggles to meet the game’s minimum requirements. This results in a frustratingly poor performance, making the game almost unplayable in its current state on the handheld console.

To run DOOM: The Dark Ages, testers had to use the preview version SteamOS 3.7.6 combined with the Proton Experimental beta, specifically the Bleeding-Edge build. Even with these cutting-edge software versions, the first chapter of the game, running on the XeSS “Quality” preset with low graphics settings at 1280x720 resolution, was described as “nightmarish.” Frame rates barely maintained 30 FPS and frequently dipped to 20-25 FPS.

Later chapters proved even more demanding on hardware. Performance worsened, and the only way to reach a playable 30 FPS was to reduce resolution to as low as 960×540. Dropping the resolution further to 768×480 stabilized the frame rate at around 45 FPS on low settings and nearly 30 FPS on high settings. However, this came at a significant cost to image quality — the visuals became heavily pixelated and blurry, resembling a Nintendo 3DS XL screen with unpleasantly low pixel density.

Despite these adjustments, Steam Deck HQ noted that frame rates still occasionally dropped to 20-25 FPS, and the overall experience suffered from severe blurriness and pixelation. This makes DOOM: The Dark Ages a challenging title to enjoy on Steam Deck without further optimization.

Main image: youtube.com

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