You know how sometimes you want to play a video game, but instead of the latest and greatest title sitting in your game library, you reach out for something familiar to pass the time. In my case it used to be Fallout 4. Walking around irradiated downtown Boston and taking in the sight and sounds while expanding ammo on ghouls and mirelurks used to be a time-killer for me. Keep in mind that I’ve beaten the game several times over, so punching down deathclaws and speedrunning through raider outposts are par of the course for me by now.

But ever since I’ve gotten the Steamdeck, there are two games that have taken up my time, enough to distract me from doing stuff like reviewing new games (I’ll get to them, eventually).

Vampire Survivors

First up is Vampire Survivors. I bought this back in 2022 for the PC and each playthrough lasts about 30 minutes which is pretty ideal whenever there are competing things to do. The brilliant part for this top-down roguelike reverse-shmup is that there are so many things to unlock and no one playthrough is the same. Screw up your choice of power-ups and your playthrough may end early, but if you do get everything right in terms of power-up combinations watch as your character go to town as a god-like demolisher of the undead.

I’m not proud though on the number of copies of Vampire Survivors that I have. The earliest copy that I own is on Steam which I use for my PC and my Steam Deck, I’ve also a copy on my Xbox Series S and a copy for my Nintendo Switch! A word on the latter, the game loads and runs a little slower on the Switch versus every other platform.

Diablo IV

Now the other title is a much more recent release and a more demanding one. Unlike its predecessor, Diablo IV features a massive open-world to traipse around. Recent updates to the game makes every venture into Sanctuary whether within the current Season or Eternal Realms to be challenging affairs. I managed to stick with buying just one copy of the game on Battle.net for the PC. I managed to get that copy working on the Steam Deck as well. The fact that Diablo IV has made it on Game Pass has enabled me to enjoy the game on the Series S and the 65-inch TV attached to it.

The latest update to the game has included a whole slew of graphical enhancements to the game, including ray tracing (finally!) and upgrades to reflections, ambient occlusion and contact shadows. Check out the soft shadows below with ray-tracing enabled.