After a recent patch, Death Stranding 2 is great on Steam Deck

When Death Stranding 2 released for PC last month I didn't think it would work well on Steam Deck. And it didn't: when I booted it up on my OLED, nothing I tinkered with could stop its framerate from lurching between the teens and mid-20s with long hitches in-between, which was slightly disappointing because Death Stranding: Director's Cut is a gem on Steam Deck.

Still, fair enough, I thought. It's a big blockbuster PS5-exclusive, and the Steam Deck is getting long-ish in the tooth.

But last week port magicians Nixxes rolled out patch 1.2 for the PC version of Death Stranding 2. The patch notes promised "improved performance on Steam Deck" among other performance-centric tweaks. Nixxes has worked on a heap of PS5 games that have worked surprisingly well on Steam Deck, including both modern Spider-Man games, both The Last of Us games, and Horizon Zero Dawn, among others.

Emboldened, I re-downloaded all 112 GB of Death Stranding 2 and the difference is definitely night and day: using the game's default portable settings I'm generally getting between 30 and 35 fps during moment-to-moment open world gameplay, and around 50 fps in minimal interiors. Battery drain is a bit intense—you can expect around an hour and a half worth of play at best.

Here's what the portable preset for Death Stranding 2 looks like:

And a few shots taken in-game on the Steam Deck:

A lot of studios are implementing portable presets in PC games and it's very welcome, even when the preset doesn't necessarily mean it'll run well on Deck. Resident Evil 9 and Crimson Desert are two notable examples: I haven't played the latter, but Resident Evil 9 is perfectly playable on a Steam Deck OLED so long as you're not expecting 60 fps and exorbitantly detailed texture quality.

It's the same with Death Stranding 2. It's definitely a game that lends itself to a big screen, but I've played six hours worth on the OLED's 7.4 inch display and haven't really felt myself at a disadvantage. Overall, it's good proof that the Steam Deck, and other handhelds with similar specs, can still sing so long as studios have the time to optimise for them.

Here's the full 1.2 patch notes for Death Stranding 2:

• Performance improvements on systems with limited PCIe bandwidth.
• Improved performance on Steam Deck.
• Various crash fixes, stability improvements, and performance optimizations.
• Photo Mode screenshots taken in HDR no longer appear to be washed out.
• DualShock 4 triggers no longer need to be pressed fully to register input when using Steam Input.
• Various bug fixes related to the Map user interface.
• Various bug fixes and improvements related to graphics.
• Various input and user interface related improvements and bug fixes.

Death Stranding 2 released for PC last month after a year of PS5 exclusivity. "By turns sentimental and ridiculous, Death Stranding 2 nonetheless offers the best marriage of mechanics and meaning in Hideo Kojima's storied career," Wes Fenlon wrote in his review.