This page will be dedicated to all of the games I have played from start to finish with all DLCs, with a download link to all the recommended games(Using my Instant Gaming links supports me and I would greatly appreciate it!). As an associate of these websites, I earn from qualifying purchases.(Instant Gaming)
Paid
These are games that are actively being charged for, so I will be a lot more critical of them than free games, especially with higher priced games . The developers are taking peoples' hard earned money and as such should be held to a high standard.
Recommended
Instant Gaming(Steam)[Great Deal, If In Stock!]
Hours Played: ~150, Playstation 3/4/5
Replayability:5/10
Content:9/10
DLC:5/10
Categories: Open World, Fighting
NOT PLAYABLE ON UNMODIFIED STEAM DECK
Longer Description
Arkham Asylum is a really good game although also quite primitive. The elevator level in particular shows the team was really getting used to level design, but the combat system was and is a masterpiece to this day. Not much to say about the DLC since the Joker content was also quite primitive, but it was fun.
Recommended
Instant Gaming(Steam)[Great Deal, If In Stock!]
Hours Played: ~200, Steam Deck and Playstation 3/4/5
Replayability:6/10
Content:8/10
DLC:8/10
Categories: Open World, Fighting
Longer Description
Arkham City is my 3rd favorite Arkham game with a great story and an even greater ending. Although the side missions are a bit lacking with 5 of the 12 missions being comprised mostly of either purely retrieving something or beating people up. The DLC content is spectacular, showcasing another character's side of the events of Arkham City. Although the mobility of said character is a bit annoying along with that character's endgame goal.
Recommended
Instant Gaming(Steam)[Great Deal, If In Stock!]
Hours Played: ~400, Steam Deck and Playstation 4
Replayability:8/10
Content:10/10
DLC:9/10
Categories: Open World, Fighting
Longer Description
Arkham Knight is my second favorite of all the Arkham games. His internal struggle is fantastically done, all of the villains are done very well, the DLCs are really good, and I even found myself liking and playing the AR challenges which I would actively avoid in other games. There was some original awkwardness with the batmobile, but I would say it's really fun once you acquire the skill(minus some of the special AR batmobiles which handle like a tin can falling down a staircase). Would say more, but don't want to spoil.
Recommended
Instant Gaming(Steam)[Great Deal, If In Stock!]
Hours Played: ~500, Steam Deck and Playstation 3
Replayability:8/10
Content:10/10
DLC:9/10
Categories: Open World, Fighting
Longer Description
Arkham Origins is my personal favorite of all the Arkham games. Love the angry gritty Batman, his internal struggle is fantastically done, and the Christmas aesthetic was a brilliant choice. Would say more, but don't want to spoil. The online portion was also a work of art before the shutdown.
Recommended
Instant Gaming(Battle.net Only)
Instant Gaming(Xbox)[Ultimate Edition].
Hours Played: ~1000, Playstation 4/5
Replayability:8/10
Content:9/10
DLC:10/10
Categories: Multiplayer, First Person Shooter
NOT PLAYABLE ON UNMODIFIED STEAM DECK
Longer Description
Cold War is a hidden gem. The campaign is great, the zombies are great especially with its separate camo and perk progression system, the multiplayer is fun and allows a lot of diverse builds with knifing being really fun, and the ranked play is fun. The camo grinds for both multiplayer and zombies were great. I couldn't really get into the arcade-like "Dead Ops Arcade" mode, but loved everything else. Only annoying part of it is the broken pistol shotguns in multiplayer.
Recommended
Hours Played: ~1000, Playstation 4/5
Replayability:8/10
Content:9/10
Categories: Multiplayer, First Person Shooter
NOT PLAYABLE ON UNMODIFIED STEAM DECK
Longer Description
Modern Warfare is a great game with beautiful graphics, fun and diverse gameplay(especially loved ninja defusing and knifing with a riot shield), a great campaign, tough but fair time to kill, and really smooth weapon play.
Recommended
Hours Played:~500, Steam Deck and Playstation 3.
Replayability:9/10
Content:10/10
DLC:10/10
Variable Difficulty
Categories: First Person Shooter, RPG
Recommendations: Buy The Broken Steel DLC.
Longer Description
Fallout 3 is my favorite game and is a great mix of rustic charm, serious moral and ethical lessons/dillemas, and satirization of capitalism and senseless violence. While there are options to do horrible things in the game, they are very deincentivized both by the ingame rewards and by the fact the world feels very lived in. The characters you can do the horrible actions to are very sweet, relatable, and feel like an everyday person, so the horrible options are obviously meant to make the player feel bad and push them towards more benevolent options, enforcing good moral lessons both in game and in real life while still allowing player freedom. The side quests are very well made and mostly are filled with interesting player choices as well. The Downloadable content is top tier. Would highly recommend. The combat and progression systems are really nice and fluid. The only real criticism I've seen is some points about the ending of the game, but it is symbollic.
Recommended
Hours Played:~500, Steam Deck and Playstation 4/5.
Replayability:3/10
Content:6/10
DLC:7/10
Variable Difficulty
Categories: First Person Shooter, RPG
Longer Description
Fallout 4 is fun for the first playthrough although a lot of the quests, especially for the morally good ending, are just fetch quests or go to X and kill X quests which I don't find engaging. Probably the most interesting part of the game is the companion system, which is actually really good and allows good insight into the people watching your back. This is closely seconded by the settlement building system which both encourages exploring and allows the player to feel like they're actually a part of the world. Fallout 4 has a lot of endings, but only 2 of them are really morally sound. There isn't too much push back from choosing any ending aside from a couple dialogue lines, so there is not a lot of emphasis on your decision. The DLCs are really good and in some ways better than the base game. Far Harbor is a fantastic break from the normal feel of Fallout 4 and felt a lot like Point Lookout from Fallout 3 to me. Nuka World was a great way to give more morally bad choices with Fallout 4 having very few of them, although even the Nuka World choices have very little push back. Automatraton is also a really good DLC with an interesting story and good characters.
Recommended
Instant Gaming(Steam)[Fantastic Deal, If In Stock!]
Hours Played:71.6, Steam Deck.
Replayability:9/10
Content:9/10
DLC:9/10
Variable Difficulty
Categories: First Person Shooter, RPG
Longer Description
Fallout New Vegas is really fun and reminiscent of Fallout 3. Amazing combat and progression system and really fleshed out characters and world. Definitely gives a much more happy vibe than the rest of the series but definitely does have its darker moments and gives some really interesting commentary on free will and capitalism through the main story. The DLCs are amazing as well. Dead Money is another really interesting storyline involving capitalism and free will with a really cool new environment and enemies, Honest Hearts is a very interesting moral quandry and a much different feeling and environment with a much more lively landscape, Old World Blues is a really fun wacky story filled with satire on the pre-war world as well as the current occupants of the new environment with new enemies, and Lonesome Road is a really interesting and thought provoking story shedding light on the main character's past. The game contains a couple quirks like a lot of invisible walls between areas that artificially enhance play time, but overall a really solid game.
Not Recommended For New Players
Hours Played: 198.3
Replayability:5/10
Content:5/10
DLC:3/10
Categories: Multiplayer, Asymmetrical Horror
Recommendations: Do Not Buy At This Point.
Longer Description
Texas Chainsaw Massacre had a lot of potential for its niche and in the first couple weeks every asymmetrical horror fan was playing it. Although unfortunately from there it went downhill and people lost interest in it very fast mainly due to developer inaction, bad balancing, and lack of content. Now the servers can still somewhat be populated and it's cultivated a quite small but loyal fan base. Although even that seems to be slipping with there just not being a lot of interesting content. The gameplay enhancing DLCs are overpriced for the little content they give and there is not much to do inside the core gameplay loop once you've played each killer and through each escape pathway. It's OK for an occasional idle activity but not really worth it for a new player to buy.
Recommended
Instant Gaming(Steam)[Fantastic Deal, If In Stock!]
Hours Played:~300, Steam Deck and Playstation 3/4/5.
Replayability:7/10
Content:10/10
DLC:9/10
Variable Difficulty
Categories: First Person Shooter/Fighting Game, RPG
Longer Description
Skyrim is a masterpiece of the medieval genre and should be used as the golden standard for the genre. It has a fantastic combat and progression system(all weapons feel really good although I, like many, tend to gravitate to a stealth archer. The world feels really alive. The characters, their stories, and the various guilds you can join are all really fleshed out. There is a lot of content included in the base game including some from Bethesda's own shop called the creation club included in the newer versions. The DLCs are also amazing although 2/3 of them are very linear with not much room for player choice.
Free
These games are provided at no consumer expense and with some of them being from indie developers, so I will be very lenient with my reviews and if anything will provide constructive critical feedback. I'd ask others to do the same and if you enjoy the game show some love to the developers.
Recommended
Hours Played:1.9, Steam Deck.
Replayability:7/10
Content:9/10
DLC:10/10
Categories: Walking Simulator, Puzzle, Story
Longer Description
Marie's Room is a really cute charming short game with a very interesting story, a cozy look, and a lot of work put into details. It is not long and you can side step a lot of the lore to go straight to the end, but it is much more enjoyable getting the full experience. Just wish it was longer.
Recommended
Hours Played:0.2, Steam Deck.
Replayability:5/10
Content:9/10
Categories: Puzzle, Story
Longer Description
Good, fun, and funny short puzzle game.
Games I Will Never/Cannot Play
These games are ones I will abstain from either for moral/personal reasons or because they do not run well on Steam Deck, running windows or not.
Moral/Personal Reasons
Technical And Moral/Personal Reasons
Dead By Daylight is the single most buggy and unbalanced experience I've ever seen with the most toxic community I've ever seen, including playing Call Of Duty for 4 years. Although what's even worse is the dev reaction to toxicity and whining. I played against a Twitch streamer who had cosmetics that can only be given by BHVR(the company in charge of Dead By Daylight) who proceeded to moan about video game strategies(that BHVR themselves have said are just part of the game) and called me a toxic POS multiple times. Then when I reported the streamer with a copy of their stream BHVR said that nothing could be done because it "didn't happen in game" despite endorsing the streamer for her out of game actions streaming. This is also far from a rare occurence with a large number of players spewing vitriol over video game strategies(check the Problematic Public Personalities and Salty/Toxic Non-Public Personalities section for proof). Also DBD claims to be a very inclusive game and does pride events but then partnered with Five Nights At Freddy's creator Scott Cawthon, who made donations to xenophobic and homophobic politicians like Donald Trump proving all their support to be nothing but virtue signaling. BHVR also releases powerful characters or perks, takes peoples' money, then completely nerfs them 6 months or so later which is an obvious ploy to take people's money without actually caring about game integrity. Additionally, BHVR constantly panders to the side that makes the most money(survivors) by adding base mechanics that eliminate normal playstyles(anti-camp, anti-tunnel, anti-3gen, anti-slug) and quickly fixing survivor bugs while killers can be left unplayable for an extended period of time such as with the Twins killer being literally stuck in place randomly for the full game 2 years after their launch. This is definitely not helped by the fact a new slew of bugs happen every other update. The anti-cheat is horrible and subtle cheaters can easily get away with a speed hack unless the other side is really paying attention, especially with a lot of perks mimicking things that would be obvious cheats in any other game such as increased speed and invulnerability. Overall, just a horrible game with inattentive devs who refuse to hold people they endorse accountable.
The creator, J.K. Rowling, has a vast history of transphobia including following a self-professed transphobe, defending people who were ousted for anti-trans statements, and more. Also created her own fund specifically committed to fighting against trans acceptance which she funnels Harry Potter money into so giving money to her is both pracically AND figuratively supporting transphobia. Also, out of curiosity since I grew up with the series I bought a copy from CD Keys so she would not profit from it and the game itself was dogshit, not running above 30 FPS and essentially playing like a slideshow.
Technical Reasons