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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on the Steam Deck is a hot messDon’t try it
Don’t try it
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Moment-to-moment performance simply isn’t good enough to enjoy with any degree of comfort, and that’s even assuming that you can make it past the introduction scene without it crashing. I can’t, and using the magic of cloud saves to hop into later stages, it’s clear that neither framerates nor stability improve as the game goes on. Instead of my original plan for a handheld-specific settings guide, then, allow me to reel off the many and varied reasons to stay away from Star Wars: Jedi: on the Steam Deck.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Has Big “Prequel Memes” Energy (PC Review)Alice chatted to Liam about her favourite thing in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.Watch on YouTube
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Has Big “Prequel Memes” Energy (PC Review)
Image credit:Rock Paper ShotgunSteam Deck Academybrings together all our guides and explainers on getting the most out of your Steam Deck, no student loans or sweaty dormitories required.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Steam Deck Academybrings together all our guides and explainers on getting the most out of your Steam Deck, no student loans or sweaty dormitories required.
The first isn’t a technical problemper se, but Jedi: Survivor’s mammoth 155GB storage requirement is bad news for lower-specced Steam Decks that are yet to be upgraded with expandable storage. It’s much too chunky to fit on the base model’s 64GB internal drive, and will eat the lion’s share of the 256GB model’s SSD space as well. Pairing your Steam Deck with amicroSD cardgets around this, though in Jedi: Survivor’s current state, it’s not worth installing in the first place.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
This happened in the intro on Coruscant, it happened on the first big hub planet, it happened in Cal Kestis’ ship while travelling between worlds, and sometimes it happened before it could so much as finish loading a save file. This instability alone makes Jedi: Survivor a non-starter (almost literally) on the Steam Deck, and even if I could play for more than a few moments at a time, what I have seen suggests it’s miles off achieving a steady 30fps. A full collection of Low settings, plus the fastest but messiest-looking Ultra Performance setting onFSR 2, is only enough to launch into the opening cutscene at a paltry 15fps. This picked up to about 20-25fps once I’d gained control of Cal, but it never looked like rising higher than that before the inevitable crash a few steps later.
Switching to a different save, the one I’d used for benchmarking Jedi: Survivor on desktop, it ran even worse, huffing along at 15-20fps. Before crashing. So far the only place I’ve been able to get above 45fps is the cramped workshop the rear of the ship, where Cal can customise the colour of his RGB gaming lightsaber. But you can’t do much Jedi surviving from there, so it’s little consolation.
I’ve also noticed that the Deck’s native 1280x800 resolution isn’t being applied correctly after choosing it in the display settings. Although it’s not instantly noticeable while pushing our ginger Jedi lad around, on some menu screens and even on the ship’s galaxy map, text and prompts will run off the left and right edges of the screen. 1280x720 seems to work okay, but 800p just nudges these UI elements out of place.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Lord, it’s just all so broken. But can it be fixed?EA tweetedearlier this week that Jedi: Survivor will receive numerous bug-stomping and performance-helping updates, and Valve have previously launchedProton updatesthat give little performance and stability boosts to certain games on the Steam Deck. It’s within the bounds of possibility that this particular game’s fortunes could be at the very least improved, even if it takes a few weeks.
Right now, though, I wouldn’t bother. Until EA and developers Respawn can conjure up some meaningful upgrades, Jedi: Survivor is joiningReturnalandThe Last of Us Part 1in the Steam Deck sin bin.
