Doom: The Dark Ages is surprisingly playable on the Steam Deck

While working on our review of Doom: The Dark Ages last week, I was unable to test the game on the Steam Deck due to a bug that prevented it from launching on SteamOS. I didn’t consider this much of a loss at the time, since I figured the Deck’s 3-year-old portable hardware was rated way below the minimum PC specs for the game, which call for ray tracing-capable graphics cards at a minimum.

Over the weekend, though, Valve released a preview build of a new version of SteamOS that allows Doom: The Dark Ages to actually launch on the Steam Deck. And after a bit of testing, I found the game is surprisingly playable on Valve’s portable hardware, provided you’re prepared to turn down the graphics settings.

With all the graphical quality sliders set to “Low” (and FSR upscaling set to “Performance”), I was able to run Doom: The Dark Ages at the system’s native 1280×800 resolution and a reasonably steady 30 to 40 fps.

This screenshot (and all others in this piece) were captured on a Steam Deck running at “Low” graphics settings and 1280×800 resolution.

Bethesda Game Studios

This screenshot (and all others in this piece) were captured on a Steam Deck running at “Low” graphics settings and 1280×800 resolution.

Bethesda Game Studios

Some impressive fire lighting, even on the Steam Deck.

Bethesda Game Studios

Some impressive fire lighting, even on the Steam Deck.

Bethesda Game Studios

This screenshot (and all others in this piece) were captured on a Steam Deck running at “Low” graphics settings and 1280×800 resolution.

Bethesda Game Studios

Some impressive fire lighting, even on the Steam Deck.

Bethesda Game Studios

Sure, the lack of fancy lighting effects was definitely a step down after enjoying “High” graphical settings on an Nvidia GTX 2080 TI-powered PC rig last week. And we’d prefer to run a reflex-based shooter at the Steam Deck’s maximum 60 Hz frame rate (or even more on the Steam Deck OLED).

Still, the fact that a ray tracing-forward game like this runs at all on the relatively underpowered Steam Deck hardware feels like something of a miracle these days. We can only imagine an “Ultra Low” graphics setting designed specifically for the Steam Deck could squeeze an even better frame rate out of the system, if Bethesda decided to make it a priority.