Garwoofoo

They all do, I think, even Metroid Dread had a bit of that.

Zero Mission's pretty much the best one of the whole lot though, like Alastor says it's a kind of bitesize distillation of the whole Metroid experience that barrels you through bosses and upgrades at a tremendous pace. Fusion's OK but it's extremely linear and I remember one of the bosses in particular being an absolute bastard.

Play

I'm still playing Final Fantasy VII Remake and it's really the most amazing thing. I can't imagine how daunting it must have been to take on the task of remaking such a beloved classic, and they really went for it: the combat system is entirely different, huge amounts of the game have been expanded upon, and even the plot is far more interesting than you'd expect. Taken purely on its own merits, it's also probably the best pure Final Fantasy game in the last 20 years. A towering achievement.

Also been dabbling a bit with Against the Storm, which as a roguelike city builder is quite unique and is scratching a certain itch while I'm waiting for a discount on Anno 117. This really wants to be played on a PC with mouse and keyboard, but it works decently well on the Steam Deck - I'm less keen on the console conversions.

Want

Keeping an eye on the Steam Machine but it's looking like it'll be a little less powerful and a little more expensive than I would ideally like so until full details are released I'm on the fence about this one.

Bin

I haven't yet abandoned Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment but it's very repetitive and I rarely feel the urge to play it. When I do, I tend to quite enjoy it though. Maybe I just need to devote some preoper time to it.

Keeper

Odd little puzzle game / walking simulator from Double Fine in which you play… well, a sentient lighthouse. It's very pretty and has a lovely soundtrack, and that's probably enough for a lot of people, but it doesn't give you much reason to care about its world - a lot of it is quite abstract and even in the more grounded bits things happen randomly and with little underlying logic to them. Your only means of interacting with the world are shining your light at stuff, and sending a bird to interact with stuff, so you'll figure out every puzzle soon enough even if only by trial and error. So you walk forward, because there's nowhere else to go, and you solve puzzles, because there's nothing else to do, and then after a few hours it ends. It is pretty, though.

And the next mission features Eminem and has you taking out Slim Shady. I have no idea what IOI are doing with this game any more but it's quite brilliant all the same.

I think that's probably true, but you're talking about a level of technical knowledge that most prospective buyers of the Steam Machine won't have. I mean I'm fairly tech-savvy but I haven't installed Linux on a PC for twenty years or more and I remember it being a complete ballache (maybe it's improved). And I wouldn't know where to start in terms of making a nice living-room friendly low-power six-inch cube like Valve are offering. It's just a nice piece of kit, and people will be gaming on it within minutes of powering it up.

It's an interesting question though: how much of Valve's stuff is actually proprietary? Part of what makes the Steam Deck so good isn't so much the hardware but the experience of SteamOS itself and particularly all the work that goes on behind the scenes with different Proton versions etc that means that stuff works as well as it can and automatically picks the right versions of the compatibility layer etc so you don't have to faff around with all that stuff manually. And they work with publishers too to include Steam Deck presets in some instances. A PC gaming setup is never going to replicate the plug-and-play ease of a console (stuff still needs configuring, tinkering is sometimes still required) but honestly it's hard to see anyone getting much closer.