The Steam Deck OLED in 2026 Vs. The Competition

Despite all of the new handheld PCs coming out, with their fancy new Z2 Extreme chips and Intel processors, the Steam Deck OLED remains a thing and is still quite affordable. The question is: given how crowded the market is, how does the Steam Deck OLED hold up to all the new competition?

My own Steam Deck OLED as well as my original Steam Deck have both had hardware issues, meaning even if I wasn't stupidly obsessed with these handheld gadgets I would have had to upgrade at some point. The original Steam Deck had a HDD failure, so its toast without taking some time to repair. The Steam Deck OLED still works, but for reasons unknown if I leave it alone for a couple days I can only restart it by force booting into Bios half the time, and I have no explanation for why this is so. It is not impossible that the hardware in these devices is, similar to laptops, given to a shelf life of only a few years. Either way, it has made the Deck a frustrating experience last year, as I spent a fair amount of time researching online for solutions to the problem which often felt like they bordered on magical ritual.

So given that.....what to do when you think you need to upgrade?

We're going to ignore the expensive and prestige machines for purposes of this comparison because I am going to assume that if you are tired of the old Steam Deck OLED's level of performance you will find the funds to upgrade to one of the fancier new machines. So the real question is: does the Deck hold its own against other lower-priced models, specifically the Xbox ROG Ally base model, Lenovo Legion Go S, and other last generation models such as the older ROG Ally X and MSI Claws? 

Well, the very short answer is: absolutely. Steam Deck OLED holds up just fine in the current market, even if it is getting a bit long in the tooth. At least part of this is due to the fact that so many SteamOS compatible games have been released with deliberate Deck optimization, and it also helps that despite new and fancy tech like DLSS 4.5 coming out, the actual state of computer games has been fairly stagnant for the last four or five years now, meaning that while you can get games which don't run on Steam Deck or have suboptimal performance, it doesn't happen nearly as often as one might expect. As a result, if you just want some on-the-go playtime with your Steam library, odds are the Deck will cover you just fine.

Now, if you are looking at the Steam Deck from the perspective of "does this hardware feel long in the tooth, and should I upgrade anyway for a more modernized experience?" or you are thinking, "I would really like to play some games that only work on Windows 11," then yeah, maybe you would like to take a look at the alternatives. Assuming you are sticking to a similar budget in terms of cost, you will find that the top competition for Steam Deck OLED space is the Xbox ROG Ally base model (the white one), and I have had this device for about two months now and continue to play on it. While the XRA is a Z2 Go chipset and therefore closer in functionality to the Steam Deck OLED, it has a lot of modern features that make it stand out. For one thing, despite loving the old 720p OLED screen on the Steam Deck, I much prefer the nicer and newer looking 1080p 7 inch IPS screen on the XRA, which for whatever reason just looks and feels better to me with the extra resolution. It can run some games that the Steam Deck can't, though more graphically intensive titles may have long load times due to shader caching, though these games often have the same lengthy load and cache times on the Steam Deck. 

Although the Steam Deck has a pretty decent ergonomic design that I really like, the XRA and its bigger cousin (the "XRAX") beat all handhelds in this department with their controller-style grips, so that's a no brainer of comfort in play is your goal.....but noting that the Steam Deck grip feel is still really decent.

You can find the XRA for as little as $489 on sale right now, which makes it price competitive with the Steam Deck, too. 

The other competitor in the new handheld space is the Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS edition. This one I will review more shortly, but the short version is: you get a SteamOS experience (if you buy the Steam ready edition), and if you get the Z1 Extreme chip version you get the best last gen chipset you can find, along with 32GB of RAM (who knows if that will still be the case going forward, though), and that extra power essentially smoke the Steam Deck in terms of performance. The grip of the Legion Go S is also very comfortable....not as amazing as the XRA, but as good (imo) as the Steam Deck in feel. It's biggest drawback: the price varies wildly, though patience will usually net a sale where it can drop to as low as $650 for the Z1 Extreme model. If you can snag that version for a good price, grab it, it's worth the upgrade.

Finally, you don't have to buy new to get a decent replacement for an aging Steam Deck. If you are willing to brave the marketplace, I have found that there are a metric ton of decently priced used-market handhelds out there. Worth taking a look, as you might even be able to get a deal on a newer generation handheld. 

So, given that, if I had only picked one budget device to replace my Steam Deck, which one would it have been? The short answer would be the one I actually did pick to replace it originally: the Steam Deck 2.0, alias the Lenovo Legion Go S. With that said, I am surprised at how much I have enjoyed and continue to use my base model Xbox ROG Ally, which deserves more respect than it has gotten from the online community.....its a robust and comfortable handheld, even with a weaker processor.

Okay, next, time to talk in more depth about the Legion Go S!

"Why NOT Switch 2!" - Zoidberg

 This post will join my collection of reviews and comments on the various PC handhelds flooding the market. You can go over to Ebay and do a little searching to see just how many of these things are out there....it's nuts, especially OneXPlayer which churns out high priced handheld variants like Games Workshop churns new Space Marine models. But they have a lot of competition in this space now, with some of it being higher end but still cheaper than what they have to offer (MSI Claw, Legion Go line) and some of it being cheaper (Steam Deck, Xbox ROG Ally Base Model, Legion Go S). It seems like $1,000 to $1,500 is the "prestige price point" now, and anything over that is the dominion of OneX. Meanwhile, you can still spend less than $600 and get a perfectly decent experience, even if not all of the PC games in your collection will run optimally.

All of this is moot, though, when if all you want is a convenient on-the-go gaming experience then you can get a Switch ($379 last I checked), Switch 2 ($450 at least for now) or good old Switch Lite ($229 new, I think?) and have pretty much all the gaming you can stomach, even if its restricted to the walled garden of Nintendo. So what are the advantages of going this route, and what reasons might you not want to do this?

The top advantage aside from price is that the Switch 2 is an actual console, so it and its predecessor is built with ease of use in mind. You can dock it and it just works on your TV. You can take it to go and it just works, unless you are using a second unit and then you have to connect to wifi to get it to handshake with Nintendo's servers before you can play digital games (card-based games will work enywhere, unless you are using one of the cards that is only a code on  Switch 2). You can pop off the joycons and do multiplayer. You can kit it out with all kinds of stupidly fun accessories. I love the Satisfye style grip handles, for example. You can play it, stop a game, shut it down and then start it up again right where you left off with game pause that actually works. 

It does, in short, all the cool things that make consoles a better user experience than a Windows 11 PC in console clothing can do. Even SteamOS which tries hard is still only about 85% of the way there.....though with that said, if you really want the closest experience to a Switch at the closest price point to a Switch then the Steam Deck is a no brainer.

The downside of course is it is a console. So you can't load all your Steam, Epic, Xbox and GOG libraries on a Switch, and if you don't like the types of games that tend to find their way on the Switch then you are out of luck (this is really less of a problem than it seems, though Nintendo's eshop is kind of filled with hentai garbage these days and cheap cash grabs, the Good Games do stand out from the chafe). 

Switch 2 games tend to be more expensive. Many come on game cards but are really just codes; if it says its just a code, don't bother getting it unless you want to take turns sharing that code with family, which I think is possible. Even then, one day in the future if you like having a device guaranteed to last a long time, odds are those codes will eventually fail as all console storefronts tend to go kaput when the user base drops low enough for the company to sunset everything. Likewise with the eshop....look in to how Nintendo closed down their DS/3DS shop for an idea on what its going to look like on the Switch in 5-10 years. 

A note on Switch 2 ergonomics: its got terrible ergonomics, though you can figure out how best to hold it, or go buy a grip attachment or silicone skin like I have to make it more comfortable. That said, all of this is moot as the mere fact that it feels like a feather compared to all the PC handhelds means it will be a much friendlier, easier device to play with for long sessions as a handheld.

All that aside, for many of us there is an expectation that we may not plan on playing all games on a device for the rest of our lives and that the hot newness of 2030 will be far more important than whether games on the 2017 Switch will still be available. So for that scenario....buying one now is totally fine.

Anyway, this is hardly a review of the Switch 2, but it is a moment of sanity that I wanted to shine on the month I do all these handheld reviews: PC handheld gaming is awesome and fun, and I love these gadgets, but if I was on a budget and wanted some on-the-go gaming, I would stick with a Switch 2 in 2026, or maybe also a Steam Deck OLED (or Asus Xbox ROG Ally base model). The Switch 2 is the benchmark by which all of these other devices should aspire to.

Blog Retrospective: A Look Back to February 2011

 So here's how this concept for posts started: while writing the prior blog on Resident Evil Village I did a link on the search bar to prior posts that spoke about Resident Evil. While perusing those posts I was more than a little surprised and entertained to see that many of them are so old now that they talk about situations and perspective that feel like ancient history to me. There was a time, for example, when you couldn't get the original Resident Evil games from the PS1 era on GOG.com, or to play Resident Evil Revelations you needed access to a Nintendo 3DS. Hell, some of those posts are written before Resident Evil 6 came out and caused Capcom to rethink their approach to the series! Other posts were me writing about the batshit crazy multiple-character scenarios of RE6. 

Bottom line is.....my blog started in February 2011 and spun out of a time when I had more free time and less to worry about (also, less money, meaning more to worry about in a different sense), I was involved a lot in learning how to self-publish online and my then fairly new marriage hadn't yet even spawned our first child. So when I started this blog I was recently married to my third (and final) wife, did not have a child, was using online publishing and POD as a source of income (mainly to get more money for games) along with my then accounting job, I ran RPGs Wednesday and Saturday nights, and my video game time was centered around MMOs on the PC and the Xbox 360, my exclusive console of choice back then. I also note an old air of pragmatism that I think I should try to re-adopt, as I tended to have one thing (say, one console, one e-reader or one MMO I was obsessed with) that I was thoroughly focused on. Meanwhile I lived in an apartment up near the mountains in our local city that was small but very cozy for my wife and I. We had a lot of cats.

To contrast today, my wife and I passed our 16th anniversary last September, my son is 14 years old and asking me for advice about his sundry girlfriends, I am still gaming on Wednesday nights though not Saturdays anymore, I haven't touched an MMO at all except to occasionally pop into Guild Wars 2 just to see what's up only to play an hour then log out for another six months, and I don't have a single console....I have ALL the consoles and I have a real problem with handheld PCs, too (and tablets). In fact I have a problem with collecting and hoarding gadgets and I really, really need to stop doing that. Meanwhile I no longer put any effort into self-publishing online outside of the blog, mainly because the long term reward-to-effort value simply wasn't there; I get more fun doing the blog for fun, and while I still write a lot, its mainly for the home campaigns and the entertainment of my player group. I am no longer an accountant, and am instead a business owner who hires accountants to do that work for me. I am, ironically, still working in the exact same building as I did in 2011, but its by coincidence a completely different company that I have ownership in. Oh, and I own a house which is a 30 minute highway commute away. And we have even more cats than we used to, though only one of the cats from 2011 is still with us (he is 17 years old now).

I only had three blog posts in 2011: an introductory blog post, one which talked about our experiments in Swords & Wizardry, and a third one which talked about The Rising Dark, a book on the lands of Agraphar, a setting I published for Swords & Wizardry and had also adapted to D&D 4E (holy cow, that was the edition of 2011....yikes...). The Lands of Agraphar is still available in print at Lulu, I think....PDF probably at Drivethrurpg. I never used it as written; I ended up modifying and adapting its scenario concepts to other systems and settings, notably D&D and my Lingusia setting. You know....I have this book on my shelf even today, in my S&W section. I should pull it out and run the thing as originally intended at some point, it would be a fun exercise.

Apparently I played and was only mildly impressed with the game Singularity in Feb 2011, commenting on how it was good enough to finish but also not good enough to feel good about finishing. Weird, as over the years I have replayed that game a couple times and liked it more on a new playthrough. I recently tried getting it to work on the handhelds but it is difficult to get Singularity to play nice with modern controller schemes, unfortunately....and then I thought, "I should really play some of the new games I have stacked up, like RE Village." So that went away.

I also talked about being into the early adopters of the free-to-play model of MMOs: Champions Online and D&D Online. I really did love those two games, but eventually the interest petered out. Both games were fairly decent at least early on in their F2P models, with the goal being to sell actual content such as scenario packs and classes and stuff. They would eventually turn this approach into a far too expensive proposition, and as we all know, F2P models have turned into predatory nightmares that are so bad now I simply won't give a F2P game any effort or energy, noting that rare exceptions remain those which sell you actual content even if their base game remains free (so "free to try") like Guild Wars 2 or Destiny 2.

Okay! This might be a fun exercise, periodically digging through the ancient archives and revisiting long lost eras of this blog. Maybe there will be more of this. 

A Brief And Very Late Review: Resident Evil Village

 

Long time followers of this blog know I have written a lot about the universe of Resident Evil games, books and movies in prior years. Like....enough that it may surprise you to know that it took me approximately 4 1/2 years from the date of its release to get around to playing (and finishing) Resident Evil Village....and I haven't even started Resident Evil 4 Remake yet, either. It took me a good year or two to get around to playing and finishing the RE 2 and 3 remakes as well. 

Part of the problem with writing about the RE 2 and 3 remakes is that, well, they were kind of decent and managed capture the feel and style of the originals in a more modern play experience without bringing over any of the wonky or janky bits. In fact they were both rather fun games to play, and as such the most I could say about them was "Thumbs up, would play again!" Also, these are stories that, even if modified a bit, are well known to me, having played the originals multiple times....so not quite as exciting as entirely new content. 

Resident Evil Village is a direct sequel to Resident Evil 7, which was the first in the series to break with a third person perspective, and also leaned into a lot of tropes that had become common in horror games around when it came out, including helpless protagonists (you eventually do get weapons and the game at some point begins to feel like a Resident Evil game, but not for a while), overwhelmingly villainous monsters who hold a clear power advantage, and for at least the majority of the game it is entirely unclear how it relates to the plot of the bigger Resident Evil universe. It eventually opens up with the (SPOILERS!) discovery of a beached Umbrella research ship, and the incredibly late game appearance of Chris Redfield, now working for a reborn Umbrella Corp, this time as an organization dedicated to cleaning up the mess of its predecessors, but until those moments the story is basically about a guy named Ethan Winters looking for his girlfriend who went back to see her weird family in the Louisiana Bayou, and they it turns out are all horrific mutant monsters that, you eventually learn, are being genetically modified by exposure to a mysterious mold that Umbrella was studying.

Cut to the sequel, in Resident Evil Village Ethan and his now wife Mia have had a child named Rose and moved to "Europe" (somewhere in or near Romania, it is presumed), where they seem to be living a normal and happy life, although Mia is acting a bit weird. Protip to young 'uns out there, its not really that weird, many moms act a bit off post-pregnancy, so if you ever find yourself there, trust me, she's just being herself, she is not secretly a Resident Evil monster. Almost immediately this is interrupted by Chris Redfield and his team of crack assassins murdering Mia and trying to spirit away baby Rose and Ethan without any explanation afforded; Chris Redfield is turning into a bit of a creepy black ops villain, it seems.

If you have seen any of this game's images, videos and discussions over the last years then you probably know this is the game with the big scary mommy-dommy vampiress, Lady Dimitrescu. As it turns out, this is only the game's first boss, as Lady Dimitrescu and her three "daughters," who are each creepy vampire-fly women are but the first stage of a much longer battle with the progeny/creations of Miranda, the actual real boss of the game and the actual reason this remote community in Romania is completely screwed up.

I played REV in the late-game DLC added third-person mode, so my sense of the game's creep factor was probably lowered by that fact a bit, but I really do love the over-the-shoulder third person perspective more than first person mode for horror games, its just the sweet spot I find most entertaining. That said, my son said he preferred the first person mode because it made the entire game creepier and more visceral, and he is not wrong; he plays all of these the day I buy them FYI, so just in case you think I'm buying a game and sitting on it four years....yeah I totally am, but the rest of the family (or those that care) have already played them to exhaustion immediately. 

The multiple bosses in the game that come after Lady Alcina Dimitrescu (as well as the vampire herself) are all transformative battles, which is a staple of Resident Evil games.....you meet the villain, who is usually normal-ish looking (or horribly mutated, but still in a "normal" way such as with Moreau) and then you eventually push them too far, they take some damage, and the familiar "Now I begin mutating Akira-style out of control into a beast ten times my size" event happens and you get to have a fun boss arena fight. This is only broken by one encounter, with the doll-maker Beneviento, a woman who can manipulate the mind through hallucinogens and uses the mutating effects of the mold's source to control her dolls. That entire sequence strips you of weapons and forces you to deal with her horrifying hallucinations without a means of defense until the very end, and its actually done incredibly well, leading to the creepiest mid-game moment where you still have agency. Many other encounters are creepy, but handled as cut scenes; the evil doll's sequence is masterfully done and is the one part of the game that most closely reminds me of the earlier RE7 game. Dimitrescu's Castle is also fairly close, as you can't really harm her or her minions without using the right environmental tactics, so much of the castle sequence is spent running and hiding, as well. But the Beneviento Doll maker? This is probably some of the best stuff I've seen in any Resident Evil title, right up there with the first Tyrant encounters in the original trilogy and the opening creepy house sequence in RE7.

Around 75% of the way through REV I began to get a sense of tedium. I admittedly had been almost 100%ing the game, finding all of the special treasures and looting everything I could, but there came a point when I realizes I had depopulated the entire village and surroundings, and all that remained was to go after the semi-final boss Heisenberg and then Miranda herself. Ethan Winters had graduated from survivor to true monster hunter, and by this point in the plot it was clear he himself could very well also be a monster, just one that didn't appear to be ready to mutate. Around this point I have to say that I began to feel like the DNA of REV now felt like a blend of the high octane action of Resident Evil 5 and 6 more than RE7; the game had firmly established that it was most definitely in the Resident Evil universe. 

Right before the final boss Miranda we find her secret lab where there was an insane level of information dumping. Lots of clues existed in the rest of the game, but the final lab neatly tied up everything in a bow, including explaining the Umbrella Corp./Dr. Spencer connections to the mysterious region and its mystery mutating mold monsters. The exposition dump was appreciated, but I really wish there had been more clues and details to be found more gradually; the end-of-game exposition dump felt if not a tad contrived, it might have been nicer to have it slightly more spread out, at least.

Similar to the RE7 DLC, but now part of the core game experience, you get a chance to play as old grizzled veteran Chris Redfield who must be like in his late 40's at the time the game takes place. Redfield gets a fun sequence where you are effectively given all the ammunition you need to fight hordes....literal, vast hordes of every lycan and other beast that has been a serious threat to Ethan up to this point with the firepower necessary to make short work of them. Before you rejoin Ethan following more blatant exposition dumps (and a final, grand explanation for his inexplicable healing powers) Chris manages to collect the goods, rescue Mia and plant the bomb (a surprisingly small bomb, but it does the job of wiping out the entire vale) before we return for Ethan's final showdown to save Baby Rose from Miranda. Miranda's fight is...fine....but perhaps not the most inspired as boss fights go. Not great, but at least not frustrating. If you had been maxing out your weapons and hoarding ammo, you will find this fight to be fairly easy, or at least not difficult.

I haven't played the Rose DLC yet. My son missed that the DLC released and wants to watch me play it. It sounds like it will be typical RE bonus content that is okay but not great; we'll see. The main game was well worth it, but I was surprised at how much REV shed it's RE7 vibe for more conventional RE style horror....but with the concession that maybe that was inevitable, playing in the third person mode.

If you, like me, somehow never played this game, but enjoy good survival horror, then I would give it a thumbs up for you! If you haven't played RE7 you really ought to play that one first, though. Solid A- from me, mainly because I was, toward the end, feeling like the game could have ended at about the 70% mark and I would have been content.....but to its credit, there weren't too many areas that felt like a drawn out slog (maybe tiny bit with The Factory at the end, which was tense and interesting but also easy to get lost in). But all of the locations and bosses of the family were in general well realized and different enough that the game kept providing new and interesting stuff at every step, and it really was only in the late game when I began to feel like  Ethan was the Real Monster here that it felt like it was time for the story to end (but I still had to defeat Heisenberg and Miranda by that point!) 

Now to play Resident Evil 4 Remake before Resident Evil Requiem comes out! I have pre-ordered Requiem, and am determined to play it on day of release, none of this multi-year procrastination again!

What's left to say.....hmmmm....how about, "Hey Capcom, when's Resident Evil Code Veronica getting remade????"

One final thought: what was up with Duke? Your resident merchant is never explained, and chooses to be enigmatic right up to the end. I was expecting some sort of reveal that he was cousin to Dimitrescu or something. My son says there's a connection to the arms dealer in RE 4 but he also hangs out on fan-theory forums so its hard to parse out what is real and what is just redditors pulling nonsense out of thin air.

The Legion Go 2 - A Review of the Boss Monster of Handheld Gaming PCs

 

Legion Go 2 

So let's get the basic details out of the way first. The Z2 Extreme version retails for MSRP $1349 but a base Z2 (not extreme) model exists for $1049 according to their website. Here's the Legion Go 2 specs: 8.8 inch 144hz OLED screen (the biggest difference between this and other handhelds); Detachable controllers; AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme Processor (there is a lower power base model as well); integrated AMD Radeon Graphics; 32GB memory; 1TB M.2 SSD (I understand it is possible to get up to 2TB but I haven't seen this version in the wild anywhere); a MicroSD card reader that works well. 

The first takeaway from those specs you should get is that this is the most luxurious and prestige handheld gaming PC currently easily available on the market unless you start counting in OneXPlayer products and other niche handheld PC builds that tend to have better specs but also tend to be very expensive and require that you kickstart them first before you can get one. The OneXFly Apex, for example, is roughly equivalent but starts around $1700 MSRP for a lower end model with specs similar to the Legion Go 2. 

So with that in mind, let's just say that the Legion Go 2 is the most expensive prestige level handheld gaming PC that is not necessarily aimed at enthusiasts alone; it's got plenty of functionality for anyone willing to fork over the money for a device that can also function as an on-the-go laptop substitute. I have already been hooking it up to my big monitor and speakers and connected it to a mouse/keyboard set up with a handheld dock and the device functions very well. In fact I have been able to get decent performance out of it playing games on the big screen, something that can be done with no effort using the detachable controllers (I hook them on to a rechargeable connector to turn them into a "real" controller). This is a hard feat on other devices which requires messing around in Windows settings to get the devices to acknowledge an external controller and not keep defaulting to the embedded controllers. Legion Go 2? It does this effortlessly. 

You can get a lot of rechargeable connectors out there (Jsaux has a good one) and it doesn't matter if they are for the original Legion Go or not, they work just fine with the LeGo 2 controllers, which are both retro- and forward compatible with the original legion Go controllers. Unlike the original, the LeGo 2 controllers work very nicely out of the box, and while you can tamper with their settings and calibration, I have not yet needed to do so....in contrast, with the original Legion Go I spent a lot of time tinkering and had to consult online communities for advice.

The Legion Go 2's other and probably most amazing feature is its gorgeous 8.8 inch OLED screen. This is bar none the most satisfying screen experience you can get on any handheld device on the market right now that I know of, and that feature coupled with a powerful processor and enough RAM (32 GB) it can run most games on average or even high settings at the 1200p native resolution on this thing, which means it borders on "a normal gaming experience" when playing games. The LeGo 2 does not make you feel like you are making any compromises in your gaming experience with it.

Games I have been playing on the LeGo 2 include Hell is Us, The Crew Motorfest, Destiny 2, Atomfall, the ever-present Deadzone Rogue, and The Callisto Protocol. I have not as of yet run into a game that could not be played on the device, or which required me to settle for a suboptimal experience. Most of the time the autodetect settings in the respective games seem to recognize and adjust, but occasionally a game will default to high or even epic settings, which may not be optimal; average settings at 1200p are great for most, but some high settings at 1200p will also work fine, and on occasion dropping the resolution a bit can yield good results with high or even epic settings. Destiny is running on high settings with max resolution and getting 60+ FPS, for an example of a game that runs very well on this device.

The Legion Go 2 has one glaring issue: it is heavy, it feels good in the hands but its weight is just a bit too much for the intended purpose as a handheld. I have repeatedly found its optimal play approach is actually to use the kickstand to prop the screen and then detach the controllers and play it that way. In this mode the LeGo 2 both excels and make me think that was really the best way to play as envisioned by its designers. 

For sound the device is far superior to the original Legion Go, but its not as good as the MSI Claw 8 AI+ or the Xbox ROG Ally X, both of which have front-facing speakers and incredibly optimized sound quality. The Legion Go 2 does seem to have weird sound issues (it feels tinny and watered down) when navigating the Steam app, but the sound immediately improves when going into a game. The sound is decent....its just "decent" as opposed to "amazing." 

The LeGo 2 also feels weighty and a bit awkward to carry by hand. There's no easy way to carry this that won't make you worry about its safety if you drop or bash it by accident. I purchased a silicone skin of Amazon for it that provides a decent layer of extra protection, albeit with the caveat that I must pull the skin off every time I want to play with detached controllers. 

Because of the price it is hard to advise anyone go buy a Legion Go 2 unless you are very serious about your handheld gaming interests, but if you really do want the premium experience and like the idea of a device which emulates the Switch 2 aesthetic of playing with detachable controllers, that also connects to a big screen monitor without any issue, you may well find this to be your cup of tea. The fact that you can also get a Switch 2 which does all of this for a $450 price tag is the big problem; LeGo 2 works for me since I have an enormous library of Steam and GOG games (and even Xbox, though I haven't set that up on it as of yet) but if you were starting from scratch, I'd suggest that if the desire is just to have a convenient on-the-go experience then you probably should get a Switch 2, Xbox Ally or Steam Deck OLED. All of those are much cheaper and provide a perfectly find on-the-go experience. 

If you really do like the idea of having a gameplay experience with a handheld that borders on proper competition with decent gaming laptops, gives you lots of flexibility in how you choose to play, provides the best screen experience you can get in a handheld and can still function as a full Windows 11 based PC and even substitute for a laptop during travel if you find a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, then the Legion Go 2 is perfect for you. But this thing is heavy, so just don't drop it!  Solid A+ but maybe just a straight A due to being just a tad too heavy for its intended use as a handheld, offset by its flexibility for playing in detachable mode, or docking to a monitor.

The MSI Claw 8 AI+: A Review

 

MSI Claw 8 AI+ - The only Intel 7 Handheld in an "affordable" range worth looking at

I bought this one directly from MSI's online store back in...hmmm...end of October, I guess? It was a decision informed at least in part by watching way too many Youtube videos talking about the various MSI Claw types, and how this one was rather better than its predecessors. It was also incredibly difficult to find a preorder of the Xbox Rog Ally X that wasn't booked out to Xmas, although I did manage to snag a preorder on the Legion Go 2 by chance, and yes I did keep that preorder so I now have both the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and the LeGo 2, so I can definitely compare and contrast. Oh and I finally snagged the Xbox Ally X, so yeah, someone please stop me before I tank my credit card.

Anyway, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ is nice enough that I could in theory have stopped right there and I think I'd be able to say I had an ideal handheld PC gaming device and really didn't need to go any further. I bought it for $1049 on MSI's site, and for that price I definitely feel like I got my money's worth. Here's its specs, for the A2VMX Polar Frost edition: it is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor, has an 8 inch IPS touch screen at 120hz, 80 Watt Hr battery, 1 TB M.2 SSD, and the thing has some noteworthy internal speakers.....like, the best speakers you can get in any of these handhelds. 

Because the device uses an Intel chip, it also can use the Intel XeSS upscaling technology. What I have discovered is that no only does this thing run everything I load on to it like a boss, it runs them with much nicer performance figures if the game in question supports XeSS....pretty much if the game has this option, you will want to enable it, its absolutely worth the boost.

In watching endless enthusiast videos about the MSI Claw 8 AI+, I have learned a few things. They are, as follows:

Not all Claws Are Alike: Not all MSI Claws are worthwhile. There is an A8 model which I think is mostly available outside of the US right now that utilizes the Z2 Extreme architecture from AMD, and that one allegedly does not run as well as other Z2 Extreme powered devices already on the market (Xbox Ally X and LeGo 2). 

There is an older 7 inch screen model of MSI Claw with an older model intel chip that is pretty cheap, but also completely not worth the price, allegedly. I am not going to grab one just to find out, I've already got a range of older devices collecting dust on my shelf, don't need one more.

Amazing Speakers: Everyone universally agrees that MSI Claw knows how to pack high quality speakers into a device, and this one demonstrates that amply; the MSI Claw 8 AI+ (I specifically keep using the proper name because the MSI Claw naming conventions are damned confusing) has amazing speakers, absolutely top notch for a device of this size.

Top  Performance: The performance metrics of the MSI Claw 8 AI+ are generally better, sometimes slightly, sometimes by a wide margin, than every other device on the market except maybe Legion Go 2. There was a general concern for a while that Intel's coverage of the graphics processor would lag if the device wasn't successful, but I think based on the fairly stellar performance of this device that Intel must be keeping up.

Okay Ergonomics: The device is fairly comfortable to hold and use, but it could use better "grips" on the sides, as the device can be tedious to keep holding for long play sessions. A popular accessory for the device is a set of side grips you can snap on (these can be 3D printed but a zillion Chinese companies also sell them for varying prices) and they make a huge difference in improving the comfort of the device for long play sessions.

Aesthetics: It's either pretty or ugly depending on your personal aesthetics. I happen to have the newer Arctic White model, which I think looks pretty distinct and cool, but I can concede the older one that came out earlier in 2025 with a mud-brown coloration was not the prettiest.

Hard to Find: I bought it directly from MSI, and I do see it is intermittently available on some websites like Best Buy now, but this thing can be hard to find in stock.

The Micro SD Card Reader Works: this may sound odd, but it's not; the Micro SD card reader works well and you get fast transfer rates. I have had no problem with this one with any games loaded on the card, unlike the Xbox ROG Ally base model and original ROG Ally models. Worth noting that I am using a Micro SD Express card with it; it's not an Express card reader, but it still works and the transfer rate is still better than a normal SD card.

The RGB Lighting Lights up the buttons: it's actually the only handheld that does this, and it is very cool to have the ABXY buttons illuminate like this.

So why get this device over any of the other handhelds? I would suggest that Intel's Core Ultra 7 processor is generally better at this than the AMD Z2 Extreme, although that chip is pretty amazing, too. While I did try the Microsoft FSE experience on this, I found that MSI Claw works better in regular mode. The Claw's own software is "okay" but not great. Still, it doesn't get in the way, either, which is important.

Overall in terms of raw performance and general grip comfort, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ is a stellar device. I would argue that it is a superior product to the Xbox ROG Ally X, but as I am still testing that one out I will reserve judgement there until later in the year.....the comfort of built in controller grips cannot be understated. But the ability to load up and comfortably play pretty much anything with decent graphics and a nice 8 inch screen with good color depth and amazing speakers cannot be ignored, either.

I hooked up the Claw to a docking station and used it on my external 2K monitor, both for general tasks and for gaming. It ran very smoothly and without issue, so it actually could work as a "big screen" replacement if so desired. I bought a slim bluetooth keyboard and mouse which I connected to it and it worked great....in fact a plurality of my blog posts in the last 6-8 weeks were written on the Claw with this setup. I have since disconnected it but only because I discovered that there is, in fact, one device which does the "big screen" experience even better: the Legion Go 2.

On the Claw I'm currently playing Deadzone Rogue, Atomfall, The Outer Worlds, Division 2, Hail to the Rainbow and The Callisto Protocol and pleased to be making progress in games I have long ignored despite having them in the Steam collection. I also loaded the Xbox app on it and have tried out Forza Horizon 5 and Starfield on it, to great effect. To contrast with the much lower-powered Xbox ROG Ally base model, it probably took a couple minutes for those two games to load into the device, though they ran fine (Starfield was at the edge of "acceptable") but on the Claw they both loaded up almost as fast as on the laptop, and ran like beasts; I capped the framerates at 60 on both, but they otherwise ran at the 1200p resolution of the screen just fine in high graphics settings. Pretty slick.

So barring when I talk about the Legion Go 2 and the Xbox ROG Ally X, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ (that one specifically! Not the others!) is a solid A and if you shop around I have spotted a few in the wild on places like Ebay for less than the $1049 price tag, so you may be able to get it on a deal if you're willing to pay that sort of cash. If you do get one, keep in mind I think it works best as a Windows device, and I have not heard of many having much success with SteamOS on it, probably due limited support for this chipset in Linux.

One last item: you may be wondering about the AI+ element of this device. It's a feature that exists, and supposedly the AI component can help modulate your play experience. I followed an online tutorial designed to maximize the actual power and output of the MSI Claw and killed the AI feature, which was resoundingly considered to do a poor job in this regard. I still seem to get decent battery life even with playing it on "max" TDP and no AI regulation.

Next! We'll chat Steam Deck OLED and its viability in 2026, then the Steam Deck successor of 2025, the Legon Go S.

The Xbox ROG Ally Base Model - A Short Review

 So after some deliberation I decided to make January the month I obsess on the blog on my side-hobby as a handheld PC gaming enthusiast. I have some credentials to this, albeit with the caveat that there are like a millions Youtubers out there who love filming their handheld devices and running endless performance metrics on them. I mainly like the handhelds for gaming, and I tend to go for the vibes when it comes to assessing their performance and value to my personal experience. This means that I may find a device more fun and engaging than reviewers do because I am far less worried about how many FPS I am squeezing out of the device than I am whether it feels good to play and the game seems to run smoothly to my eyes.

So with that in mind, here's my quick review of the first such device of the 2025 crop that I shall dive in to: the Xbox ROG Ally - the base white model! AKA the one with the budget performance specs.

Xbox ROG Ally Base Model Specs: From the ASUS website: Ryzen Z2 A processor  2.8GHz (6MB Cache, up to 3.8 GHz, 4 cores, 8 Threads); GPU is AMD Radeon Graphics Card (integrated? not sure); 7 inch, 1080p IPS display, touch screen, 120hz refresh 500 nits brightness, and AMDFreesync Premium

The Xbox ROG Ally base model is a decent budget priced handheld gaming PC. It runs MSRP $600 but you can find it on sale for cheaper usually. This new line of ASUS handhelds are equipped with the best form factor for comfortable handheld gaming on the market; they are far more satisfying to play on the go than almost every other device, and I find only the Legon Go S to be comparatively friendly to the hands (also the Playstation Portal if you want to count that). 

It's Xbox marketing will disappoint a lot of people who will find the Windows Full Screen Experience (FSE) a shallow replacement for an actual Xbox experience, but it does run a surprising number of top tier games just fine....notably Microsoft published titles like Horizon 5, Gears 5 and Gears Reloaded, Halo Master Chief Collection, etc. all run pretty well on this, but other games may struggle. It's hampered by only 512GB of storage, and the expansion slot for an SSD is often insufficient for running modern games, but I use the SSD slot to load older games and less demanding titles. Bottom line: if your gaming experience revolves around Hades and Hollow Knight, this handheld is a great choice (but so is a Steam Deck). If you want to run games curated by Microsoft to run well (like Gears of War and Forza Horizon 5) it is also a good choice. Other graphically-intensive titles will be all over the place in terms of quality, performance and feel, however. 

I set up Steam, GOG and Xbox's platforms on the device and it ran each just fine. I ran in to repeated issues with how the Windows FSE switches between the storefronts, and whether the storefronts would drop to the background while playing games, which was often so frustrating I would have to kill the FSE mode to get things to play nice, however.

Both Xbox ROG Ally models have the standard 7 inch IPS screen common on prior Asus handhelds. The screen is totally fine, and looks crisp, but it pales when you compare it to the infinitely superior screens of the Legion Go series, especially the Go 2's OLED screen. Good news though: if you are not insane like I and other enthusiasts are, and just buy a single handheld device, I don't think you will be bothered by the screen size.

I tried the Xbox ROG Ally out on a dock with a hookup to a 1080p big screen to see how it functioned as a dockable work station and the answer is: not very well. It showed obvious performance issues in jumping to tasks, the keyboard and mouse, and compared to other handhelds (even the original ASUS Rog Ally which I used this way constantly) it was an inferior experience. So the Z2 A processor is just not great at this sort of docking setup, I can confirm.

Another problem with the device is actually a FSE problem. Microsoft's handheld solution does not play well with the controls on this thing, and I often find that while in FSE mode, the game I am trying to boot in to does not automatically pop up, or the control scheme changes from gamepad to keyboard, or while in a game it will also detect button pushes and activate other features or games in other storefronts. This is a problem that uniquely impacts this device, though some of the issues are found on other handhelds as well (MSI Claw notably), enough so that my preference is to disable the FSE entirely in order to enjoy a game uninterrupted.

Get this thing on sale if you can find it and want a Steam Deck replacement, and aren't too worried about high end performance (say, you prefer indie titles and older titles for gaming). But if you want performance and can save up to get something better (such as the Xbox Ally X) I suggest you do that. Spoiler for later blog posts: my personal preferred handheld is the Legion Go 2, but you can buy like 2 and 1/2 of these for the same price so YMMV. Solid C as a rating. 

Games I am playing on my Xbox ROG Ally currently: Forza Horizon 5, Gears 5, Deadzone Rogue, Berserk Recharged, Hollow Knight and Hades (I am waaaay behind on the last two franchises, trying to catch up). I have also loaded up some older titles like Hunted: The Reckoning and Bioshock 2 and had very satisfying play experiences on the device.

Will I still have this handheld by 2027? I don't know. It's really comfortable to play, and I like a lot when it works well, but literally everything it does well other devices do as well or better, and the Xbox ROG Ally X also exists, and it has the same comfort in play. So I may end up gifting it to a friend or relative. 

Death Bat's 2026 Predictions

 Okay, some predictions for 2026 to give me fodder at the end of the next year as I marvel at just how inaccurate I was:

Tabletop Gaming Prediction: gaming as a hobby will remain healthy

Take a look at ENworld's 2026 Most Anticipated Poll here. Holy cow, I recognize or know of 13 of the games listed, and 6 I only know indirectly from the IPs they are covering (Invincible, Assassin's Creed, etc.). The rest are all interesting mystery boxes. I am presuming this high volume of titles scheduled for 2026 is a sign of a healthy and diverse array of options in the hobby.

Although I don't know a lot about many of the listed games, one thing I don't see is very many suggesting a D&D 5E or D20 compatibility origin...maybe one or two by name I can tell, and it does also look like some venerable OSR games are getting refreshes in 2026. 

All told, I think it is safe to say tabletop RPGs will continue to be very popular. It helps that, regardless of the economic dumpster fire the rest of the world turns in to, that RPGs as a hobby are ultimately very cheap and easy to enjoy, with the highest dollar to hour of entertainment value ratio you will find pretty much anywhere.

Computer Gaming Prediction: the dumpster fire is just getting started, but indies and AA will thrive

Unlike tabletop RPGs, computer gaming can be very expensive on the hardware side, and it really looks like there's a quiet apocalypse brewing due to the severe impact AI technologies are having on both the programming side of things and the scarcity issue with hardware. I think more than any industry visible to the public game developers will find this hits them hardest of all, as big studios and their publishers scale back manpower for AI, AI sucks up all the RAM cards out there, and people continue to rebel against flagrant use of slop in games, especially Games as a Service. Oh, and Microsoft and competitors will push hard to get everyone to go full cloud gaming, with the idea being subscription-basd "own nothing" models as the new future.

Meanwhile, this will give more space for smaller indie titles to bloom, and we may see more AA titles get traction as the really big triple-A developers get stymied in their shift to AI. Also, everyone will be relying on their currently owned hardware, as sales plummet because people can't afford decent rigs anymore, and the cheap alternatives (seriously, it looks like 8 GB RAM and Core I5 processors are all that's affordable at this very moment) are just too low powered to be worth it. In short....its going to suck in the gaming space while Big Tech tries to make it all about AI and freemium services where you play on the cloud. 

Okay, that's it for my conservative predictions for 2026! Now for some personal predictions:

1. I will play a lot more Pathfinder and Starfinder in 2026, due primarly to the fact that I am getting old and stuck in my ways.

2. I will get at least one campaign in with Tales of the Valiant because I know the Player's Guide 2 will be an icebreaker for my group that feels TotV doesn't have enough player content yet.

3. I will run another Mothership campaign because Mothership is fun.

4. My son will run another Alien RPG campaign and I will lose at least three characters as is tradition.

5. I will try and might even succeed in running a new BRP campaign and Call of Cthulhu campaign.

6. I will manage to get at least some game time in with 13th Age 2nd Edition, but whether it usurps Pathfinder and Tales of the Valiant remains to be seen.

7. I will run some Cypher System when the new edition arrives, assuming it arrives in 2026. MCG has a pretty good track record on fulfilling most kickstartrs timely though so I feel confident this will happen.

8. I will continue to get an abnormal level of gaming done due to the excess of handheld PCs I own. I will probably try to sell a couple of them as I only really need two now: the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and the Legion Go 2. And I have a soft spot for the Legion Go S.

Okay! That's it! See you all in the New Year!

The Death Bat's 2025 Year in Review

2025 - Oh What a Long and Unpleasant Year

I have a confession to make, one which I think is a sentiment others might feel: when the world is going to hell in a handbasket, it can have a real impact on one's desire to enjoy simpler pleasures in life. Gaming, for example, requires a certain amount of personal time investment in both effort, thought and emotional commitment. It can be very hard to provide that level of commitment when Real World problems are sapping that time and energy away from you. So while this is not a blog where I write about all the other crap going on in the Real World, it is a blog where I try to focus exclusively on hobbies, interests and escapism...and this year was a challenging experience. I mean, I finally had to start assigning myself a quota on blog posts to force myself to write, because I could feel myself slipping away from these little entertainments in life. Hell, I got rid of my Saturday gaming night this year, because I simply didn't have enough energy left in me due to the interference of the Real World.

But luckily this is not a blog about the Real World, so lets talk about the noteworthy aspects of gaming in 2025:

Deathbat's Game of the Year for 2025: Starfinder 2E

Who knew....I really love this new edition of the game, and it is 100% compatibility with Pathfinder 2E. The new design and focus makes it a much easier and more accessible experience, and a real pleasure to GM. I am looking forward to running this one more than any other game (except maybe 13th Age 2E) in 2026.

The RPG I Played the Most in 2025: Pathfinder 2E

Close runner up is Mothership, followed by Tales of the Valiant and then there was that D&D 5.24 campaign I ran to give it a fair shake. 

Best New Sourcebooks in 2025: BRP Creatures, Monster Core 2 and Monster Vault 2

A three-way tie! Both Pathfinder's Monster Core 2 and Tales of the Valiant's Monster Vault 2 came out this year, and not a moment too soon. I love the updated stuff in the Monster Core 2, and I really love the Monster Vault 2, which is entirely new stuff, something I didn't think was possible given how many monster books Kobold Press has already come out with. Meanwhile there is the BRP Creatures book, which provides at long last a decade's long "most wanted" book for Basic Roleplaying, now providing enough content that a person could effectively replace their D&D life with BRP if they wanted to.

Best RPG I Didn't Get a Chance to Play in 2025: 13th Age 2nd Edition

I have only been able to read the PDFs, still waiting for physical books, but I am very much loving this mildly revamped new edition of one of my favorite D&D iterations, and it could not have come a moment too soon....I predict I will run a lot of 13th Age in 2026.

2025 PC Game of the Year: Deadzone Rogue

Look, there's not a lot to Deadzone Rogue, it's a FPS game about a dude on a derelict spaceship who has to solve the mystery of what's going on by shooting a million rogue robots and mutants. Every time he dies a computer recreates him and he starts over, but luckily carries his experience forward. It runs like a charm on every handheld I own which means its an essential game for my travel kit.

2025 PC Game I Played the Most: Tom Clancy's Division 2

Per my Steam metrics it turns out I have played this game a ton every single month. I did an entire second playthrough this year, in fact, and am working on the DLC expansions that came out. I like it, and similar to Deadzone Rogue it runs on all my handhelds like a charm (fair disclosure: I have not tried running it on the Xbox Rog Ally base model, but I may try it just to see; its surprising how well this device works with games, actually).

2025 Best Game I Played This Year That Was Not New: Little Nightmares I and II

Yeah, I tried them out on a lark and ended up loving them. Finally about to start the newest one. I understand purists don't like the new one as much since it not a continuation of I and II, but let's be honest, by the end of I (which II is a prequel to) left your little raincoat-clad survivor as Death Incarnate, so I am not sure where they'd have gone with an ending like that.... 

2025: The Year of the Next Generation of Handheld PCs

This year we got the Lenovo Legion Go S, the Xbox-themed Asus Rog Xbox Ally series, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and also I understand that all the usual suspects still pump out very nice high end (and high priced) handhelds, such as OneXplayer. Both of my Steam Decks suffered catastrophic failures this year, one of which was clearly a hard drive failure, and for my OLED model I am still trying to figure out what happened if it is recoverable. This motivated me to find replacements. First I sold my old Asus Rog Ally original model, then sold my Legion Go original model, which went to a good home. Then I snagged a SteamOS edition Lenovo Legion Go S with the Z1 Extreme chip, bought my wife an Asus ROG Ally X, and then as the year closed out I managed to get in succession (yes, I have a problem) a MSI Claw 8 AI+, Xbox Rog Ally base model, and a Lenovo Legion Go 2. After the Legion Go 2 I decided I was done for now; there was no purpose to getting the Xbox Rog Ally X model which was inferior to both the MSI Claw and the LeGo 2 (as the fans call it).

Oh yeah, and the family upgraded to the Switch 2 when it came out. My son uses it exclusively as a Pokemon device, but my wife plays a lot on it. I continue to enjoy Switch 2, even though I am not really a good Nintendo guy, but I concede....I really love the new Kirby games that came out on it. 

This may sound excessive....and it is. I could have stopped with the Legion Go S which does everything I want, but I really enjoy messing around with this handheld tech, and I know it goes back to my youth when I would dream about the idea that one day this level of gaming fidelity in a handheld model could ever exist. Seriously, I was thinking about how cool handheld devices were when I was ten or eleven years old, and I have owned pretty much every handheld device for gaming that ever came out in the following decades. It's an illness, I know.

I'll probably be writing more about my experiences with this new generation if Intel 7 and Z2 Extreme powered chips in January. 

2025: The Year of the Walled Tabletop Gaming Garden and the Collapse of D&D 5.24 as the One Game to Rule Them All

   This year really saw the division rise between gamers who play D&D 5E, and those who play D&D 5.24, Tales of the Valiant, Daggerheart, Pathfinder 2E, or "insert here." The end result of the WotC OGL kerfuffle from two years back has born much fruit, but gaming now feels a bit corralled. Of these different options I feel like Paizo is working hardest to keep their corner of the market, as if Kobold Press, while D&D 5.24 moves forward on the momentum of a fanbase that is divided in a way I haven't really seen since the 4E days, albeit with less vitriol....probably because 5.24 didn't really change enough to merit anger, but what it did change just feels pointless, unfun or stupid. The number of times I have read an argument about why 5.24's method of "all humanoids are represented by a generic set of NPC stat blocks" is just fine, actually, and the system doesn't have any depth in stat blocks so there is totally no difference between a thug or scout and an orc warrior or lizardfolk is totally normal; the argument for the fans is literally, "The game isn't deep enough, get over it." Meanwhile, an even slightly more thoughtful design on the game could have simply included the customization by species rules from the original 5E DMG and it would have solved everyone's problem here, even mine. Unfortunately almost all of the changes in 5.24 ultimately feel like this: poorly thought out, solving a nonexistent problem, or tackling the problem (if there was one) poorly. I suspect 2026 will see D&D collapse further, and I hope the Daggerheart guys, Paizo and Kobold Press are there to scoop more players up.

2025: If Tabletop was a Hot Mess, Computer Gaming was a Dumpster Fire

From Games as a Service models collapsing to Microsoft publicly trying to murder the Xbox Console in favor of their Game Pass subscription model, to developers taking flack for using AI tools in their development, while other developers use AI generated voices to replace voice actors, its just a hot mess. To be clear: AI (or rather, the programs such as LLMs which are coming out of generative designs) as a tool for programmers to use makes sense to me. But the thing that freaks people out the most is when it looks like AI is used to replace human creativity; because the only people who don't seem to recognize slop for what it is appear to be Big Tech. (EDIT: That's not fair to Big Tech, they know exactly what they are doing, which is theft; it's the tech bros who will argue that slop is fine actually and not theft.)

On top of all this, the rapid development of AI Data Centers are causing RAM shortages and price spikes, and making the prospect of affordable computers in 2026 look dim. Just in the last two months you can see prices spike, and I'm actually really happy I managed to both upgrade my own personal tech and do a ton of hardware upgrades at my place of business earlier in the year, before the prices went out of control. You can find cheap laptops and desktops now, sure, but those machines have specs that were embarrassing in 2019, let alone now. 

2025: Was a Year of All Time

It sure was. I'd like to think things will be better for 2026.....but yeah, I don't think it's going that way. I think 2026 will unfortunately be the year that makes us look back on 2025 and go "Wow, remember when all the stuff we were dealing with in 2025 was just silly stuff like dumb game issues, short sighted and malicious Big Tech decisions driven by accelerationist philosophies, corporate greed and cowardice, life in a kleptocracy and a never ending river of AI slop? Yeah those were great times."

The Twelfth GM Inspiration: A Suggested Reading and Resource List

The Twelfth GM Inspiration: A Suggested Reading and Resource List

For my final blog post on GM Inspirations I am going to offer up my "top ten" list of additional books I keep on the shelf because they are great sources of inspiration and ideas for gaming. Each of these tomes have served me well over the years, and I will try to manage links for everything that can be found somewhere online:

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places

Written by Alberto Maguel and Gianna Guadalupi, this is a fantastic resource of imaginary places from myth, legend and fiction. You could do worse than to have this book on hand, it is an excellent resource for inspiration, and practically any article in the book could provide the framework for a game or campaign. 

A Guide to the Ancient World

This venerable classic by Michael Grant has been in my collection for decades. This particular tome is all about actual places and locations in antiquity, and provides an excellent resource for historical gaming. It can also provide inspiration for names, ideas on fictional locations in your own setting, or ways to reinterpret the history behind actual locations into a fictional framework.

The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient World 

This is a more recent work headed by the ubiquitous Brian M. Fagan (one of the premiere popular archaeology writers, almost all of his books are worth a read). It's a fantastic well-illustrated overview of seventy real world archaeological sites, concepts and mysteries, complete with lots of photos and illustrations, the history on each subject, and often maps when possible. Many of the entries look at the real known history behind specific legends and myths, ancient texts and are extremely valuable for a GM looking for real world myth and fact to blend in to a game.

The Phantom Atlas

This tome by Edward Brooke-Hitching is a excellent resource on pretty much every weird notion that made its way into the cartography of the old world, whether it was steeped in legend, propaganda, a misunderstanding or outright fictions scribed on to maps. Every chapter in this book is a Pulp adventure or historical game waiting to happen.

Medieval Folklore

This book is a deep read, but it is very much a guide to what it claims on the tin, and if you are specifically looking for inspiration for a medieval period campaign, or one inspired by the period, you may well find this book full of useful ideas and concepts. 

Giants, Monsters & Dragons

Carol Rose's encyclopedia of monstrous beings is a lovely resource with tons of useful information on the imaginary beasts of the world. It's main downside is many entries degenerate into name-listing, but as a resource to identify the origins of a given beast it can be incredibly helpful. 

The Deeper Dive List: these books are all valued in my collection but will require more time and reading investment....but the knowledge gleaned will definitely prove inspiring to you:

Magic in the Ancient World

Written by Fritz Graf, this is is a very detailed analysis of magic and how it was perceived in antiquity. A fascinating read, exceptional in its depth and useful for Call of Cthulhu and games which want realistic magical concepts in them; a fun contrast with today's modern day magic systems that are primarily a product of video games.

Shamanism

Written by Mircea Eliade, one of the pre-eminent French anthropologists of the mid twentieth century, his work on shamanism and its many variations in different cultures is a must-read for students of anthropology but also happens to be a valuable resource for understanding the way people imagined and interacted with the spiritual aspects of life in antiquity and in archaic cultures. Mircea Eliade wrote several excellent books on religion and magic, but Shamanism is the definite must-read.

Seafaring Lore & Legend

Peter D. Jean's treatise on maritime myths, legends and occasional facts is a fun read, but because it is more of a general tome on the subject with discreet chapters and topic it is slightly less useful as a general resource. It is a fun read, though, and provides a lot of inspiration for what may happen in a maritime themed campaign setting.

The Golden Bough

Hey, if you want to read a fascinating book full of interesting observations (and arguably still not too out of date), as well as one of the books actually on a sanity-loss inducing list in Call of Cthulhu that is a real book, then read James Frazier's unabridged seminal work on magic and myth. Well worth it, and surprisingly readable. I love this book so much I somehow have three copies on my shelf and one in my ebook collection, including a rare copy that is over eighty years old. 

Okay! That's it for my GM Inspiration posts for December. What to do for next month.....hmmm....