By Returning to the Handheld Frontier
When I first booted up First Light on the Steam Deck, it was a fun but slightly uneven experience. However, in the recent 007 First Light update, the developers have pushed out a couple of significant patches, and I am thrilled to report that the game is running astronomically better. As a handheld gaming enthusiast, there is nothing quite as satisfying as watching a previously choppy title transform into a buttery-smooth experience in the palm of your hands.
Breaking Down the Frame Rates
Let us talk numbers, because I know my fellow intermediate tech tinkerers love a good performance breakdown. In the more enclosed or less demanding areas of the game, I am actually seeing the frame rate soar up to a glorious 60 frames per second. It feels incredibly responsive and fluid. Naturally, as the environments open up and the heavy visual effects roll in, that number dips back into the 40 FPS range. But honestly? That is not a bad thing in my book. If you have spent any amount of time gaming on the Steam Deck, you already know that a locked 40 FPS on a 90Hz OLED screen feels remarkably close to 60 FPS anyway. It is the golden ratio for portable gaming, balancing battery life with visual fluidity.
My Recommended Steam Deck Settings
To get this level of performance, you cannot just rely on the default presets. You have to get your hands slightly dirty in the settings menu. After a fair bit of trial and error, I have found what I consider to be the absolute sweet spot for First Light.
First off, I am running the game at the Steam Deck’s native 800p resolution in full-screen mode. I highly recommend keeping VSync turned off in the game menus to reduce input lag, letting the Steam Deck’s built-in frame limiter handle the pacing if you need it. Now, a quick note on High Dynamic Range (HDR): I had to keep HDR off during my testing purely for recording purposes, as capturing HDR footage can sometimes wash out the colors on standard displays. However, if you are rocking the Steam Deck OLED, you absolutely must turn HDR on. The visual pop, the deep blacks, and the blindingly bright highlights add an entirely new layer of immersion that you simply cannot get on the LCD model.
When it comes to the heavy lifting, upscaling is your best friend. I have FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) set to Balanced mode. This does a fantastic job of keeping the image crisp while significantly reducing the strain on the APU. For the actual graphical sliders, I have settled on Medium for both Texture Quality and Terrain Quality. This keeps the world looking rich and detailed without bottlenecking the system memory.
If you are someone who prioritizes an absolutely rock-solid frame rate and you want to push higher than 40 FPS more stably during heavy action, you can easily bump those settings down to Low. The game still looks perfectly fine, but personally, I prefer a bit more eye candy. I like my games looking pretty decent when possible, and staying in that 30 to 50 FPS window for the vast majority of my playtime is a trade-off I am more than happy to make.
The Heat of Battle
The truly great thing about this game is its sheer immersion. If you were not obsessively watching the FPS counter in the corner of your screen—a bad habit many of us PC gamers share—you would never even notice the minor frame dips. You are just going to have an absolute blast kicking people’s butts when you are in the midst of a massive, chaotic firefight.
To be completely honest, there are not a huge amount of massive, screen-filling battles in the game anyway. Because of this pacing, you are going to be sitting in that higher frame rate range much more often, giving you plenty of smooth moments to just take in the gorgeous scenery. But I specifically wanted to test the performance when all hell is breaking loose, and I am happy to report that even during the most intense explosions and particle effects, the performance remains highly respectable. There is no game-breaking stutter, no massive freezing, and no glaring technical issues that pull you out of the experience.
The Verdict on Verification
Given how well this runs, I am genuinely surprised that First Light has not yet received Valve’s official ‘Verified’ status. Currently, it is only marked as ‘Playable’ on the Steam store. I was fully expecting it to get the green checkmark, especially considering it performs significantly better out of the box than many other games I have seen proudly wearing the Verified tag. The controls map perfectly, the text is legible, and the performance is rock solid. Hopefully, Valve updates this soon, because I strongly believe this game deserves to be officially Verified.
Final Thoughts and Alternatives
I know I am going to be spending a lot more time with First Light. With its satisfying combat loop, gorgeous environments, and newly optimized performance, it is shaping up to be one of the best games I have played so far this year. It is the perfect title to curl up with on the couch after a long day.
Of course, if you are someone who demands the absolute maximum graphical fidelity—we are talking 4K resolution, ultra settings, and ray tracing—and you do not want to compromise on a handheld, you have options. The game is also available on GeForce NOW. Streaming it through the cloud is a fantastic alternative if you have a solid internet connection and want to push the game’s visuals to their absolute limits without melting your hardware.
Ultimately, whether you are playing natively on the Steam Deck or streaming it from the cloud, this is an experience you do not want to miss. Take some time to tweak those settings, turn off the FPS counter, and just lose yourself in the gameplay. You will not regret it.
