You know when you’re in the queue at, like, Disneyland, or Universal Studios, or whatever, and they have those videos where Christopher Lloyd is pretending to be Doc Brown from Back to the Future or something like that, telling you about the ride you’re about to go on and doing all the little catchphrases from the movie, but it’s sorta hollow - they sound so tired, and it doesn’t last long enough to fill your time in the queue, so you keep hearing it over and over again, this same shit, for what feels like years? Maybe even decades? Yeah. Super annoying! I hate that kind of stuff.

Anyway, remember when the Nintendo Switch came out? Those were great times. Feels like forever ago since I first did a Zelda dungeon while taking a shit. That feeling when you first slid the joycons onto their rails and heard that satisfying click... Oh yeah! The little minigame in 1-2 Switch where you could feel the balls moving around in the pad? So awesome. When was that again... 2016? 2017? Five years ago?! Wow! I remember that first weekend it launched, my friend brought his with him to the pub in the pocket of his cargo pants! Crazy, right? We all played Bomberman round a table, just like in those adverts Nintendo made to promote the console, laughing and smiling and shit. So much fun. What a system. Good times, man, good times.

So, this is the first Valve game I've played. I see a lot of people say a return to Aperture or typical Valve humour but this was all pretty fresh for me having not really played PC games since the 90's but recently purchasing a Steamdeck. This is essentially the Steamdeck's version of Astro's playroom. It's a free title more like a tech demo to teach you some of the basic controls of the Steamdeck, which is basically the controller, gyro and touchscreen.

You play the role of a new member of staff for a company called Aperture with a robotic companion Grady who guides you through your role and controls in a fairly linear fashion. Craziness steadily ensues over the games 30 minute runtime progressing forward. It's pretty well written, amusing both through it's great voice acting and visual style. I especially liked the mantis empire.

It doesn't really excel though due to its nature of being locked behind a desk. Once again it's hard to not compare it with Astro as a comparison. The other odd thing, and maybe that's due to the way Steam works as I'm fairly new, but it didn't come built into the Steamdeck so I only found out about it two weeks after I had bought it and it feels like an integral experience front and centre.

Still I had a good time with it, it was obviously made with passion, is genuinely entertaining and completely free. If you have a Steamdeck and a spare 30 minutes there is literally no reason not to play it.

Now that I own a Steam Deck, I've been seeing this app appear in the recommended section nonstop whenever I boot it up. Decided to give it a whirl and had a fun time!

They do a good job going over what the Steam Deck is capable of in terms of functionality, the graphics do a good job showing off the power of the Deck, the writing is funny, and it's over in around a half hour, giving you just enough of a taste of what the Steam Deck brings to the table to make you excited to use it with the rest of your Steam library. If you own a Steam Deck I don't see any reason to not check it out!

Also this taught me how to take screenshots with the Deck this is such vital information I feel reborn.

>shows up
>drops goty 2022
>leaves

love you valve please keep making games

It's a goddamn shame that Valve has decided to make Portal and it's science heavy setting into their defacto "Test Our Software" game series now. I mean it's been 13 years since the last new game that tries to capture what Portal is as a puzzle game. Instead, we've gotten The Lab, a tech demo with all sorts of stuff to show off vr, and this, a 30 minute experience to get you to be aware of what the Steam Deck can do.

The good news is that everything here is still remarkably Portal. The writing, the comedy, the look, the lore, it's all there and it's borderline necessary if you want to go out of your way to know every inch of officially released material like an encyclopedia.

Gameplay wise it's also shockingly in depth to go over all the stuff the Steam Deck can do while still being a fun game, vs The Lab which is mostly just a bunch of fun experiences that require you to be in vr for them. Nothing particularly groundbreaking, nothing incredible, but the jump from Valve making The Lab to making Half Life Alyx did a very good job of telling them to make video games to show off tech stuff over just tech demos that do the job in a familiar setting.

What a meh-ass tech demo. The only fun part was shooting with gyro motion-controls but that’s also the only part where it drops in frames. You don’t do much else than that other than to flush toilets and listen to this blue portal-looking mf.

I took too long to sign my name on the touch screen, so it went like: actually fuck you, you don’t get to sign anything.

At least this game does something right, and that is to redefine the meaning of what a job is. #normalizetoiletwarmachienes #normalize #toilet #war-machines

I like the mantises tho, they cute. :D

I'm of the mind that game controllers are rife with untapped potential to an almost comical degree; even our two-analogue + two-shoulder-triggers (etc.) standard exemplified across every major system for the past couple of decades has plenty of wriggle room to prove themselves as fructuous user interfaces, as platforms for expression and experimentation. How often are games elevated by you using an input and receiving a response you didn't quite expect, when a title is brave enough to break out of muscle-memory-worn tradition? Why are we always using the right analogue stick for the camera when God Hand demonstrated that it could be used as an omnidirectional dodge? Bumpers piss me off too, it always feels like the part games fall back on when they run out of face buttons.

Aperture Desk Job is a hardware showcase for the Steam Deck, placing the player behind a desk filled with buttons and knobs that represent an abstracted control pad, more specifically the Steam Deck button layout. but I'm honestly not sure what it's so proud of, what it's even flaunting. When all comes down to it, the game seems satisfied to give you another simulation where the left stick "moves" the player, you ready a reticle with the left trigger, and shoot with the right. It even demonstrates with a quippy section that deviations from this, let's face it, trite format are nothing more than "overengineered" amalgams begging for failure. I honestly am a little disappointed in Valve for this. While I definitely think the Steam Deck is one of the best pieces of handheld gaming hardware on the market, it doesn't do anything for interactivity the Switch doesn't do - the WiiU gamepad didn't do. Hell, the fucking Nvidia Shield.

Which, I wanna stress, is fine. I love the Steam Deck lol, it's a relatively uncomplicated means to play my Steam library "on the go" (bed), I love the freedom and the ergonomics of the pad itself are wildly comfortable. It serves its purpose just fine - it's just why I'm a little confused by... this? It does nothing, and despite reprising a fan-favourite role, it also says nothing. I wasn't even necessarily expecting Valve's take on Astro's Playroom, I simply had hoped that their generally forward-thinking design ethos would unravel a hidden truth or two, especially since they had the confidence to release this on regular PCs as well.
Oh well, it's nice to hear little motifs from the Portal 2 soundtrack again, gave me the tingles.

Got my new Steam Deck recently and decided to give it a spin with this, and it was... fine. It runs well enough on the system and has your classic Portal 2 humor and aesthetics, but it feels kind of lacking in the actual gameplay. The most fun part here was using gyro controls to handle the toilet turret for a few minutes, otherwise the rest of the buttons (including the back buttons of the Steam Deck) are relevant maybe once or twice, and the trackpads + joystick clicks could have been covered more thoroughly. There's a bit too much downtime in this already super short (think: less than an hour, maybe at most half an hour) tech demo, and more recent tech demo games like Astro's Playroom or even Wii Sports just blow this out of the water. It's free so ultimately I can't complain too much, but it really would be interesting to see the first party push their own hardware a little bit more than this.

I can barely remember what happened because I was enthralled by the texture and lighting on that blue cunt's dome.

That's about all it has goin' for it. Decade old patter still getting wheeled out. Hee hee da quippy robot.

I feel ancient. Fuck off.

Certainly not "another showcase of Valve's world class game design" or anything, you literally just sit and watch real time cutscenes for half an hour interspersed with occasional extremely barebones shooting mechanics that are obviously meant to acclimate you to the Steam Deck controller. For that reason it's not great, but I also don't hate it because it's not trying to really be anything more than that. The humor was also less consistently solid than the prior Portal games (which themselves did not have a perfect track record).

But as a way to kill half an hour? Sure, might as well. Mostly just reminded me that gyro controls rule and should be standard on all games that require you to aim with any amount of precision.

I have to wonder why Aperture Desk Job doesn't just come built into the Steam Deck. The game provides an excellent onboarding to the portable machine and is a must play for new owners. I only found out about it through word of mouth, though, as you have to search for and download it on the Steam Store yourself, and only on the store page does it say that it is a Steam Deck demo app -- I thought it was some Portal gag-spin-off at first.

It's a very welcome introduction to Valve's new gadget. The premise is simple: you're an Aperture employee tasked with certifying the company's products. You're assisted by a robot called Grady, who quickly develops ambitions of climbing the corporate ladder and drags you along with him. It's a short (30 minutes) experience that boasts incredible production values, and will walk you through all of the Steam Deck's functionality, from "what are all the buttons on it" to "how to open the virtual keyboard in-game".

It's great when console manufacturers do this sort of thing, like Nintendo bundling Wii Sports with the Wii and the AR stuff with the 3DS, or Sony adding the Welcome Park to the Vita. With the gains from generational leaps getting ever smaller, getting a new console doesn't have the same spark as it once did -- "new machine that does previously unthinkable things" has given way to "new machine does the same as previous machine, probably even shares much of the same games, but performs slightly better". Having these demo apps helps give a bit more personality to the new toy, and Aperture Desk Job is brimming with character.

this plays it so safe that I'm not sure why they even bothered making it. gyro aiming is not what I'm here for, that's not exactly new or exciting anymore. the touchpads are easily the most unique aspect of the hardware and they barely get utilized. it's the one thing that's unfamiliar enough to need a tech demo as an introduction to its possible uses! did they hold back to make it easily playable on desktops?

one of the first things I did when I got this thing was play peggle nights, a game from 2008 that lacks conventional controller support. that's the sort of thing that excites me about the steam deck as a mobile console, but it's not a feature you can really convey through a tech demo game like this. it's fine enough as a short little experience and it has fun moments but it's not memorable as a game.

considering this game doesn't have much purpose as an introduction to the steam deck, its status as a portal game is really the biggest reason to check it out. it doesn't really have me convinced though? it's very blatant portal 2 fan service that doesn't have much of its own to bring to the table. sure it's short by nature, but what little is here is just really hit or miss for me.

portal 2 was at its best when it was allowing you to interact with the game as dialogue played out. it's fun to let the quips wash over you as you puzzle about. even when there's no immediate way to progress you get to move around, or at least look around, it helps you get immersed and connect with situation. there's a few moments in desk job where you just have to sit and wait for a voice line to play out and you just kind of have to sit there and endure it. you can't really do anything other than fidget with your desk. it makes it a lot easier find annoyance in the writing. maybe this is just a me problem, but the experience was like getting strapped to a chair and forced to listen to a mediocre stand-up routine performed by a tired burnout who doesn't seem totally convinced by his own jokes. less talking at you and more talking for you? saw other people say it was classic valve writing so maybe I'm out of line here. I did like some of it. the cave johnson bit was pretty good.

but yeah I don't feel cheated for playing a free game for 30 minutes or anything, but I am a bit disappointed. in comparison valve's vr lab game was a pretty good introduction to the tech and had a lot of charm, I guess it got my hopes up a bit too much

i rated this 2.5 initially because i was like "yeah that sure showed me the deck's controls alright," but ive decided to lower it another half star a few days later after realising this is the one portal related thing that didnt make me laugh or smile once. i was expecting a fun little thing that happened to demonstrate that my deck didnt need RMAing, since i was going to swap out the ssd and didnt want to open it up before that. i couldve just opened a calibration menu instead and saved myself 30 minutes really, i had more fun imagining all the games i wanted to play while i went on blueballing myself through this. just do that instead lol