If you've just picked up a Steam Deck (or been gifted one) here's the 5 games that you should play first on your new handheld gaming device.

Valve shared its “Best of 2024” data on Dec. 26, highlighting games that performed the best by a variety of metrics. The data is split into various categories, such as best-selling games, most played, and favorites among Steam Deck, VR, and controller users.

For the first few days with the Steam Deck OLED in hand, all I did was load up different games to try and find the hard limit for the Deck's capabilities. As it turns out, as long as a game is Steam Deck Verified,

It’s a tad rote to extol the virtues of Valve’s Steam Deck in 2024; it’s been the handheld PC that’s had gaming and tech journalists alike wax lyrical about it. Yet here I am, about to tell you why it’s my most-played games device over the past 12 to 18 months.

The Steam Deck is one of the best portable gaming devices around, despite one major shortcoming: It doesn’t run Windows. Unlike the Asus ROG Ally, the Lenovo Legion Go, and a fleet of other devices that come with Windows preinstalled,