Last year while at PAX Australia, Ruby got the opportunity to play with a Steam Deck, that beautiful, magical handheld console that she poignantly explained as requiring you to head into an underground tavern and making a deal with Real World Rumpelstiltskin, who is like regular Rumpelstiltskin but worse, if you want to get your hands on one from down under.
The Steam Deck is still not available to buy in Australia, I’m convinced it doesn’t actually exist and it’s all just a conspiracy to make every one of us sad. But what does exist is the Logitech G Cloud. How’s that for a segue?
While at CES in Las Vegas this week, I went on a tour with Nvidia that essentially walked me through its 2023 batch of announcements. While that was fun, so was my 10 minutes with the G Cloud.
Everything we’ve heard about the Logitech G Cloud has been good, a lot of reviewers have focused on its exceptional battery life (which comes due to the fact it doesn’t need a beefy processor on board).
For those of you uninitiated, the Logitech G Cloud was developed in cooperation with China’s Tencent. It’s got a design that’s reminiscent of the Switch and Valve’s Steam Deck: a generous 60Hz LCD touchscreen, measuring in at 7-inches in size with a 1080P resolution, sandwiched between controls on either side of the display that include asymmetrical analogue joysticks, four action buttons, a D-pad, and shoulder triggers. The handheld also features vibrating haptic feedback, gyroscope-powered motion controls, and remappable controls, and weighs in at just 463 grams — a little heavier than the Switch with Joy-Cons attached, and a little lighter than the Steam Deck.
I didn’t have long with the Logitech G Cloud, and as the casino Wi-Fi was absolutely shocking, I had to play a pre-installed game, Ghostrunner, which I definitely have never played before.
The last game I played was The Quarry and that was on PS4, so all I can tell you was that I was exceptionally terrible at Ghostrunner and will not be including any gameplay footage in this post because I’d probably never be invited back to Kotaku Australia to write anything.
But what I can tell you is that the G Cloud is light, easy to hold with my small hands that somehow lack the ability to grip. For those of you with bigger hands, I can’t imagine it not feeling still comfortable after a few hours, either.
The graphics were gorgeous, gameplay was smooth and after my 10 minutes with the Logitech G Cloud, I’m hesitant to say I agree with any criticisms that the Android device isn’t, at the very least, on par with its more expensive, more popular peers.
I’m someone who wishes they were as good a gamer as those of you reading are and I can’t help but think having access to devices like the G Cloud and Steam Deck would go a long way to making this possible – it’s a cheaper alternative than a console and a far better one than turning my Google Pixel 7 Pro on its side.
I wanted to walk away with the Logitech G Cloud and curl up on the lounge to push through the jetlag with something that made me feel like it was a warm cup of camomile tea being injected directly into my soul. It felt like comfort.
I truly get why it broke Ruby’s heart walking away from the Steam Deck.
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