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LEGO games are some of the best titles to play on Steam Deck due to their relatively simplistic graphics and collectathon gameplay - and LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is no different. However, with its massive open world and huge step up in visual fidelity, gamers are right to be worried whether the latest outing from TT Games would run on Valve's Steam Deck portable at all.

Thankfully, I'm here to report that not only does LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight run on Steam Deck, it performs pretty admirably. I reviewed the game for Express Online and played roughly 10 hours of the game exclusively on my Steam Deck OLED - this is how it performed in my experience and the settings I used.

For the most part, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is capable of running at a locked 45fps when played on a Steam Deck. This is particularly the case when playing through the short, contained levels away from the open world of Gotham.

However, I did find that a 30fps target was more realistic when exploring Gotham - especially when gliding quickly over its rooftops or speeding down the streets in the Batmobile. Here, the game regularly dips under 30fps with a few frame time spikes to boot, so it's not entirely smooth sailing.

That being said, I found the gameplay experience to be more than playable, especially for a handheld device such as the Steam Deck.

To achieve the best performance in LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, I made sure to lock the Steam Deck's refresh rate to 45fps (90Hz) in the SteamOS menu. This ensured that I had a smooth gameplay experience with minimal frame drops, at least in the contained levels.

If you're particularly sensitive to frame rate drops, I'd recommend dropping this down even further to 30fps (90Hz), as this will help to keep gameplay smooth in Gotham's open world.

As for the game's settings, I swapped the resolution to 800p to take up the Steam Deck's full vertical resolution. I also whacked all of the settings as low as they can go to ensure maximum performance.

The only other setting I changed was in Resolution Scaling, where I set this to use FSR 2. At first, this seemed to tank my performance even lower, but this is because the quality setting of FSR 2 is actually a few items down on the menu.

Make sure to scroll a bit further down and set the FSR mode to 'Performance', as this will ensure you're getting the best visual quality to performance ratio.

Once I had these settings dialled in, I was able to play through a good 10 hours of LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight without any issues on my Steam Deck OLED. In terms of battery life, the game is quite intensive, so expect it to pull a pretty hefty 22-23W during gameplay.

This translates to just over two hours of battery life on a fully charged Steam Deck OLED, and a little less on the original LCD model.

Overall, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight performs admirably on the Steam Deck and definitely earns its verification badge.

Will you be playing LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight on Steam Deck?