(upbeat music) If you told me a year ago that my favorite device at the end of this year would be a handheld gaming device, I might have believed you because of course there is the Switch. But I would have never believed that it is an Asus device, especially this, which is the Asus ROG Ally. In this video, I'll be sharing the games I have on my Ally, what I'm currently playing. The game launcher I'm using and why it's not Armoury Crate. How I use my Ally and the settings I use to preserve battery health. The my Asus app and just everything that you need to know about the ROG Ally. I'm Captain Awesome, this is Geekception. Thank you so much for checking out this video. Hit that subscribe button if you like what I do here as it really helps me out. And let's start with Armoury Crate. And the first thing you notice is that the game launcher I have here looks nothing like Armoury Crate. And don't get me wrong, if you use Armoury Crate, it is still a perfectly nice game launcher. And of course, if you want to customize all of the options you get in the command center on the left there, you still need to use Armoury Crate in one way or the other. But immediately I started using the Ally, I noticed that I just did not like the experience here. And while you can add other apps and all, it just kind of dumps all of your game in one place without any sort of categorization. And I have to give credit to Asus here that even though I don't use Armoury Crate a lot, I do use it to update and they are very, very generous with the updates to the Ally. Take for example, the most recent update which brought gyro controls and settings directly in Armoury Crate. No need to use any third party app anymore. And also one of the most common Ally acts is to disable CPU boost for better battery life. And they've also managed to bring it in to Armoury Crate right here with the toggle in the command center. Which means that if you play a lot of games handheld, you will definitely enjoy just having simpler settings thanks to Armoury Crate. But it still just doesn't work for me, which leads into my favorite launcher of choice. Playnite. Playnite is a launcher that enables you to pretty much add your games from everywhere, including emulation and then displaying it nicely. And compared to Armoury Crate, Playnite is just a superior experience and you will see that very soon. Now I'm in full screen mode right now on Playnite and the theme I'm using is called the Hero Theme. And I like it because it is beautiful yet very minimal. And I can filter my games by each store that I've linked here, such as EA, Epic Games, my favorites here, my most played games across all of my library, the games that I currently have installed, my Steam library and Xbox Game Pass. Now I no longer have Nintendo Switch games on here, but when I had Nintendo Switch games on here, there was actually a category I could have the games as well, which you do not get on Armoury Crate. And something that I like on Playnite are some of the extensions that I have here, such as when I open a game such as Spider-Man right here, you can see I actually have like a time played here. I have like a trailer. So it automatically downloads a trailer for all of the games that I have in my library. You can see howlongtobeat.com data there, such as how long the main story is gonna take and how long I have played, what is my completion status? And yeah, I have lots of plugins here and I cannot take credit for any one of this because I have to give credit to Joey's Retro Handheld, who has made an extensive Playnite guide that I will link in the description below for how you can also set up Playnite so that you can have all of these cool features here. And I know if you're just getting into Playnite, it can be very overwhelming. So I really suggest you go watch Joey's video as he does a step-by-step on how to actually get started on Playnite. For a quick recap of my add-ons here on Playnite, let me switch back to Playnite desktop mode, which is as easy as just going into the settings here, going into switch to desktop mode. And it goes back to my ROG desktop for a quick second before it will then launch me into the Playnite desktop app. Now, going into the menu and extensions right here, I have a few extensions here that are very, very essential to my Playnite experience, such as the purchase date importer that imports the purchase date of all the games that I have, a duplicate hider to hide duplicate games because you know sometimes I've bought a game on Epic Game Store and then I also have it on my Steam, such as lawn mowing simulator. I loved it, I bought it twice. So you can hide those games so it does not show twice in your Playnite library. Theme extras, which was I think one of the themes I installed that needed it. A game pass catalog browser, which I will show you in a quick second here. Howlongtobeat.com, which shows that data that I showed just now. And also a success story, which shows you like how many achievements you have across all of your library. I'll also show you that right now. And extra metadata to be able to download all of your trailers like you saw for Spider-Man just now. So you actually have like a very, very nice experience. So now going over some of the quick tabs on the left here in Playnite desktop mode, I just go here and you can just see a quick overview of the statistics of my game library, all the games that I have installed, the ones I don't have installed, my total play time, average play time for games. And it's just, you know, for a data nerd like me who likes to just see everything, it's just nice to be able to see all of this data with a quick overview right there. Next is a success story right here, which shows all the achievements that I have in my games, such as, you know, the games I have installed, how many games am I playing right now? What is the achievement status? What is the progression level? So if you are someone who likes getting achievements like I do in games, I'm so obsessed with Spider-Man right now I think I've gotten like 88% of the achievements right now. You would be very, very happy with success story right here. And next is the Xbox Game Pass library here, which shows all the Xbox Game Pass games that you can install or add to your library, because there's this weird thing we're on Game Pass, you need to add a game to your library first before you can then download or install it. But here you can browse through the games and then also add it to your library. So you don't need to go outside into the Xbox app on its own. You can do pretty much everything under Playnite here, which is super cool. And the last one is how long to beat, which shows all your games, which of course you can have different filters and how long it will take you to beat each and every one of them. I have far too many games that I am never going to beat. I'm never, not even going to install because you know, we just love buying games when it's on sale. But yeah, you can pretty much see a quick overview of all of your games and how long it will take you to actually beat them. Now, in my opinion, one of the best features that Playnite has that is way better than Amore Create is the ability to automatically quit game clients when you finish playing a game. Let me explain. So let's say I play a game like American Truck Simulator right here, I enjoy it. It's one of my most favorite games and I quit it. It brings me back into Playnite right here. Normally, you know, Steam will be running in the background and if it were Amore Create, I would have to manually exit Steam myself or I would have to deal with Steam just running in the background all the time, which I do not like. Playnite solves this brilliantly. Now let me switch, quickly switch back into desktop mode and show you what I mean. So here in Playnite, I can go into the settings right there and there is an auto-close client section here under the settings, which you can tick to enable Playnite to wait. In my case, I have selected 60 seconds. And after 60 seconds, when you've quit a game or you've exited a game, it will automatically close the game client, which has been a life changer, which means that I don't have to deal with Epic's thousand notifications. I don't have to deal with EA telling me something is not working or I need to log in. I don't have to do any of that. It's like I quit the app 60 seconds later and I am, it's gone. Like I never have to see the client again and I can just remain in Playnite. And this is why instead of launching Amore Create by default when the Ally boots up, I have disabled that. And of course, if I press the button right here, it will launch Amore Create. I'm not gonna do that. I have instead selected to have Playnite auto launch at boot up with the ROG Ally so that I'm immediately thrown into my favorite games right here and I can just start playing immediately. I don't even have to interact with Amore Create at all. And since we're already here, I might as well tell you about the games that I'm currently playing right now that I have installed on the Ally. Now, I know there are many guides on how to open your Ally and upgrade the storage. And I agree that the storage that is bundled here, 512 gigs is simply not enough. I'm always constantly having to manage the games that I have installed or delete games that I've finished playing and then install other games. So until I upgrade the Ally, definitely that's something I would have to do. But the focus here is just on what games that I have installed. So definitely it's not as many games that I would like because of that 512 gig limitation. But I think one of the reasons why I've also not upgraded it, and maybe this might be an unpopular opinion, is because I'm a hoarder. I know I tend to hoard things. And if I had like one terabyte or two terabyte, I know I'm going to install games that I'm never going to play, but will be nice for me to have on the Ally anyway, because I might play it, but I never would. But I would still install it because there's space anyway. So I think many of you watching can definitely relate to me on this one, which is why I've sort of, it's a temporary limitation and it gets annoying to constantly delete games and install games and manage all of that. But I think it has always also taught me a little bit to be like a bit more thoughtful about the games that I want to play and to actually finish the games that I'm playing on the Ally. And I think I've already finished like five games on the Ally right now, which I think is the most I've ever finished in a year before I got the Ally, because I had a Mac before, so it was impossible for me to play games. So let's quickly go over some of the games that I have here that I'm currently enjoying. And of course, the tab I'm under here in Playnite is the installed tab, which are all the games that I have installed. And in case you're wondering, these are the games that I have as my favorite, of course, American Truck Simulator, with a new update for winter, Spider-Man and No Man's Sky. I was a pre-order 2016 No Man's Sky day one. So yes, I am here for the redemption arc and all of that. The game was always good for me anyway. So I'm going into the games I'm playing. I'm definitely, definitely enjoying Spider-Man. As you can see, I've put in 54 hours in the past, I think three weeks, and I finished the game. I finished three of the DLC, no, three, two of the DLCs. I'm in the last DLC right now. It's been a very, very enjoyable game, and it just looks really, really nice here on the Ally. And the next game I'm playing is Fortnite. And I must say, I downloaded it to try the Fortnite Lego, Lego Fortnite, and I'm very, very surprised at how good it is actually. So as you can see, I only have one hour here. I've not played it a lot, but I just downloaded it. I never thought I would actually play Fortnite ever, 'cause it's never just been my type of game. I'm not a battle royale type kind of a gamer, but it was enjoyable actually in the one hour that I played it to try it out. And next is Thirsty Shooters. And yeah, I have logged in about four hours in this game right now. It's been really, really enjoyable. It's a turn-based game, RPG, I would say. It's an RPG, I'm not sure, but it's been really, really enjoyable. The next one is Lego Brick Tales, and I think this one just tickles my Lego fantasies, and it's just been really, really fun. And especially on the Ally here, it looks really, really, really good, Lego Brick Tales there. The next is Quantum Break. And the kind of games I like are games that are very story heavy. So Quantum Break, Detroit Become Human was really a really, really good game that I also enjoyed. So when I saw this game recommended as well, and for the longest time I have not had access to a PC, so this is one of the games that has been on my list to playlist for a long time. And I only downloaded it. I started playing it, but I didn't want to play it while I was also still playing Spider-Man. So I just put a pause on it. And the next game is Drusant, which of course I love simulators. And this is a climbing simulator. And the twist here is that the gameplay mechanics, which I think is very nice. It has a gorgeous interface, as the trailer just said just now. And it's just one that I think I will enjoy playing when I don't want to play a heavy game like Spider-Man, for example. Of course, Big Daddy, Cyberpunk 2077, a game that I think here on the Ally I've played for almost 50 hours. It's just amazing that we get to be able to play games like this handheld. And I remember playing this at a meeting where I took the Ally and I was playing Cyberpunk on battery. And the people I went there to meet were so surprised. Like, "What, you can do that now?" And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, you can. You absolutely, totally can." And I think it just showcases the Ally very, very well. Unpacking is also another indie game that I'm playing. And I've been trying to play a lot of indie games this year. I've played Vember, I've played a Fly Above or a game like that. Firewatch and Unpacking. So I'm just going through all of the indie games. And most of them I installed via Xbox Game Pass 'cause I find that the library there is very nice. And I can just play it and maximize my subscription every month. Firewatch here, which I have also mentioned, I think it's a very chill, relaxed game. I like the visual style. I've wanted to play this for a long time on the Switch, but I could not justify paying the $60 or however much it was on the Switch. And it's included on the Game Pass. So I've started playing that as well. Speaking of the Switch, I have almost 10 Lego games on the Switch. I love Legos. And I found this Lego Lord of the Rings on my Steam account. And I think I bought it a long time ago, I think through Humble Bundle or something like that. And I just found it in my library randomly and I've just been playing it again. Of course, my favorite game of all time, American Truck Simulator. I think I've logged again, almost 50 hours here on the Ally as well. It's my most favorite game to play. And on the Ally here, it doesn't matter that it's a small display. I just enjoy trucking and delivering packages all around America. So yeah, it's been a very enjoyable game to play here on the Ally. And of course, lastly is No Man's Sky, which I pre-ordered in 2016. I have enjoyed countless hours in it here, both on the Ally, on cloud gaming, on the PlayStation, on my friend's PlayStation 5. So yeah, this has been a game that I've really enjoyed playing as well. So that is all the games that I have installed here on my ROG Ally. And if I go into my most played, there are of course some of the games here that I don't have installed. And the nice thing here with Playnite is you can actually just see all of the games you have. And for me, I've enabled it to darken the games that are not installed. So like it's a bit darker, the trailers, the cover photo is darker there. But if I click on it, you can actually see like how long I've played. And if you just give it a quick second, you would also be able to see like the trailer load as well and play. So yeah, that is the games I have here, both on my to playlist and also the ones that I have played the most. Next, let's talk about how I use my Ally here. And while this is a mostly portable game console, of course you can hold this and bring it anywhere. I've mostly used the plugin in the outlet with the 65 watt charger. And if I go into Armoury Crate right here, my power profile that I use almost like 99% of the time is the turbo mode because I want the best performance. I'm always plugged in because I just, you know, I don't want any compromises. I don't want any lags in my gameplay and I'm not trying to optimize the battery life. I'm mostly at home anyway. So I do not mind just having it plugged in and just getting the best quality I can all the time. But Captain Awesome, if you have a plugin all the time, then what about your battery? And that is an excellent question that you did not ask. Now, Asus thought of this, and I think this is one of the reasons why I really like the Ally here, is that if you go into the My Asus app that is bundled here and you go into battery care, there is this customization mode here. I think I'm just going to zoom in on my camera so you can see what I mean. You can actually see like there is this battery care mode that I have turned on. And because it's turned on, the battery will never go above 80%, which means that after 80%, I get to use power off of my power brick and not the battery. So I can preserve the battery health for longer, because again, I am having this plugged in all of the time. And it will be horrendous for the battery and the battery life if I was always using, you know, topping up the battery to 100% all the time. So I suggest if you're like me and you want to, you know, game with your Ally plugged in most of the time, I suggest you also turn on battery care mode in the My Asus app, as it will really, really help you with your battery. Now, since we are in the My Asus app, I might as well tell you how I get updates here on the Ally. And as I said earlier, Asus has been really, really, you know, consistent with the updates here for the Ally. And if I go under live updates here under customer support in the My Asus app, you can actually see Asus frequently updates the Ally here. And you know, the most recent update, I think that I updated was the RC71L334, which I updated I think yesterday or day before yesterday, which brought that ability to have the CPU boost a toggle here and also the ability to control your gyro controls in Amarok Create itself. So yeah, it's been very nice. And I have to really, really, you know, give a lot of credit to Asus for just how much they have supported the Ally here. And I still get updates for things like, you know, the wifi, I've never had any problems with the wifi, but they're constantly updating it. Of course, graphics, they've constantly updated, you know, the graphics drivers. Sometimes even as new games come out that crash, right? To update those crashes. So it Asus, I really have to like, you know, give them props for just how good of a job they've done when it comes to updates here on the ROG Ally. Now there are four ways to update the Ally and it might sound confusing, but it really isn't. Now we've already covered two, which is using the My Asus app right here, which I just showed you right now and Amarok Create as well. So if you open Amarok Create right here, give it a second, you go under content and you go to update center. You also get the ability to update your Ally, but there are two more ways that we've not covered here. And I think the third one here is by going to the store app. So you open the Microsoft store and again, it sounds confusing and it looks confusing, but I promise you it really isn't confusing that much. That much I would say, is you go under the store there, you go to library and you'll be able to click on, get updates and you'll be able to see all of the updates that you have like here. In this case, I have updates for the, you know, Xbox app, I tap update all and it will update. So Amarok Create itself is updated via this specific method of the Microsoft store. So you would definitely want to periodically check the store from time to time. And also the last way to actually get updates here is by going into your settings. This is your windows settings in this case, going to windows updates. And then as you can see here, I have an update already pending for me there and I can just click install all and it will start installation. So yes, that is the fourth way. So for a quick recap, we have in Amarok Create right here, right under Amarok Create, you have a way to update right there. You have in the MyASUS app, under customer support and live updates, you have the ability to update there. Under Microsoft store, you go into library and you should be able to see all of the pending updates that you already have there. And lastly, we have under Microsoft settings and under windows update, you have how to update there as well. So four ways to update your Ally so that you can get the maximum performance. And thank you for watching. This has been what is on my ROG Ally where I've taken you through, you know, the apps I have installed here that I use most of the time, my launcher of choice, how I update the Ally. And I've had the Ally now for, I think, about three, four months, and it's just been so much fun. I have enjoyed playing with this almost everywhere on the go, you know, at home. I'm mostly at home anyway. And it's just been a game changer. And as I said in my intro, if you told me at the beginning of the year that my favorite gaming device of choice will be a portable handheld from ASUS, I would be like, huh, what? But yeah, here we are, end of 2023. And definitely this is my editor's choice for gaming console of the year. And, you know, I would like to give a huge shout out to the folks over at ASUS who are very passionate about this, you know, not just in them telling us that they are passionate about it, but in just the, you know, kind of features we have gotten. And I did not even talk about, you know, the comfort, how comfortable the Ally is. For example, you know, on the left here, it has this curve and makes it easy to hold to when you are gaming for like a long period of time, you don't feel that fatigue, which maybe you feel on another handheld from another laptop manufacturer that I've heard is not very comfortable. I have not tried it, but I can imagine the curves here make it very nice to hold. The buttons are, you know, very, very clicky and very, very easy to use. The screen is nice. The battery life is crap, but you know, I never played on battery life anyway. The speakers, the speakers are really good. The stereo speakers, I remember playing at my friend Steven's house and he was like, what is that? Is that from the console? He couldn't believe just how loud the sound was, right? The quality of the sound as well. Not just that, it was just loud, right? It was good quality sound. So yes, that has been it for what is on my ROG Ally. Please tell me what is on your ROG Ally. What are some of the games or apps you have installed? Do you use Armoury Crate like I do here? Well, that I do not use here, I use PlayNight. What are some of the things that I should check out that you have on your Ally? Let me know. I would really, really love it. Thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video. All the links to everything will be in the description, especially Joey's channel. Check it out. Joey's Retro Handheld, you know, is one that I watch all the time. I really enjoy his stuff. And you know, it goes into many videos about the Ally, not just the Ally, but the Legion Go as well, and other, you know, handheld gaming consoles as well. And yeah, until next time, I have been your captain of awesome. This is Geekception. Please do hit that subscribe button if you enjoy what I do here, to be really, really helpful. And until next time, don't forget to stay awesome. Bye. (upbeat music) [end]
