13 Classic Games You'll Be Able To Play On Steam Machine (That You Can't On PS5)
Topics: Steam Machine, Retro Gaming, List, Features
Featured Image Credit: Vivendi
Topics: Steam Machine, Retro Gaming, List, Features
The price of the Steam Machine has now been revealed, and it’s not a pretty sight.
As many are baulking at the sight of the Steam Machine’s four-figure price, it does indeed seem like many gamers feel priced out of an effective way to combine the convenience of console gaming with the depth of PC gaming.
While there are many people who will skip the Steam Machine as a direct result of these prices, the audience with a large library of classic PC games will find a lot of value in being able to play their 20+ year old games on the big telly without much faff.
If you’re a console gamer with a PlayStation 5, many of these games will be locked to you. There’s a huge back catalog of retro games which haven’t been ported or remastered for the PS5.
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We’ve picked out 13 beloved classics which you simply can’t play on modern consoles, but will be easily available for the Steam Machine.
Now that pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI are available, it’s a great time to head back and check out some of the best GTA games of yore. While games like GTA V and GTA: San Andreas are freely available to play on PS5, Grand Theft Auto IV is not.
While it is available to play via backwards compatibility on Xbox Series X/S, Steam Machine users will be able to play the original PC version of GTA IV with mods installed, allowing you to bypass that pesky framerate bug that can hit you in the final mission of the game.
Although it’s rumoured to be getting a modern generation remaster similar to last year’s Oblivion remaster, Fallout 3 is pretty difficult to play on modern consoles. PS5 users can stream the game via PlayStation Plus Premium, but it’s not a great experience if you ask us.
With the Steam Machine, players will be able to install Fallout 3 with all the DLC and mods included. That opens you up to potentially hundreds of more hours of gameplay.
The Sims 4 is fine, but you know where it was truly at? The Sims 2. Not available on PS5, The Sims 2 was re-released on modern PCs along with the first game last year for the franchise’s 25th anniversary.
On Steam Machine, you’ll be able to play The Sims 2 relatively frustration-free if you use the Steam Controller’s trackpads as a mouse alongside it, so you can spend countless hours in the virtual simulation without a care in the world.
One of the best games like GTA is The Simpsons: Hit & Run, essentially a cartoon take on the open-world genre using familiar characters and settings from The Simpsons.
Despite being one of the most popular requests for a modern remaster, there has been no sign of a revival of the classic 2003 game. However, given that the game also released on PC back in the day and has some easily applicable fixes to get it running on modern hardware, it should run on the Steam Machine like a piece of cake (insert Homer’s “Mmm, cake” line here).
One of the greatest FPS games of all time is almost entirely exclusive to the PC platform, and you definitely can’t play it on modern consoles. While Valve used to embrace porting some of its games to console, it has all but moved away from that since it found success with Steam.
Fortunately, with Half-Life being one of Valve’s own games (as well as being nearly 30 years old), it should run perfectly well on the Steam Machine, with controller and modding support working right out of the box.
Yeah, so the later Fallout games are all fantastic, but you know what else is great? Fallout 2. Back when the series was more of a traditional CRPG with an isometric view, Fallout 2 was one of the best games you could really play on the PC.
On the Steam Machine, it should run pretty well if you use the trackpads on the Steam Controller in lieu of a mouse. While it doesn’t have native support, there are lots of presets made by the community which can get it up and running. Find a mod which adds HD resolution, and you’re good to go.
The Total War series has always been a PC-first series, to the point where it has never been released on console in the past. While the upcoming Total War: Warhammer 40,000 will see the series debut on PlayStation and Xbox for the first time, you have a whole cavalcade of classic Total War games to play.
Total War: Shogun 2, released in 2011 for PC, is a great starting point. Not only does it cover an interesting time period (the Sengoku period of feudal Japan), but it’s also arguably one of the easiest ones to get into, refining the series’ evolution while also bringing it back to its own simplicity.
Silent Hill 2 remake caught the attention of many horror fans when it released in 2024, but it’s still no match for the original game, which is cited as one of the scariest video games of all time.
The original Silent Hill 2 had a rather clumsy port to PS3 and Xbox 360, but the PC version with the Enhanced Edition mod makes it the definitive way to play the game today. And on Steam Machine, this should work rather flawlessly if you install it correctly.
It’s going to be a long while before we get to play The Elder Scrolls VI. You can already play Oblivion, Skyrim, and Online on PS5, but you can’t play the secretly best Elder Scrolls game on there: Morrowind.
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind should play rather nicely on the Steam Machine. You might need to download a custom controller configuration, but combining it with OpenMW should make for an exciting open-world experience that rivals Skyrim or Fallout 4.
Although we weren’t too fond of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, its 2004 predecessor was a cracking RPG which unfortunately didn’t see any life outside of the PC platform.
Luckily with the Steam Machine and a custom controller config, you’ll be able to have a great experience playing the original Bloodlines using Proton pretty easily, and it should function quite well as a result.
Thanks to the various remasters that have been released over the years, you can play almost every Assassin’s Creed game on PlayStation 5 now except for the original, which came out in 2007.
I’d die on the hill suggesting that the original Assassin’s Creed is the best one, and while you’ll also need to download a custom controller plugin to get it running properly, I’d go so far as to say this might be one of the best gaming experiences you’ll be able to get on your Steam Machine.
Fans weren’t so keen on the artistic direction Aspyr has taken for the Deus Ex Remaster, which is probably why it got delayed indefinitely at the start of the year. Now’s as great a time as any to go and check out the original.
Deus Ex has always played best on PC, and the original game has a huge plethora of mod support, custom configurations, and additional fixes which make it run incredibly well on modern systems. With the game not really having much of a presence on modern consoles, this ought to be one of the first titles you check out on the Steam Machine.
The first Portal game was an absolute masterpiece when it came out nearly twenty years ago. Coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360 as part of The Orange Box, it has proven itself to be one of the most influential puzzle games of all time.
Despite being remastered for Nintendo Switch along with its sequel in 2022, the game has seen no sign of being brought to PS5 or Xbox Series X/S. However, as we said with Half-Life, the Steam Machine should have solid support for Valve’s own first-party titles out of the box, making this a must play.
