6 games you need to play on Asus ROG Ally

The Asus ROG Ally is one of the best handheld gaming devices right now. With access to Xbox Game Pass and Steam, it offers the ability to play a vast number of games all on a 7-inch touchscreen. That alone makes it appealing for anyone looking to get into handheld gaming. In my experience, it’s powerful enough to handle almost any major gaming title.

I’ve had my ROG Ally for a little over six months, which has given me plenty of time to test some of the newest games and my old favorites on the handheld. So, I’ve rounded up my absolute favorite picks to start out gaming on the Ally. It includes a few major new titles, like Helldivers 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3, but also some hard-to-find classic titles.

1 Helldivers 2

For Liberty!

Helldivers 2 has been one of the surprise hits of 2024. The co-op shooter places players in the role of a Helldiver, a soldier of the futuristic Super Earth, tasked with dropping onto alien planets to take on giant bugs and hordes of automatons. The game’s satirical take on a future version of Earth, stunning graphics, and an already impressive slate of free updates have made it one of our favorite games of 2024 so far.

The future also looks promising for Helldivers 2 players, with a new enemy type, the Illuminate, being teased to make its first appearance in the game. The game has also already added a ton of cool new toys to play with, like a rocket-armed mech suit and a suite of electricity-powered weapons to take on the enemies of freedom.

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2 Baldur’s Gate 3

Roll the dice

Baldur’s Gate 3

Create your own perfect dungeons and dragons party and adventure through the world of the Forgotten Realm.

Developer

Larian Studios

Release

August 3, 2023

Genre

Adventure, RPG, Strategy

Multiplayer

Online Co-Op

Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the more addictive RPG games I’ve played in recent memory, and I’ve played it entirely on my ROG Ally. The game released the same day I picked up my ROG Ally, and the Dungeons and Dragons-inspired game was the perfect way to test it out.

I’m not normally a fan of turn-based action games, but Baldur’s Gate’s fights are so intense that it may have changed my opinion on the genre entirely. The other great part of Baldur’s Gate 3 is the freedom to solve problems however you want, even if it kills your character or makes the game much weirder for you. You can kill a character important to the storyline, and the game still goes on. It’s also just a hilarious game. I’ve blinded my character by trusting a singer to remove a parasite, and accidentally launched a dwarf that was attached to a windmill into space.

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3 Sid Meier’s Civilization 6

Best game to play while watching TV

The most common way I play my ROG Ally is on the couch next to my wife while she watches something like Gilmore Girls. I might have high hopes for spreading democracy in Helldivers, but I’ll end up enthralled in whether Lorelai Gilmore will finally settle down with the charming small-town diner owner, and dying too many times before I open up Civilization 6 — a game you can go 10 minutes without looking at and be just fine.

While 4X strategy games are notorious for being a lot if you’re inexperienced with the genre, the Civilization series is great for beginners. The game presents you with prompts on the bottom right of your screen that let you breeze through turns as you learn how to play. Once you learn more about the game, there’s endless tinkering you can do to try to create the perfect civilization.

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4 EA Sports FC 24

Bend it like Beckham

EA Sports’ soccer simulation has undergone a rebrand, with the 2024 version being the first called FC instead of FIFA. It’s still one of the best sports simulations on the market, which was also the case with the FIFA-titled games. You can still take control of 700 different soccer clubs from 30 different leagues throughout the world and lead them to glory. You can also create your own player to play online 11-on-11 games with other players.

I jumped into FC ’24 as part of the Xbox Game Pass plan that comes with the Asus ROG Ally, partially inspired by having watched the FX series Welcome to Wrexham, which follows a small Welsh soccer club. Way too many hours later, I’m happy to report that Wrexham has become a Premier League powerhouse.

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5 Palworld

Pokemon with guns

Palworld

This survival game lets you capture cute little Pokemon-like creatures that you can use to help you tame the world around you. You can also craft a ridiculous arsenal of weapons.

Developer

Pocket Pair

Genre(s)

RPG

Platforms

Xbox and Steam

Multiplayer

Online Co-Op

Palworld took the gaming world by storm with its concept of arming Pokemon, but the game’s a lot more than a meme. It has an incredibly deep crafting system and a roster of creatures, called Pals, that offer a ton of different abilities. The guns are surprisingly more of an afterthought, and they’re only unlocked deep into the game’s crafting system. The small goals that come with building a base to take care of you and your pal’s needs more than preoccupy your time.

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6 Elden Ring

Do you like pain?

Elden Ring

An open-world Souls game that’s as beautiful to look at as it is difficult.

Developer(s)

FromSoftware

Release

February 25, 2022

Genre

Action role-playing game

Platforms

Steam

Multiplayer

Online Co-Op , Online Multiplayer

If you’ve ever played a FromSoftware game before, like the Dark Souls series, you know they tend to be more unforgiving than any other game. That’s no different with Elden Ring, a third-person RPG that sees you tasked with navigating an open world known as the Lands Between. You’ll have to defeat the demigods that rule the Lands Between to obtain pieces of the Elden Ring and become the Elden Lord.

I was obsessed with Elden Ring when it came out, but regularly played it on the 85-inch TV. I randomly decided to pick it back up shortly after I got the ROG Ally just to test the system on a newer, more taxing game. It ended up being all I played for two weeks. Needless to say, I’ll be playing the Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, on the ROG Ally.

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Pocket-lint

FAQ

Q: How to play your classic favorite games

We live in the golden age of video game remakes, so now’s a great time to pick up a copy of one of your favorites that’s recently been remastered. I’ve enjoyed the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes, for example. But you might have a few white whales from your childhood that are just never getting remade. One of the best parts of gaming on the ROG Ally is finding ways to play some of those old classics by using emulators.

NCAA Football was a formative game for me as a child, and playing a modded version of the now ten-year-old game has healed my inner child. But it hasn’t been the only game I’ve revisited on the ROG Ally. I’ve also played some other games I grew up on that are hard to find now, like Alien vs Predator: Extinction, Twisted Metal 3, Freedom Fighters, and the classic Gameboy Pokémon games. There’s a way to play games for just about every old system now, and the ROG Ally lets you take advantage of them all.

Q: What games should you avoid on Asus ROG Ally?

There’s a few things you should consider before buying a game on the ROG Ally. It’s worth doing a little research before any purchase to make sure the game is compatible with handheld devices and that the Ally is capable of running the game. I passed up playing Dragon’s Dogma 2 because it isn’t optimized for handheld devices like the ROG Ally or Steam Deck. Another game I love, Rimworld, is just a little clunky to play on the ROG Ally.

Similarly, I bought Cyberpunk 2077 recently, but the game was fairly glitchy with average graphics settings and the Ally on Turbo Charge mode. I ended up just refunding the game, although it was fine on lower graphics settings. Games that require a little more power are worth purchasing on a gaming console if you can.

Q: What performance mode is best for the ROG Ally?

I keep my ROG Ally in Turbo mode pretty much all the time, but I keep it plugged in while playing for the most part. If you want to conserve power and play on the go, you can fine tune the performance settings for your ROG Ally so you use the perfect amount of power you need for each specific game you’re playing. However, you might still experience dips in performance that you wouldn’t while using Turbo mode.