Oh, my poor PS4. How lonely you should really feel now, nestled untouched beneath a layer of mud below my TV stand, initially consigned to work as a glorified streaming field after I lastly kicked my Destiny behavior and accomplished my gradual shift to solely gaming on PC. When I upgraded my ageing plasma display screen to a shiny new sensible TV, even that responsibility fell from you, leaving you to wallow in inactivity exterior the uncommon event I’ve home friends who need to play Jackbox.
I’ve all however given up on ‘living room gaming’ nowadays, even after a childhood spent taking part in on nearly each house console for the reason that Nintendo 64 and Sega Dreamcast, even after, uh… oh man, how many hours spent in Destiny 2? Oh expensive. Let’s not speak about that.
Going mobile…
And yet, Asus might have changed my mind. I got the original ROG Ally when it first came out back in 2023, and it’s seen plenty of use in my household. Not just by me, either; my partner has been trying and failing to get into PC gaming for a while, but the Ally has streamlined that whole process for him, and now we’ve got 200+ hours in a Stardew Valley co-op save file. In fact, he probably uses the Ally even more than I do – I’ve been unceremoniously banished to my desktop more than once when we both want to play different games at the same time.
But in the two years I’ve been enjoying my time with the ROG Ally, at no point did I ever think of using it as anything other than a handheld. That’s even sillier now, in retrospect, considering that I already own a Nintendo Switch and have spent plenty of time playing on it in both the handheld and docked modes.
So when an Asus ROG Bulwark Dock dropped into my lap this December (in the very pleasant way that hardware sometimes does when you’re a tech journalist), I knew I had to at least give it a chance. Who knows, I thought to myself. Maybe I’ll even like it more than playing in handheld mode?
…and not so mobile
Turns out, I liked it a lot. I already owned one of the best PC controllers (the excellent GameSir Tarantula Pro), and setting the ROG Bulwark up with my TV was a breeze. Within minutes, my Ally was streaming to the big screen, and I was putting my feet up on the couch to settle in for some Death’s Door.
If you’ll allow me a brief tangent: Death’s Door is absolutely bloody amazing, and I can’t recommend it enough. Seriously, go play it.
Back to the matter at hand, though. I was pretty impressed at how well the Ally was able to simulate the experience of a home console – at least, once I was actually in-game and not fumbling around in Windows 11. Even on my older Z1 Extreme model, I was getting smooth performance (albeit only at 1080p) across a range of games, with the Ally transitioning back to handheld mode in a snap when I decided it was time to crawl into bed rather than turn up the thermostat.
It made me realise that I actually rather miss the good old days of gaming on the living room TV, though it’s hard to put my finger on why exactly that is. Perhaps gaming just doesn’t quite hit the same when you’re trying to play games on the same device you sit and work at for 8 hours a day? Being able to kick back and relax on the couch certainly brings a different vibe to the gaming experience; I was even able to relive the glory days of couch co-op with my partner in Split Fiction.
So while I suspect my home console days are over and my PS4 is likely to continue gathering dust (sorry, Destiny – it’s not me, it’s you), I’ve got a new appreciation for my gaming handheld – and I think it’s finally time to separate my work and gaming spaces. Plus, with the current soaring prices of computer components thanks to AI, I don’t think I’ll be doing any major upgrades to my desktop PC anytime soon – so why not settle in for some cozy couch gaming?
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