I played on PC, and had a great time. Like the other person said, it wasn’t intended for such a casual machine.
I really liked the interactive items, even though they were useless. It was fun to try roleplaying as a student sometimes. I didn’t find the enemies to be too clustered either. My personal favorite thing was flying around on the broom. The game world is pretty big so you have plenty of room to just do your thing.
Steam Input is super helpful with this. If I find that I’m consistently pressing wrong buttons on the controller, and the game doesn’t give you the ability to rebind controls in the menu (ew), then I just edit the profile in Steam Input and voila
People sleep on Steam Input, but it’s one of the more unsung features of the Steam Deck imo. Nobody ever talks about it, and I’ve even seen people say that they hate it which makes zero sense to me (just don’t use it?)
I think it’s a bit unfair to base it off the Switch version. Even though the developers really tried (walling off vistas for better framerate, reducing the amount of objects in rooms, etc) the loading times are virtually nonexistent on PS5 and obviously it looks and plays a lot better.
Doesn’t apply to the puzzles and possibly the controls though, although Switch is missing an analog trigger so that might be another reason it’s being obtuse.
All in all, when I saw the comparison video and how long loading times were even when going in and out a single building, I knew that it was gonna be a rough time. Playable, sure, but the best experience is on PC/PS5
My girl almost never plays games. I bought her the ps5 with Hogwarts Legacy. She did like the atmosphere and such, but the story felt very rushed towards the end, the ending was unsatisfying, the world started off cool but got a choreful minefield afterwards.
yeah I think I played about 10 hours. the initial stage around hogwarts proper was interesting and fun, but once the quests went out into the open world it got a lot more tedious.
Honestly I don’t know why you want to 100% it. It seems like you’re not having a good time. It’s okay to stop games instead of forcing yourself trough something you don’t enjoy.
Having said that AFAIK the PC version seems pretty stable. There are some perfomance kinks but overall the game seemed to run good. My partner has not reported minor or gamebraking bugs aswell. So this side might be on the switch port.
Now let’s talk about the actual game. It is incredible shallow. That’s just it. But honestly I think that’s fine. The game was made not made for people who play a lot of games and more importantly I don’t think the actual gameplay is the selling point of the game. It’s the incredible and rich presentation of Hoghwarts and it’s surroundings. The amount of unique assets and beautiful textures you find in the castle are incredible and it’s clear most of the development budget was spend there instead of the gameplay.
The word as a gameplay playground is horrible as you said. Countless of meaningless repetitive tasks. But as a backdrop to the focal points of the game they do their job. I don’t think the game is a game of the year but I’m still impressed by the visualisation of Hoghwarts and it’s surroundings. I’ve expected this game to be way worse than it is.
I strangely find enjoyment out of 100% something and I’m not currently the main player (mostly help my partner out in the difficult spots, collect items for upgrades and restock equipment). If it was just me I probably would’ve lost interest a while ago.
You’re absolutely right about the assets. The variety was baffling, we wondered if they were able to import a large library or if considerable time was taken modeling all of it. Would explain a lot for the development, and our hopes is that everything can just be carried over to the next installment so other areas of the game can be concentrated on.
I had to refund armored core 6 because the first boss fight stuttered so much. I have a 3080, so not the best but definitely no slouch. No matter what settings I tweaked, it’d always drop to slideshow performance for 1-2 seconds at a time. Acceptable in a cheaper title, maybe, but not on a full price game.
The first 4k video of gameplay I saw blew my mind lol. You can actually see depth and aren’t confused squinting at a low res model trying to figure out what you’re looking at from a small distance. I was shocked when we first played BOTW and it’s problems running properly (lots of lag for a game made for the system), this title made me realize the switch is just dead to me now.
I don’t even see the optimising problem as bad probably because I’m used to it. Evil Within for example ran terribly on launch but since then I have upgraded my setup and played through it. Checking the benchmarks just is something you should do on PC. Reviewers usually are pretty out of touch with rest of the world or average gamer just doesn’t care about drops and sub 30 framerates.
I feel like a worse problem currently is how games are made with TAA in mind or with forced TAA so you just can’t make them look good even with time and more powerful hardware. It’s either blurry mess with artifacts thrown in or something that doesn’t even look like 1080p on 4K resolution.
Frickin Dead Space remake. I’m playing through it now and even on the lowest settings it was pretty bad. My computer crashed while the shuttle was crashing, which honestly felt kind of apt
I’ve never beat the original, but my wife wanted to see the game and has never played it. Even after tweaking things to get them running on my computer it’s still not super stable. We might have to switch to 2008
The game looks super tense, gross, and scary. Personally, I think it’d be scarier if it was buttery smooth, but I guess there’s a certain amount of anxiety to be had wondering if walking through a door is going to freeze the game while I’m being chased by xeno horrors
It ran incredibly well on my machine and looked amazing. This is not a poorly optimized game in my experience. Could it be that it also ran fine on the machines of most reviewers?
It wouldn’t surprise me if reviewers have the budget for top of the line computers. Sadly, that does little to soothe my frustration that my computer - which meets the advertised recommended specs - falls short
I finished Pathfinder: Kingmaker after putting 250 or so hours into it and now I feel kind of empty. I still don’t think it’s a particularly great game, but after spending so much time on it you develop a sort of Stockholm syndrome. There are things about the game I enjoyed, but also endless frustrations. The ending chapters especially were an absolutely insane slog of numerous terrible Wild Hunt encounters that seem completely mindlessly thrown together to up the “challenge”. It’s a shame, really because there is a good game in there somewhere if you’d only scale back the bullshit. It could also do with some editing in general, I don’t think it justifies being so goddamn long.
Looking for the next thing to fill the void has been a bit of a challenge, I’ve been at it with Kingmaker for so long it’s been tough to switch focus suddenly. I started Weird West, which I bought on the last GOG sale and the beginning of it seemed alright, not sure if it will stick though. I also played through the first couple of levels of Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive which is an absolute classic that I never played back in the day. The AI is pretty dumb, but immersion breaking stupidity aside it’s still super fun to approach it as a puzzle and work around and abuse the dumb AI.
Still, my brain might still be in the CRPG frame of mind after two months of Kingmaker so I also installed Arcanum with the Multiverse Edition modpack. Perhaps this is the time I finally play through it.
Have you heard of Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood from the same developers? A very similar game in many ways, with some of the most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds I’ve ever seen in an isometric game. And yes, the AI can also be played around with at will, although it feels a bit more sophisticated compared to Desperados.
I never heard of it back in the day, but I did see it suggested on GOG when I looked at Desperados. I might consider grabbing it the next time it’s really cheap if it’s really that good. Better than Desperados/Commandos you reckon?
some of the most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds I’ve ever seen in an isometric game.
The old isometric games have really aged so gracefully. Desperados looks absolutely fantastic still imo and Baldur’s Gate 2 also has some fantastic isometric art (sprites not so much). I bet they’d look even better on a good CRT, too.
I’ve never played a Commandos game for some reason, so I couldn’t tell, but I would say it’s about on par with Desperados 1 in terms of gameplay, if perhaps a bit less punishing. Cutscenes and voice acting (at least with the German version I played) are considerably worse however and I have no idea why.
I can confirm that these looked magnificent on a high quality CRT. This was a transitional period, when 3D graphics were not able to deliver the same amount of detail as the best 2D isometric graphics just yet. That said, everyone knew that the clock was ticking, since the advantages of fully 3D graphics were obvious and, unlike today, technological progress happened at breakneck speeds.
I was particularly fond of isometric RTS games back then. I spent the most amount of time with Age of Empires II (of course), but there were many others, like Cossacks (2001) from GSC Gameworld (who would later develop S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), which didn’t look as good as the inspiration, but boasted far larger maps and enormous numbers of units on screen. With American Conquest (2002), they refined the concept and overtook the original version of AoK in terms of visuals, with huge and detailed sprite work, as well as even more insane unit counts that pushed CPUs of the time to their limits. The gameplay was almost on par as well, with quite a bit more depth. It’s ridiculous just how much more sophisticated it is compared to Cossacks, despite there being only 1.5 years between the two. America (2000) is a more obscure title from this era, essentially a Wild West clone of Age of Empires. It’s quite solid, but unremarkable compared to the other games mentioned here.
Another Eastern European series I was fond of was Sudden Strike, set in WW2, as well as its sequel and countless spin-offs and expansions. There’s a model train charm to the detailed visuals, despite the not exactly charming setting. Fiendishly hard and realistic, but for all of its realism, it unfortunately decides to ignore the context of many battles, especially the war crimes that happened around them, which is troubling, since you can also play from the German perspective. Blitzkrieg (2005) is quite similar in terms of gameplay, although with a more sophisticated engine that blends 2D and 3D elements. However, when the groundbreaking Codename Panzers with its amazing fully 3D graphics and tight (if unrealistic) gameplay and mission design came out in 2004, all of these more technologically conservative WW2 RTS games instantly felt outdated, even though it came out right in the middle of them. They still had their value though, since Codename Panzers wasn’t trying to replace them in terms of gameplay, focusing on decision making instead of simulation.
Similarly, Desperados 2 (2006) made the first game feel a century old. From the same camera distance as the first game, it both looked far better than the original and had the advantage of dynamic lighting, more fluidity and a freely rotatable camera. Up close it was a bit blocky, but this was to be expected back then.
Many of the titles mentioned above can be rather troublesome on modern systems, so I highly recommend checking out their pages on the PCGamingWiki, which is a truly invaluable resource.
Ahh, the nostalgia of hearing about those old titles again. Takes me back to the days of being a kid reading PC Gamer monthly with ravenous wonder and excitement. That period of '94 to '06-09 or so really was the golden age of PC gaming. I’ve been thinking about starting up a sub specifically about that era actually, retro gaming subs often tend to focus more about old consoles and arcade games.
Similarly, Desperados 2 (2006) made the first game feel a century old. From the same camera distance as the first game, it both looked far better than the original and had the advantage of dynamic lighting, more fluidity and a freely rotatable camera. Up close it was a bit blocky, but this was to be expected back then.
Interesting! I’ll take a look at the graphics, but I was otherwise set to skip it as it didn’t look like it was particularly well received.
I can confirm that these looked magnificent on a high quality CRT.
I’ve been on a bit of a retro game kick lately and have been wishing I had a really good one. It’s a shame they’re so damn bulky.
I’ve been playing Fire Emblem Awakening. I had the dumb idea of playing hard/classic for the first time (having also not played much FE before), so a few of the last chapters have been a bit too challenging: I got stuck on chapter 17 for a couple of days. It’s been enjoyable, I think I’m near the end (chapter 21).
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth came out on PC, so I played that for most of the weekend, and I’m rather disappointed with a couple of things: the open world in the first area is the usual dull ubisoft-like checklist of chores. Luckily it doesn’t take too much to get past it, but then there’s my other complaint: the pacing and tone of the story feel off. There’s been a few too many breaks which IMO ruined the momentum. I’m now at Costa del Sol, and I’m already tired of the minigames.
Initially I had planned on playing Emio, since I played the demo and liked it, but the copy I ordered got delayed, the lost, so I’m gonna get it some other time.
bin.pol.social
Najnowsze