Just grabbed Thronefall and have been playing on the Deck a lot. It’s really fun; tower defense meets RTS with great economy. You’re always debating defenses vs scaling and some of the challenges are downright hard
Not to say this necessarily isn’t the case, but are your drivers all up to date? I don’t know how often I’ve heard people complain about shitty performance or weird artifacts in a game only to hear that the player hasn’t updated their graphics card drivers in 8 months.
Of course, I had to run it back in Baldur’s Gate 3, Honor Mode, after I failed right before the finish line. This time I went four Fighters, two melee, two ranged. My run ended in Act 2, not because of my party comp, but I let Isobel die in Last Light Inn. I forgot to block a door and the enemy crit three or four attacks on her. I did survive the fight with all the zombies afterward, got into another fight and ended it there. I’ll do another run like this, but probably after Patch 8, when Fighter gets a proper ranged sub-class. No idea, what my next run will be, but it will have to wait a bit.
Then, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth finally released on PC. I’ve been looking forward to this, and just recently re-played the first part. I’m at the beginning of Chapter 4 and it’s good. The big zones are kinda meh, pretty empty, and I don’t think the devs ever used a Chocobo to run around. Unless you only follow the roads, there are small ledges everywhere, and your Chocobo either slows down or stops completely, which is a pain. I still have fun, although the constant short breaks are kinda annoying. Like in the first game, you need to wait for certain animations to finish, before you can go into the menu, or when you completed a “World Intel” objective there’s a 10-second jingle and animation you have to wait for. Often you also get a call from a dude, who tells you he’s found another one, and you just have to stand there and listen. Like I said, I still have a good time, so it’s not a big deal.
Xbox had a sale so I picked up “Ravenswatch”, an action rougelike game where you play as fallen versions of fairy tale characters. For example Red Riding Hood is a playable character, but this version is a werewolf.
The other day unlocked Carmilla, a dhampir based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella. I really like her playstyle.
This is much older than 2023. I remember Fallout 4, the console version was apparently almost unplayable at launch, so Giant Bomb actually lowered the score, compared to the PC version. And even that example isn’t when this started.
Similarly, what if the reviewers don’t get a specific version, that runs like shit? Like what happened with Cyberpunk, where nobody was able to play the XBONE or PS4 versions.
The thing is, as always, a review is subjective. If the game has problems, but the reviewer can look past them or doesn’t care, why should they change the score.
Someone mentioned it already, but review copies might also run outdated code, and reviewers are in contact with the publisher or devs, and they might say some problem is fixed on release. If the reviewer believes them, it probably won’t affect the score.
What should they do about it if it actually runs great on their systems though?
A lot of games only play well if you take some time figuring out a certain combination of graphics settings for your own computer. Then there is bugs and stutters that really is only happening with certain settings. Particularly these days with the four common upscaling models, you never know which games are best optimized for which model, but none of them are optimized for running without upscaling.
So for a regular reviewer to really give a game a fair score, should they run at the default settings? Would be unfair to expect them to know how every weird setting impacts the game. Should they try the game at 4+ different systems to make sure there are no performance issues and stutters dragging it down in certain cases? Leaving performance testing to dedicated performance reviewers and just focus on reviewing the game itself might be the best option.
They should have the insight to use a system comparable to the average user. Or at least attempt to understand the perspective of the audience they’re reviewing for
In my experience it’s largely been unreal engine 5 games.
The issues with both Doom DA and Indiana Jones is that they have mandatory ray tracing that can’t be disabled. I generally think that ray tracing is a often a waste, it’s far too resource demanding, other lighting techniques can offer very similar visuals for a fraction of the cost.
I’ve heard the reasoning before that reviewers typically only have access to a, well, pre-release version. A day-1-patch is pretty common now.
So, as reviewer, you have to decide whether the performance problems look like they might be fixed on release day, and therefore whether you want to incorporate them into your review/score or not.
Good idea if you don’t want publishers to send you any advanced copies of their games in the future, which is just as well since your review won’t be relevant to anyone. At that point it’s just a preview.
it is today that nearly no reviews are worth anything. what even is that bullshit that they only rate from 7 to 10 because below 7 is somehow already the worst of worst
Reviewers don’t get these games and then play them in complete isolation. They are in contact with the devs or publisher and might get told which problems are fixed at launch or something.
You kinda have to believe what you’re told, and maybe adjust your score accordingly. Maybe if one dev burns you again and again, you might discard whatever they tell you, but I don’t know who could fit the bill.
Throwing another example on the fire: The Last of Us Part I PC port. The people who released that code ought to be brought up on charges for climate destruction.
Unpopular Opinion: The last few hardware generations have had diminishing returns while increasing the cost of being a PC gamer drematically. While the DOOM games are generally well-optimized, I just upgraded my whole ass system after 8 years just two years ago and I’m hitting minimum specs to play the new DOOM game at all. Same with Indiana Jones, same with STALKER 2, same with Alan Wake 2.
Of course, we also went from 8gb of video RAM being more than enough to needing fucking like 16-24gb as a standard somehow.
Seriously, the rig I bought to play fucking Bioshock Infinite kept up for about 8 years. I know I didn’t go all-out in building my machine but I didn’t 10 years ago either when I put my old box together. Honestly current machine feels way more high-end than the one 10 years ago did.
Anyway, kind of feels like a rip-off by the industry to me, and this is the same industry that is pushing for GTA 6 to cost $80-100 because they’re not making enough money somehow.
Basically, even if you have a 4090, the stutters and poor fps still exist due to the way the game is designed.
In a way, it’s like being back in the NES days all over again. Sometimes the game itself would just push the hardware too much and it would slow down. This shouldn’t be happening at all in this environment, it’s a joke. It goes well beyond just positive reviews for this kind of stuff.
There needs to be better compression for texture and sound files. That’s pretty much the reason for the giant install sizes and RAM requirements. In theory it’s possible, but it hasn’t really changed in decades.
“AAA” companies don’t want to spend q/a time on code. Indie devs don’t seem to have that problem. So there’s a huge gulf between quality.
Personally I think the day one patch excuse for reviewers is bull. Day one patches have been a thing for at least 25 years, everyone should know they don’t fix bad games. If the companies are not being called out for bad practices then they’ll never bother to fix them before going gold.
Additionally, if a day one patch were actually enough to fix these issues, then just delay the game by a day. That way, the launch day gamers won’t suffer through a (sometimes) unplayable experience and possibly leave bad reviews.
The reason the new Doom and Indiana Jones games require a card with ray tracing is a consequence of the consoles all having ray tracing and an increasing number of PC users do too.
So to support a diminishing number of PC players would require the game to be lit twice, one with RT and one with traditional methods. Obviously this costs more in development and testing and studios are increasingly deciding it’s just not worth it.
It’s got to be the biggest dividing line we’ve seen in years. I suspect things will settle down for a while, now.
She’s very popular and I would imagine gets lots of messages. I’m not sure if she would prefer to have you message her directly or post on the subreddit. Either way, Andromeda321 is the real deal. Good luck! Be sure to post your pics here, I bet they’ll be real cool!
Awesome, thanks! Don’t hold your breath, though. Right now, this thing is paying for itself, and it’s not much. My first goal is to get a used DSLR so I can take promotional pictures. I know it’s a manually slewed scope, but I’m not trying to take crazy multi-hour exposures, I’m trying to show what people might expect to see IRL, and take promotional shots of people on the class. Then, I’ll probably look at making the radio telescope rig more seriously, hopefully before summer.
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