C&C Red Alert Remastered It's as fun and painful as I remember. It would have been nice if they could modernized the game a bit more, but maybe there are some mods that can help with that.
Red Alert has much more balanced sides than the original game. I think it holds up a lot better than CNC.
Baldur's Gate 3 is sitting at a 96 on Metacritic which put's it in the top 50 games of all time. Starfield is sitting at an 88. That number could go up or down over time. I've learned that game reviewers that score on a 5/5 scale sometimes get skipped with early test releases because a non-perfect 4/5 score can put a game into the 80s on Metacritic. I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 and I'm considering Starfield.
Starfield got a 7/10 from both Gamespot and IGN. Those are the two main review sites most people look at. A 7/10 for me means wait for a sale. It runs poorly on most hardware. On the Series S it dips down into framerates in the teens. It runs poorly on all NVidia cards other than the 4080 and 4090, and even on those cards the performance is mediocre. It gets mediocre performance on the Series X and newer AMD cards. Nothing runs it very well. I'll probably get it eventually. But not until it's heavily patched to improve performance, and not for $70. I don't know why developers have stopped optimizing AAA games. The last AAA game that was properly optimized was Doom Eternal, and that was 3.5 years ago. Every AAA game now is released in some dogshit state. You shouldn't need a $1500 video card to have a proper experience. The worst part is that Starfield doesn't even look that good. The graphics look like PS4/XB1 or even maybe late gen PS3/360 graphics. Like what the fuck is going on with the games industry that games are being released in this state? Does nobody play test the games before they release them? The most common video cards at the moment are the 1650 and 1060. If your game can't run at 60 fps at 1080p on medium settings on those cards it isn't ready for release. If it can't run at similar settings on its intended lowest common denominator console, in this case the Series S, it isn't ready for release. Go back and fix it. Bethesda supposedly worked on this game for 8 years. What the fuck were they doing during that time? Why does it look and run so shitty? Meanwhile Id Software only had 3.5 years between Doom and Doom Eternal, and yet Doom eternal looks, runs, and plays like a dream. It can even run on the Nintendo Switch. Bethesda needs to hire some people who know what they're doing. I mean aren't they part of the same umbrella of companies as Id Software? Why not bring over some people from Id to get the game to work correctly?
I think Bethesda released Starfield about 3 months before it's done. It runs at playable frame rates on about 2 or 3 cards currently, one of which I happen to own. But it's probably going to take months to get it into proper shape where most people with relatively new cards can enjoy it assuming it's actually a decent game in a playable state. They really needed to delay this game a few months and do nothing but testing and optimization. I'll report on what it's like when it comes out. As per usual with PC games, I bought it at a discount on CDkeys. I also bought Lords of the Fallen that comes out next month, and that one is a UE5 game that will also probably be very tough to run but probably not nearly as bad as Starfield.' ACG had a surprisingly positive review of Starfield, which I didn't expect. He's typically pretty accurate and I can tell from his reviews he does in fact play through games extensively. I think he said he's played this for over 140 hours and counting.
I probably have another 20 hours on BG3. Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty might be my next game depending on reviews. I'm certainly interested Starfield but I'll give it time to mature. It's been a while since I sunk as much time into a game as I'm putting in BG3.
So far the first several hours of Starfield have been pretty good. Among the most shockingly negative is how segmented it is. That is, you can't fly from the ground into space or and even have doorways cutting to black briefly and loading into another area within the same building. Travelling to and from the planet surface is done via a map screen like Mass Effect, not the full takeoff and landing experience from No Man Sky or Outer Wilds. On the positive side, the main characters seem pretty charming and charismatic for a Bethesda game, and the gun play is definitely better than any Bethesda game I have played. I've used the blanket HIgh setting and most of the frame saving measures and got pretty good performance most of the time. I think it's running at 21:9 or something like that because it doesn't currently support native 32:9 without messing with ini files. I'm anticipating an update to Flawless Widescreen that I used in Elden Ring, so I'm going to wait a bit to see if that happens. There is way too much going on with the flow and mechanics to make many judgments about those aspects so early in the game, but it's reminding me a lot of Mass Effect settings and aesthetics with Fallout gameplay, music, and sound effects. Inventory space/ weight has been a pain in the ass, but I'm sure that becomes less of a concern later in the game with upgrades.
I've been playing Lords of the Fallen most of this weekend. It had a troubled development cycle, but most of the key things turned out well. The interlocking level design modeled after Dark Souls is exceptional, particularly considering there is a second dimension you can peer into from the other with the lamp. Combat is good but does not have the precision and polish of a FROM or Team Ninja game, which I expected. I haven't messed around with the online features yet; playing the first playthrough solo. Graphics are incredible, but it's a very demanding game using UE5 and a lot of new technologies in addition to the two dimensions you can jump between at any time. Not recommended for an older or budget oriented rig. i think I'm maybe 40% to 50% through the game now and am spending quite a lot of time exploring. Very impressive so far.
What are the thoughts on Alan Wake 2? I never finished the first one. I think I had technical difficulties.
It looks hard to run. Some are saying the graphics are just that good. Others are saying it’s poorly optimized. Remedy games generally look good, but both Quantum Break and Control were kind of janky and badly optimized. I’m thinking both things are probably true. I will play it after I do a full PC upgrade. I played the first Alan Wake and deeply enjoyed the story and atmosphere, but thought the gameplay was just average. South Florida is finally getting a Microcenter. I plan to head there when it opens and build a new PC. Newegg got so sucky in recent years that I stopped buying from them. I’m very excited that we are getting what is generally regarded as the best computer store in America. I’ve been to the Houston one and it’s very nice.
Microcenters are awesome. The closest one to me is a little over an hour away without traffic. I only go if I can save a lot of money. I bought a case, GPU, and two CPU/Mobo combo a long time ago. I've heard they lose money on their combo deals with the hope that customers will buy more parts on the same visit. I still mostly buy high value items from Newegg. Their return policy and support isn't great, but I'm less worried about getting bogus or used products. I'd buy way more from Microcenter if it was closer. Fry's Electronics was also a fun store that I'd hit when in California. Too bad they went out of business. I kind of wonder how Microcenter remains open and even expands. TigerDirect was another store that closed around 2019.
I bought it and downloaded it but haven't tried it out yet. It doesn't appear to be kind to older cards with the higher settings: I have one of the two cards currently available that can run it at max at 1080p at over 60 fps, although I have an AMD card so most ray tracing settings are probably not going to be options for me. However, the consoles are running it at "mostly" 60 fps, so it may scale down reasonably well. It has both DLSS and FSR thankfully.
Sounds like anything that is 3 generations old or doesn't support DX12 Mesh Shaders is going to suffer. The TechPowerUP benches differ quite a bit from the DSOgaming ones. Maybe they tested different areas in the game.
Hopefully those figures are more accurate. That looks much more reasonable. Someone with a midrange card should be able to turn down settings and adjust resolution. There has to be some settings that will work for more reasonably priced cards because the consoles are running it somewhat decently from what I've read.
Hogwarts Legacy had regions where performance varied so much that I though they must have had different teams working on different areas of the map and some teams didn't have time to optimize. It didn't make sense really because the game mostly looked the same everywhere.
Halo Infinite It feels unfinished. Every time I reopen the game it loses all of my custom control settings. Apparently this is a known issue 343 hasn't fixed that also affects the Xbox version. It takes a long time to load when I open it. It also treats the campaign like a multiplayer match, which is weird. This game has been out for two years so I would guess this stuff isn't getting fixed.
lmao, that tickles me. i finished this game about a year ago to this day and had bugs as well. https://neopvc.com/threads/halo-franchise-comes-to-steam.1524/page-2#post-58248
I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077 and the Phantom Liberty DLC, which are pretty fantastic at this point. I'm able to run most settings on High besides the advanced ray tracing settings. I don't think frame generation has been officially added in any settings, but AMD's Adrenaline's HYPR-RX profile settings seem to be implementing it anyway.
I really want to get this but I need to finish BG3. I haven't had as much time to play lately. I also got Orcs Must Die 3 but I probably wont get around to playing that either.