General gaming discussion

TitianGerm

RasTa wrote: »

The Last Guardian is the perfect length of 12+hrs. The best console game of this generation.

That's a last gen game though isn't it?


Edit: I'm mixing up LG and SOTC.

The Raging Bile Duct

TitianGerm wrote: »

That's a last gen game though isn't it?

No, SotC and Ico were last generation. The Last Guardian started development during the last generation but was only released during this current generation.

The Raging Bile Duct

I didn't mind the framerate issues with the game, I'm pretty sure I played it on the base PS4 but I can't rightly remember. There were times though that controlling the beast was an absolute pain in the balls and that took away a lot from the game. I think it was very hyped up so when I finished it I couldn't help feeling pretty underwhelmed with the game.

johnny_ultimate

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Did you play it on Pro? It's horrible to play on the base console but heard it's much better on pro.

Nope, base, still adored it.

As an aside, there’s a superb piece on the main space of the game in the new Heterotopias zine. Been a while since the last issue, but absolutely the best gaming criticism about.

RasTa

Also on the base console. I played SOTC late and that was awful controls and janky camera but still loved that but his was next level.

Gamer Bhoy 89

quokula wrote: »

I bounced off Last Guardian. Played a few hours but just seemed to always be randomly wandering around waiting for the creature to do whatever it was going to do to let me move on, the game never flowed and it never felt natural.

Which is a pity because SOTC was one of my all time favourite games and I was really looking forward to it.

The game does have a lot of outdated features attached to it which is a shame. The game was made for the year it was originally supposed to come out (2011) and it was 5 years too late.

Awkward controls, awkward camera, janky frame-rate. It's not a horrible game but it was rather frustrating a lot of the time.

Robert ninja

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It's inconsistent framerate that does it for me.

There's a lot of games that just run bad no matter what. I recently used Nvidia's streaming platform again to test somethings. These things are typically loaded out with the most bleeding edge hardware money can buy. Tried Hitman [2] and it drops to 40 FPS on the lowest settings depending on where you're looking, then into triple digits if it's a smaller indoor area.

Honestly the performance of modern games seems absolutely horrendous to me. The hardware they demand is not 1:1 or even 1:2 worth the graphics we're getting back for it. It's quite refreshing playing older titles from the 2010s and earlier because I can more often than not push triple digits all day, no stuttering or worrying if it's gonna chug any time I turn a new corner.

Azza

Robert ninja wrote: »

There's a lot of games that just run bad no matter what. I recently used Nvidia's streaming platform again to test somethings. These things are typically loaded out with the most bleeding edge hardware money can buy. Tried Hitman [2] and it drops to 40 FPS on the lowest settings depending on where you're looking, then into triple digits if it's a smaller indoor area.

Honestly the performance of modern games seems absolutely horrendous to me. The hardware they demand is not 1:1 or even 1:2 worth the graphics we're getting back for it. It's quite refreshing playing older titles from the 2010s and earlier because I can more often than not push triple digits all day, no stuttering or worrying if it's gonna chug any time I turn a new corner.

I played alot of Hitman 2 and playing on its highest settings (without super-sampling though) with an AMD 3700x and 5700XT at 1440p I was typically getting in the 70-80FPS range, can't recall if I did occasionally break the 100's FPS barrier. There was dips into the 50 FPS range. The drops always coincided with the sections of game that had massive NPC crowds. I don't think any game renders crowds as large as the last two Hitman games do (maybe AC Unity). I suspect its not a GPU optimization issue but a CPU limitation. The drops where noticeably too me but the FPS never went below my Freesync lower limit of 45FPS so the game still felt relatively smooth to me.

The thing about Hitman though is its a slow paced game, so while I would prefer not to have the frame rate drops they in no way affected my ability to play and enjoy the game.

RasTa

Gamer Bhoy 89 wrote: »

The game does have a lot of outdated features attached to it which is a shame. The game was made for the year it was originally supposed to come out (2011) and it was 5 years too late.

Awkward controls, awkward camera, janky frame-rate. It's not a horrible game but it was rather frustrating a lot of the time.

Controls where perfect. Camera was fine and frame rate means nothing unless it's somehow unplayable.

Retr0gamer

RasTa wrote: »

Controls where perfect. Camera was fine and frame rate means nothing unless it's somehow unplayable.

Except some people are more sensitive to framerates than others.

johnny_ultimate

Love the controls in all the Team Ico games. They have a real sense of weight and believability to them - it can feel like the characters are fumbling at times, but in a way that IMO enriches the gameplay. These aren’t superheroes like any other action game, but instead normal people put into strange, confusing situations they don’t quite understand. I think SotC is the one that comes closest to feeling frustrating at times, but equally there are few games that really underline the sheer outrageous risk and spectacle of the basic actions you’re performing quite like that one.

Notorious

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Love the controls in all the Team Ico games. They have a real sense of weight and believability to them - it can feel like the characters are fumbling at times, but in a way that IMO enriches the gameplay...

Do you think the controls were designed with that in mind? I always assumed that it was a poor system that the company stuck by.

RasTa

Notorious wrote: »

Do you think the controls were designed with that in mind? I always assumed that it was a poor system that the company stuck by.

Poor in what way? It was perfect for ICO, bit worse for SOTC and perfect again for The Last Guardian.

johnny_ultimate

Notorious wrote: »

Do you think the controls were designed with that in mind? I always assumed that it was a poor system that the company stuck by.

I absolutely do - all three games are made with a clear sense of purpose and vision, so I think they play very similarly to how Ueda wanted them to (the frame rate issues in SotC and TLG I think are a consequence of him being determined to show things how he wanted them to, even if it makes the console stutter :pac:).

I do think the camera issues are more apparent in the games, and absolutely they’re a team that was happy to sacrifice smoothness for fidelity - no doubt that won’t be acceptable to all. But I genuinely think the characters move about the worlds in a way that makes the games better than if it had all been a bit ‘cleaner’

Gamer Bhoy 89

RasTa wrote: »

Controls where perfect. Camera was fine and frame rate means nothing unless it's somehow unplayable.

I found them awkward. Frame rates never bother me so long as they're consistent. I played TLG when it launched, and for me the game never maintained a steady frame rate, thus resulting in me getting a headache, which I get a lot of in situations like this.

The camera didn't help either.

RasTa

Only one game that genuinely pissed me off that I couldn't play and it was Resident Evil 4 on the PS4 I think, maybe 3. I heard it's decent but it's a pile of crap for me.

Robert ninja

Azza wrote: »

I don't think any game renders crowds as large as the last two Hitman games do (maybe AC Unity).

I've played RTS games with 6-way PVP/COOP rendering thousands upon thousands of units to fight, all with their own properties and physics. The framerate was by comparison better. Yes it would drop there too but it was old an unable to use multi-threading. The hitman NPCs in crowds have reduced AI and pretty much do 2 things, walk around or run away in fear.

I worry the next generation of consoles/graphics cards are going to bring about games with even more abysmal optimization. Even under the best circumstances like you said we're getting drops. I thought by now we'd have the tech and standards to have a completely smooth experience, at least from big titles that have a lot of money behind them. But I'm starting to think the only way you can get a consistent fps is if you framecap it to 30 on the latest hardware.

Greyfox

RasTa wrote: »

Only one game that genuinely pissed me off that I couldn't play and it was Resident Evil 4 on the PS4 I think, maybe 3. I heard it's decent but it's a pile of crap for me.

Resident evil 4 is more than decent, it's a contender for the best game ever made.

Azza

Robert ninja wrote: »

I've played RTS games with 6-way PVP/COOP rendering thousands upon thousands of units to fight, all with their own properties and physics. The framerate was by comparison better. Yes it would drop there too but it was old an unable to use multi-threading. The hitman NPCs in crowds have reduced AI and pretty much do 2 things, walk around or run away in fear.

I worry the next generation of consoles/graphics cards are going to bring about games with even more abysmal optimization. Even under the best circumstances like you said we're getting drops. I thought by now we'd have the tech and standards to have a completely smooth experience, at least from big titles that have a lot of money behind them. But I'm starting to think the only way you can get a consistent fps is if you framecap it to 30 on the latest hardware.

Ah here, that's not even a remotely fair comparison. The units in RTS games are rendered with vastly less polygons and detail than than a third person game action/stealth game like Hitman.

A game like say Total War Three Kingdoms or say Ashes of the Singularity both units and background scenery have no where near the detail level of Hitman. Something older like Supreme Commander, don't even try to play that in skirmish mode because its literally broken and will reduce any computer FPS to a crawl after a certain amount of time has past. Multiplayer performance doesn't count becaus at that stage A.I isn't a factor in performance..

Get a Freesync or G-Sync set up, and dips under 60FPS are less of an issue.

RasTa

Greyfox wrote: »

Resident evil 4 is more than decent, it's a contender for the best game ever made.

Not the one I played, unplayable garbage.

nix

Resi 4 is when resident evil got less horror and more silly, fighting medieval armours and doods in robes hiding behind walls and waiting for you to pass to attack in Amish made burrowing vehicles :rolleyes:

And thats just off the top of my head with its sillyness..

Contender for best game ever my arse :pac:

Azza

Yes its silly, but are you saying the original games weren't. Good lord don't make me remind you of Steve Burnside or the god awful dialogue of the original games (a Jill sandwich or ADAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!). The whole storyline of RE series is absolute nonsense.

I like the original games and I think RE4 is great. The opening village sequence in RE4 was a lightning in a a bottle moment, few games have ever come as close as creating a sequence as tense as that on your first playthrough. But both RE4 and the originals where products of their time. People talk about how RE moved away from survival horror after RE4 but if you go back to RE1-3 and Code Veronica there isn't anything remotely scary about them at this point. The problem is most people have since grown up.

Retr0gamer

nix wrote: »

Resi 4 is when resident evil got less horror and more silly, fighting medieval armours and doods in robes hiding behind walls and waiting for you to pass to attack in Amish made burrowing vehicles :rolleyes:

And thats just off the top of my head with its sillyness..

Contender for best game ever my arse :pac:

It's not really a horror game though. It's an action game and one of the finest ever made.

nix

Azza wrote: »

Yes its silly, but are you saying the original games weren't. Good lord don't make me remind you of Steve Burnside or the god awful dialogue of the original games (a Jill sandwich or ADAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!). The whole storyline of RE series is absolute nonsense.

I like the original games and I think RE4 is great. The opening village sequence in RE4 was a lightning in a a bottle moment, few games have ever come as close as creating a sequence as tense as that on your first playthrough. But both RE4 and the originals where products of their time. People talk about how RE moved away from survival horror after RE4 but if you go back to RE1-3 and Code Veronica there isn't anything remotely scary about them at this point. The problem is most people have since grown up.

Yes the voice acting was silly, but forgivable as the rest was great. 7 and the remakes are an example of a step in the right direction with the types of games they were, 4, 5 and 6 were just daft, they should have just made a new franchise with the change they made

And back then, they were scary, as much as a game/movie could do, but yeah today, not at all, 7 and the remakes are though, and 8 is looking to be great from the little ive allowed myself to see..

Robert ninja

Azza wrote: »

Ah here, that's not even a remotely fair comparison. The units in RTS games are rendered with vastly less polygons and detail than than a third person game action/stealth game like Hitman

But you just said it's a CPU issue not a GPU one so the polygons or details of the models should not matter.

Azza

nix wrote: »

Yes the voice acting was silly, but forgivable as the rest was great. 7 and the remakes are an example of a step in the right direction with the types of games they were, 4, 5 and 6 were just daft, they should have just made a new franchise with the change they made

Nah mate they where all daft in their own ways. Don't me wrong RE 1-3 I very much enjoyed, but 0 and Code Veronica where somewhat bland. RE4 was a great reinvention, it had far better voice acting and a campy charm to it and really satisfying gameplay in which the challenge didn't revolve around not being able to see the enemy because of camera angles. RE5 wasn't as good but its still a decent game in its own right. The fact that overall RE6 was crap (Leon Campaign and Mercs excluded) doesn't reflect badly on RE4, its not its fault RE6 was crap. RE7 is yet another reinvention. A pretty good one at that. But coming form your perspective you could also why they should of just made a new franchise.

@Robert Ninja

Are you seriously suggesting comparing Hitman and RTS games is a fair comparison?

Robert ninja

The genre doesn't really matter and you already compared them mentioning high detail for the npcs in Hitman is a reason for FPS drops - or it's CPU bound to calculating that many NPCs. I don't know which one you're going with. The engine possibly has more to do with it. Series like Mount & Blade seem to handle a lot of characters on screen OK so maybe Hitman's engine isn't good for it although I personally saw low FPS in very empty areas like the starting area in the beach level for Nvidia's high end VMs. Maybe (and hopefully) VR will be the catalyst that will truly push super consistent performance in game if the industry heavily slants to VR over time.

Azza

The genre and the game type do matter.

For example in Totar War the default unit size is 60 and can be increased to 90 and 120 with larger unit sizes slected. It does have an effect on performance due to have render more units graphically but in terms of A.I each unit counts as one A.I not 60, 90 or 120.

For your playing mulitplayer regardless of the amount of units the A.I is not being taxed as the player is in control of them.

I'm trying to think of an RTS with big number of units and I'm struggling to think of a game that runs better than Hitman 2 when the A.I is controlling it?
Ashes of the Singularity is a modern RTS with a modern graphics engine and it extremely demanding to run. Your not going to be getting frame rates as high as Hitman 2 in the first place so again the comparison doesn't hold
Supreme Commander A.I skirmish mode is broken. After a while the game's frame rate will tank. The more A.I the quicker it happens.
Supreme Commander 2. Massively down scaled compared to Sup Com 1.
Starcraft, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, Command and Conquer and Halo Wars. I can't think of any RTS pushing individual units of A.I at a better frame rate than Hitman 2.

What RTS game where you referring too?

As for Hitman 2 low performance. Certain area's of the Miami level and Mumbai where pretty demanding. The opening New Zeland beach level probably ran extremely well for me with no noticeable performance dips.

Are you sure something like super sampling wasn't enabled when you played the game?

Having played Half Life Alyx have to say I wouldn't mind a pivot to VR gaming myself

Robert ninja

Azza wrote: »

What RTS game where you referring too?

You got it, Supcom. However it's 32bit (I think?) and like I said it can't even use more than 1 CPU core or multithreading. I'd wager that a much bigger bias in comparison than genre.

Azza wrote: »

Are you sure something like super sampling wasn't enabled when you played the game?

I manually put everything to the lowest setting. Nvidia said it was using one of their latest GPUs with 6GB VRAM. Couldn't do a 360 turn of the camera without it dropping frames with 47 lounging on one of the chairs.

Azza wrote: »

Supreme Commander 2

Never touched that one, seemed like junk. The entire community rejects it and still play Subcom 1 via the community client with patches.

Azza wrote: »

The opening New Zeland beach level probably ran extremely well for me with no noticeable performance dips

So weird. Maybe there was something wrong with that Nvidia's VM or I got an anomaly.

I haven't invested in VR myself yet but I'm aware even slight frame drops or stutter is unacceptable so that's why I think it might be the only thing that can save me from my disappointment with modern game performance.

Azza

SupCom's is known to have a bug that causes the A.I to cripple performance over time. Its not meant to be too big a deal in a 1v1 vs the A.I but it shows up with large numbers of A.I players in games that run on for a length of time.

Player controlled units of course don't count as they are not being controlled by the A.I.

I can't explain that Hitman 2 performance you experienced. That level was not at all challenging to run as it was the smallest and had very few A.I compared to the other levels so I;m not sure what happened to you when you played it.

On a side note my experience with Half Life Alyx installed on a NvMe drive 16GB Ram a 5700xt and a 3700xt was the game ran completely flawlessly in terms of frame rate. It actually took some time for me to realize I wasn't playing at the highest settings but I was on the 2nd highest. So I tried switching up to the highest setting, though I was warned it wasn't recommended. I really struggled to notice any performance dip or for that matter any difference in visuals what so ever. I think I eventually did perceive some occasional brief and small FPS stutters but they where barely noticeable to me at all.

Have to say overall Alyx overall was a very smooth experience to me. I don't think until I changed up to the highest settings did I notice a single stutter or even micro stutter. Very impressive.

Now the VR demo for Deus Ex Mankind Divided on the other hand. I was literally motion sick inside 45 seconds. Worst gaming experience of my life.