General gaming discussion

Far Cry 5 has been boosted to 60 FPS on SX. Not sure MS went back earlier than that for FPS boost.

That happened me with someone that was going on about how much they loved Mass Effect 2 as a child.

A unique and never to be repeated time in gaming history.

7 years apart

Ray tracing to me is almost exactly like from when I went to compressed dolby digital sound to uncompressed True HD, you do notice that it is better at first but not the jump you were expecting, but you REALLY notice it when you go back.

To me the jump to 4K/HDR was just as big if not bigger than the jump to HD, mostly because performance in general completely tanked after the switch to HD. I got my first OLED right as the PS4 Pro came out, that was some experience.

It is really only the newest generation of graphics cards that can actually implement it without serious penalties to performance. In the next gen of consoles I reckon it will just be the standard lighting used in most games.

More important than lightning are reflections - when raytraced reflections will be the only implementation available then game mechanics changes will be seen, things like seeing stuff that is off-screen e.g. seeing the enemy's reflection (I know we can have mirrors in some games, but they are implemented using tricks and they have limitations).

I definitely think the SSDs have made a huge difference, and there are a lot more quality of life features. Both my PS5 and XSX are completely silent at all times which was certainly not the case in previous generations. In both of them I can get into whatever I was playing instantly with zero friction. On the PS5 you have great controller haptics and a USB-C port that's compatible with all the other chargers already next to where you sit so you never have to think about battery life ever. On the XSX you have quick resume to dip between games super quick. That all adds up even if graphic improvements aren't particularly mind blowing on most games and I couldn't care less about ray tracing tbh. I do think as we move away from cross gen rather than just slapping race tracing onto last gen assets I think we'll start seeing higher quality assets, animations, textures and the like. I think there's also plenty of scope for advances in simulation, physics and AI that could push games forward too.

But even with what we have so far it'd be hard to go back. I mentioned I'd gone back to Witcher 3 recently with the next gen update - while the game still certainly feels its age in many ways one thing I've found is that I'm happy to play on a higher difficulty now because reload after death is a non-issue, where I remember staring at a screen for several minutes when I played before and eventually switching the difficulty down out of impatience.

I'd take 60FPS at 1080P over 30-45FPS at 4K/4K Checkerboard.

FPS is the main thing for me all day long.

I can't look at 1080p anymore, it just looks awful on larger screens these days. 40 FPS is a nice compromise.

Yeah I switched for a bit at the end of last night but still feeling the effects of the initial headache regardless so hard to tell.

The camera in the game isn't great in general. The enemy lock-on is a balls which can throw you in different directions than you want, or make enemy tracking difficult (particularly with enemies who move around a lot). And even with camera shake off the camera movements for area transitions (vaulting over something, climbing down a rope etc) still swings with the characters as he moves.

Have to say though I didn't have the same issue with GOW Ragnarok, or at least not to the same extent or that I can remember.

I'd never heard of any of these and went and read some reviews and they sound fantastic so can't say no to the bundle at that price.

Loved point & clicks back in the day but not a genre I've played since the 90s probably. I still have nightmares about the goat of Lochmarne Castle.