Personal Computer Game News

Another day, another awful PC Port. This time it's Dishonored 2.




I watched the Giant Bomb guys play Dishonroed 2 with ultra settings on PC and was surprised to see that it looked perfectly smooth. After seeing them play it smoothly with max settings I did some reading up on all this because I really liked Dishonored 1 and I definitely want to play Dishonored 2.

It seems like Total Biscuit's wording here is important. Mid-range systems don't run it that well but if you are at or above the recommended specs it looks like things are pretty good. They called out the GTX 1060 and RX 480 as the recommended specs. It looks like they both average 50 FPS on ultra and should have no problem with 60 FPS on high. I don't know if I would classify that as an awful PC port.

Many of the people complaining on Steam have system specs below the clearly advertised requirements and are upset that they can't get 60 FPS with ultra settings. When the recommended specs are good for high settings at 60 FPS I think the customer's expectations being unreasonable is just as much of the problem as the developer's optimization.

From just looking at the rating on Steam and not actually doing any research I thought I was going to have to buy the game on console to get smooth gameplay. After looking at actual benchmarks it's not an Arkham Knight situation where the game ran terribly no matter what hardware you have. It looks like I will be able to get 60 FPS at 1440p with mostly ultra settings and a couple on high. Would I like optimization to make it 60 FPS with all ultra settings? Sure but lowering a couple settings is not a deal breaker for me.
 
I watched the Giant Bomb guys play Dishonroed 2 with ultra settings on PC and was surprised to see that it looked perfectly smooth. After seeing them play it smoothly with max settings I did some reading up on all this because I really liked Dishonored 1 and I definitely want to play Dishonored 2.

It seems like Total Biscuit's wording here is important. Mid-range systems don't run it that well but if you are at or above the recommended specs it looks like things are pretty good. They called out the GTX 1060 and RX 480 as the recommended specs. It looks like they both average 50 FPS on ultra and should have no problem with 60 FPS on high. I don't know if I would classify that as an awful PC port.

Many of the people complaining on Steam have system specs below the clearly advertised requirements and are upset that they can't get 60 FPS with ultra settings. When the recommended specs are good for high settings at 60 FPS I think the customer's expectations being unreasonable is just as much of the problem as the developer's optimization.

From just looking at the rating on Steam and not actually doing any research I thought I was going to have to buy the game on console to get smooth gameplay. After looking at actual benchmarks it's not an Arkham Knight situation where the game ran terribly no matter what hardware you have. It looks like I will be able to get 60 FPS at 1440p with mostly ultra settings and a couple on high. Would I like optimization to make it 60 FPS with all ultra settings? Sure but lowering a couple settings is not a deal breaker for me.
Well it's not just mid range with issues. Popular gamer/musician Gavin Dunne mentioned that before the first patch, he was getting slide-show levels of performance, and he has a 980 I believe.

I think part of the frustration also stems from the fact that the first game was (allegedly) very well optimized upon release, and this game uses the same technology as Doom did, which was one of the best optimized games of recent memory.
 
Rockstar just released a big update for Grand Theft Auto IV (that's right, IV, not V.) Basically it adds support for modern OS machines and GPUs. Maybe now people will be able to run this on their machines without having to move heaven and earth to get it to run with decent performance.

https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/en-us/articles/235650888

If they haven't already they should have removed the Games for Windows Live requirement too. It's been a few years but I know I had problems launching it last time I tried to play because I was getting GFWL errors.
 
I'm pretty sure there's some workarounds to the GFW crap.

There is. That's how I got it to run eventually. If they were already doing a major PC update this long after release it seems like they would have taken out GFWL while they were at it since it has been shut down and makes the game more difficult to play. Steam should be all the DRM they need on a game that old.
 
In case anyone needs more evidence that Steam is in dire need of some program oversight..



I have seen people involved in the games media blast Steam for this on Twitter but it is a non-issue for me. Most of the stuff in that blue, 2016 section of the pie chart is probably complete crap that could appear in one of Jim Sterling's Digital Homicide style videos. I seriously wonder how many of those games sold 50 or more copies though. They aren't promoted on the front page of the Steam Store and the vast majority of Steam players don't even know they exist.

If anything Jim Sterling is doing these people a huge favor. Some percentage of his audience will buy the games he features to see them for themselves when they wouldn't have even known the game existed without him.

I would much rather have terrible games allowed on the Steam Store that I will probably never be made aware of and certainly never buy than have some department at Valve decide what is worthy. Valve would have to have a pretty big team to test every one of the 4,207 games released in 2016, especially if they want more than one person to play through it instead of letting a single individual decide a developer's fate.

Think about how low budget and weird some of the indie games that found an audience on Steam are. I wouldn't want even a small portion of those games blocked from Steam because the random employee who got assigned to check it out didn't understand/like it. It would also completely suck for indie developers. There is already a ton of risk involved with trying to make indie development your job because you don't know if your game will sell. Now add in the fact that you might spend a few years of your life making your game only to have it denied from the Steam Store.

I just think we are better off without Steam locking down their storefront and so are developers. I would much rather rely on word of mouth reviews, podcasts, and gameplay videos from people I like to sift through the outrageous amount of games on Steam than have Steam just take it upon themselves to decide what is good. I think the cream rises to the top naturally this way and most of the garbage is completely ignored.
 
Full Throttle, the classic Tim Shafer game that eventually led to the creation of Psychonauts, is getting remastered. Here's the first trailer.

FYI I know that the trailer is from Sony but this definitely will be out for PC as well and odds are very good that more people will play it on there.

 
http://www.polygon.com/2016/12/23/14070112/is-steam-down-for-everyone-yes

Steam has been down basically all day. I really doubt it's just from excess load of everyone trying to get games in the sale like Polygon's article suggests though. Steam was back to normal about an hour after the sale went live yesterday and has been completely down for several hours today. I have to think it's either a DDoS attack or a severe technical problem.
 
Prey's Developer Arkane has said that there will be "No PC Launch Issues" when the game launches this year.

This is a pretty bold statement in and of itself, and even more so when you consider the fact that this is Arkane, the company behind the atrocious launch of Dishonored 2 on PC..

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/169164-Prey-no-PC-Launch-Issues#&gid=gallery_6744&pid=1

Hopefully they are right. They are also the same company who put out Dishonored 1 which was awesome on PC so they have shown that they can do it in the past.

Also, Dishonored 2 runs fine for me. I am getting about 80 FPS with max settings at 1440p. It's not an Arkham Knight situation where the game runs bad no matter what hardware you have. There recommended 1060 GPU is pretty high though. From looking at the Steam reviews and forum it doesn't seem to be optimized very well for hardware below that level. They definitely didn't do as good of a job as they did on Dishonored 1.
 
http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/01...x-controllers?abthid=586f930622a328c57e000009

The new Steam update is making Xbox One and 360 controllers compatible with all games in the store, including games that don't have native controller support. Apparently they are going to automatically assign recommended controls but you can also map your own for each game. This is just like what they were doing with the Steam Controller.

I personally don't see myself switching over to an Xbox One controller when I play Civ VI but it's nice that this will be an option for those who want it.
 

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