The Gaming Chat Café

[Adam Jensen]

There's more to visuals than pretty lighting. Did you not see the clunky animations? Facial animations are particularly terrible. Every human character looks like they're staring into nothing. For some reason Ubisoft stopped making good animations after AC: Unity.

[Jason]

Of course there's more to a game than pretty lighting, but lighting is a MASSIVE part of making a game look good. IMO lighting has been the biggest leap this gen across the board, used to be that most games had okay/meh lighting, but now p much every game has good lighting cause everyone has great GI tech or they're starting to use RT lighting or stuff like UE5's Lumen - like that Jusant is a little indie game with some of the best lighting I've seen in any video game so far, all because it runs on UE5 and uses Lumen. RT lighting is also not just pretty, it can do things traditional lighting can't like proper emissive lighting, which also looks fantastic. Outlaws on PC also has RT reflections, which are  generations ahead of reflections we see in literally any PS4/XB1 era game. Reflections in virtually all games from that generation are hacky and meh - often relying on SSR, which is awful once you know how it works. RT reflections can also be one of the most significant visual upgrades in games with lots of reflective materials, like Cyberpunk where it's a god tier visual upgrade.

 

But beyond that, Outlaws looks to have some really good foliage, a really dynamic image in general especially when out in the world with all the moving foliage, flags, signs, etc, and some dense looking environments with a good amount of NPC's, props, detail in the textures etc.

 

Like pretty much every game, it's got it's down sides. Facial animations look stiff for one, and I do think in the footage we've seen image quality is slightly blurry, which is no doubt due to using FSR/DLSS in all promo material thus far, but YouTube compression also won't help here either.

 

In any case, not everything has to be some technical showcase, or some massively innovative video game. 7 and 8's out of 10's are fun too.

[Margot Robbed Me]

As I play through DA: Inquisition again, I'm reminded of how good this game actually was, especially with a lot of choices and consequences. Even minor NPCs pop up later on, depending on choices you made, even though the dialogue at that time it didn't seem to be of any significance. I just lost out on an agent because in a passing conversation that took place about 15 game hours earlier, I had casually told them to join a specific faction, thinking it was just inconsequential filler dialogue. Now they show up again to be killed as a sacrifice by those people that I told them to join. Oops.

 

The world feels like one of the larger ones as well. Sure, it's divided into separate maps, but it doesn't feel much different than having a continuous map. Since you often teleport back to home base to update missions or craft things. The walkable/usable area is pretty vast when you add up all of the maps.

 

I'm 48 hours into this playthrough, and I think I'm at the halfway point. I haven't even started any of the DLC areas.

[LongHairedFreakyGuy]

So I randomly saw this game been promoted on Twitter yesterday, and thought it may interest those who grew up playing the SSX games back in day. Obviously won't be anywhere near as good as the originals, but might be good enough.

[lndex]

God, I used to love playing SSX 3. I think the closest I've enjoyed over the years for a snowboarding game would be Ubi's Steep, less on the arcadey side, mind you.

[Margot Robbed Me]

My temp concerns on my 3090 card are becoming noticeable now. It seems to be throttling itself once it gets into the high 80s temps, and it usually sits at 90-93C. Usually it still performs fine even on the limped speeds, but in some games I'm starting to notice a drop in FPS. I've been thinking of finally tearing it apart to replace the thermal paste and pads, and came across people using thermal putty, and it has intrigued me enough to finally move to swap the thermal material. This EVGA FTW3 card (or 3090s in general) apparently has some inconsistent contact distances between the card and the heatsink so thermal pads aren't ideal (unless you use really soft thick ones), but I figured I'll give thermal putty a try since it supposedly matches or exceeds thermal pad performance and should guarantee solid contact. Upsiren U6 Pro was the putty that seems to be popular so I went with that, and I decided to go with Kingpin KPx for the GPU die. I'm expecting the old thermal material to be crusty. We'll see how it goes.

[lndex]

I'm hoping my 3080 doesn't keel over anytime soon cause I won't be doin an upgrade until a very later date lol. Never had any temperature problems either with this GPU, and it has been undervolted since I bought it as well, which those 30 series benefit from.

 

[Margot Robbed Me]

The only GPU that has died on me was my XFX 7600GT (back when XFX used to make Nvidia cards lol) from 2006 or something, and that was probably because I screwed something up trying to fix the dead fan.  Unless you get a lemon piece of hardware, these things seem to last 4-5x their useful lifetimes.

[Jason]

Still crossing every human body part possible in hopes the 5080 sneaks out this year. The typical nVidia leakers seem to disagree on whether it'll slip into 2025 or not.

 

I think I just got a poor version of the 3070, the Gigabyte Eagle. I've heard the Eagle version of other nVidia cards have bad cooling as well. I basically took what I could get back when I bought it, cause it was the height of the stock issues, I had to sit in Discords at the early morning to be ready for stock drops lol. This time around I'd like to go with something from MSI or Asus, or a founders card if they exist and are easily available.

[Uncle Sikee Atric]

It been teased for a while, but the spiritual successor to CrossCode finally has a name, a launch trailer and rough dates....

 

A vertical slice is nearly complete and likely to form the basis of a demo due early next year, and Early Access is due for late 2025, barring any hiccups (no doubt there will be).  The Steam page has been launched, and console ports are planned.

Here's the trailer :
 

 

Edited August 9 by Uncle Sikee Atric

[LongHairedFreakyGuy]

20 hours ago, lndex said:

God, I used to love playing SSX 3. I think the closest I've enjoyed over the years for a snowboarding game would be Ubi's Steep, less on the arcadey side, mind you.

 

Think I tried Steep last year, but at the time it didn't hit the craving I had for a snowboarding game similar to SSX. The amount of hours I've put in to Tricky/3/On Tour is mental, and the fact this pretty much looks like an exact copy but what you'd expect from a smaller indie team...im hopeful... 

 

I miss EA Big. 

[Jason]

They've been putting out daily gameplay snippets of the weapons and some changes/additions to them every day in the lead up to Gamescom, and todays video was of the GOAT:

 

 

 

The weapon/armour design shown in the various videos looks amazing, the hammer in that video is pretty nuts, far beyond something you'd see in Mon Hun traditionally at least at launch.

 

Cannot wait for this game to drop, does feel like Q1 next year is very likely too.

 

also re: above

 

Steep was kinda fun, but it was less snowboarding and whatnot and tricks and more 3D Trials IMO. It was more about time trials than anything else, and hitting those perfect runs. I remember hammering it when it dropped on PS+ back on PS4 and hitting max rank in all their sports in only a few days, I had a lot of fun w/ it tbh, but yea, it was more time trial than anything else. I'd like to play Riders Republic to see if it scratches the same itch, but if feels like it might be more MP-focused and I dun like that. Steep was more chill.

[lndex]

The Black Myth Wukong benchmark is out on Steam. It hit an 87 thousand player peak in 24 hours, lol. Some settings are very demanding, too. I was getting into the high 40's w/ everything set to very high DLSS quality, the slider around 75. It won't be a game I'll be picking up, but it's nice to have a benchmark tool before launch.

[Jason]

Yea it's a UE5 game so I think it might have some mandatory RT stuff in there? Looks demanding for sure.

 

Hope the game does well, it'd be nice for more Asian studios to go big in AAA multi-platform SP.

[Saul Goodman]

I heard that in the PS3 version of Skyrim, it runs like garbage unless you use an SSD. I am not sure if that's true, but that's weird

 

Anyway, I am a student in ICT and so far our topics are about numerical systems like binary, octal, hecta, and hex codes. Now I understand those nonsense I was seeing while using Cheat Engine in some of my games.

 

Also I love how Cheat Engine gives you a special message when you open it in January 1

[lndex]

3 hours ago, Jason said:

Yea it's a UE5 game so I think it might have some mandatory RT stuff in there? Looks demanding for sure.

 

I think so. You can turn on RT in the settings, but that just tanks my fps. Still looks fantastic without any tbh. DLSS does seem to be aggressively oversharpened, though that's where DLDSR would've come in handy. Unfortunately, it's something I've had to do without now

Edited August 14 by lndex

[Jason]

 

 

Gotta admit I absolutely dig this studio and what they do. Instead of just making Two Point Hospital over and over, they're taking the foundations and doing stuff like Two Point Campus and now this. I bought Hospital at launch and enjoyed it, played Campus on GP and didn't quite vibe with it cause it was very US inspired, but TP Museum sounds like it might be up my street for a fresh sim game.

[LongHairedFreakyGuy]

3 hours ago, Jason said:

 

 

Gotta admit I absolutely dig this studio and what they do. Instead of just making Two Point Hospital over and over, they're taking the foundations and doing stuff like Two Point Campus and now this. I bought Hospital at launch and enjoyed it, played Campus on GP and didn't quite vibe with it cause it was very US inspired, but TP Museum sounds like it might be up my street for a fresh sim game.

 

Saw the teaser for this the other day, completely forgot about it, but the guesses were right in it been a Museum setting. I'm intrigued as to how the gameplay will be like in this though, given that it just seems very limited in what can be done? I know Two Point will manage to pull it off though. Actually really enjoyed Hospital, still need to get round to Campus though. 

 

This and the new Planet Coaster will satisfy my sim management needs. 

[lndex]

Some really, really bizarre movesets going on there, and I'm all for it.

 

 

[Jason]

Yea the hunting horn is one of the most difficult weapons in the game to use well, especially as Wild's version is more like the World's version. It's more of a support/attack weapon than pure attack. It's one of those where if you're on a team with a good horn player it makes your life a good bit easier, but it's rare you'll come across them.

 

edit:

 

Seeing Black Myth: Wukong is reviewing well. I typically use OpenCritc but it's only got 7 reviews up so far, but it's at 82/100 from 48 reviews on PC on MetaCritic so far.

 

Doesn't sound like it's for me, but that's a very good score for a debut game from any studio.

 

 

[Jason]

 

 

Looks promising for sure. Writing and VA sounds a bit stiff and I think the overall fidelity has taken a bit of a hit, also it's very likely partly due to the amount of particles firing (like the snow), but the image quality doesn't look great. That being said, the combat looks really fun. Black Desert had some god tier combat for an MMO, so I'm not too surprised to see them go a lot further with it in a single player game.

 

Definitely a game I'm gonna need to see quite a bit more of to see if I wanna pick it up when it comes out, but it's one of the more interesting titles to watch atm for sure.

[lndex]

Jeeees, I completely forgot about that. It'll definitely be one to keep an eye on, for sure. I remember in those earlier trailers for the visuals, the vistas looked incredible and matched up to RDR2's. But yeah, a mix of Black Desert Online and DD2. I'm down for that. Asian developers are making some wild sh*t lol.

[Jason]

They're smoking some wild sh*t as well. The guidelines they gave to streamers/content creators for Wukong were a bit uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh lol.

[lndex]

Christ, I've just seen them. That's a very specific choice, to say the least...

[Jason]

They've basically created their own Streisand effect with it, it's very silly, but, ya'know, Chinese company and all that.

[Margot Robbed Me]

So the thermal putty arrived for my GPU and I decided I better do it now before I delay it forever. The GPU temp dropped by about 5C, which was replaced with the Kingpin KPX compound. The memory and VRMs saw drops around 15C, which was replaced with U6 Pro thermal putty.

 

I took these temps while using the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarking option. I wasn't expecting much difference with the GPU temps since I was only replacing the paste as a consequence of removing the cooler to replace the pads with putty. So the 5C drop was nice.

 

[RARusk]

I use a carbon pad (CarboNaut - Thermal Grizzly) and Minus Eight thermal pads with my PS4 and it has made a huge difference. It no longer sounds like a jet engine like it would do in certain games.

[Jason]

Fair to say Wukong's had an absolutely bonkers launch:

 

 

 

Peaking at this time means only one thing usually - it's absolutely gigantic in China, which is where it was developed.

 

Crazy numbers for single player title.

[lndex]

In or around the top 6 most played games on Steam, I know the majority of the player base is Chinese, but that's impressive even for a weekday.

[Jason]

It does look cool, that opening(?) fight in the clouds where they're swirling about in response to the combat and movement is awesome, the use of smoke and particles in general in the game looks amazing.

 

Might pick it up one day when I've got a rig capable of running it with all the bells and whistles on.