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[GHG]

It’s fucked up because besides Resident Evil I can’t think of any other big horror games at this level. It always seemed a dangerous release to me taking into account that Evil Within 1 and 2 never got the most amazing reception. For fans of horror games like myself it’s a shame. But hey, it’s released and from the 2 hours I played it hits all the right notes.

We’re stuck with PT clones, Bloober and Resident Evil.

The only thing that will save it now is if it sells well, which I doubt due to the PC performance unfortunately.

Maybe the crunch police got to them. Either that or it just needed another delay for a month or so. It's a shame because the game clearly has all the right ingelredients, it just needed that extra bit of polish.

another game where you cant play more than 10 min without a cutscene interrupting you

Another game where people cry about something they can avoid by simply not playing the game. You know there are hundreds of games that release every year with minimal/no cutscenes right?

 

[Gudji]

 

[tommib]

The only thing that will save it now is if it sells well, which I doubt due to the PC performance unfortunately.

Maybe the crunch police got to them. Either that or it just needed another delay for a month or so. It's a shame because the game clearly has all the right ingelredients, it just needed that extra bit of polish.

Exactly what I was thinking. 6 months of PC optimisation and it would’ve been a different story. They can still save some of it. Maybe they ran out of money and just had to launch it.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Do not let review scores dissuade you. That goes for anybody who was looking forward to the game. Judge for your damn self. I hate to see people skip games over the opinions of 30-70 people out of all the billions of people on the planet. They are not an authority on what you will find fun.

 

[tommib]

another game where you cant play more than 10 min without a cutscene interrupting you

This is not true. It’s an exaggeration. Survival horror games always had cutscenes. Look at the original PS1 Resident Evil. Callisto does have a traditional intro but quickly lets you lose in the prison. If you’ve played The Evil Within it has exactly the same kind of pace.

 

[Roufianos]

Sounds about right for a team's first go. I think I'll skip, was never crazy about Dead Space even though I love RE4.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

Exactly what I was thinking. 6 months of PC optimisation and it would’ve been a different story. They can still save some of it. Maybe they ran out of money and just had to launch it.

They had almost 1,5 months to work on performance and day 1 patches. PC version clearly was an afterthought and marketed for AMD GPUs. Even Cyberpunk was way better in terms of performance on 1080Ti at launch than this pos. I don't think they can fix PC version in just 2 weeks time before holidays, it's just not gonna happen.

 

[tommib]

Do not let review scores dissuade you. That goes for anybody who was looking forward to the game. Judge for your damn self. I hate to see people skip games over the opinions of 30-70 people out of all the billions of people on the planet. They are not an authority on what you will find fun.

True, man. If you’re into space horror you’ll love this anyway. It looks grim, gory, tough, hard and drenched with atmosphere. I can understand that it’s not for everyone and for the masses and that’s why I’ve been surprised by the amount of money they put it in.

If only they’ve could crossed over this with with, I don’t know, Spider-Man. /s

 

[winjer]

 

[Gaiff]

Do not let review scores dissuade you. That goes for anybody who was looking forward to the game. Judge for your damn self. I hate to see people skip games over the opinions of 30-70 people out of all the billions of people on the planet. They are not an authority on what you will find fun.

You're not wrong but the video game review industry is one where just making a functional game gets you a 70% score.

 

[saintjules]

 

[winjer]

Seems like the scariest thing on the PC version is the shader stutter from shader compilation.

 

[tommib]

Seems like the scariest thing on the PC version is the shader stutter from shader compilation.

I know nothing about PCs these days but is this a DirectX thing? Why hasn’t this been fixed yet? Is it windows? I don’t get it.

 

[Fools idol]

lmao oh no, it's the 'welllllll this reviewer said this game was also terrible' posts?

damn. It runs very poorly on PC, will wait for some patches to fix this.

 

[Freeman76]

They are not an authority on what you will find fun.

Neither are you. A lot of the lower scores are down to performance issues, which ruin a game for some people. Consider the whole picture before jumping on your high horse.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

I know nothing about PCs these days but is this a DirectX thing? Why hasn’t this been fixed yet? Is it windows? I don’t get it.

DX12 performance is indescribably horrendous. It's basically a definitive stutter fest experience no matter which settings you're using, screen resolution etc.

 

[RIPN2022]

Alien Isolation deserved better than 5.9, but lets not kid ourselves here. It was a 7 or 8/10 game as at best.

 

[TonyK]

The thing is they knew reviews were bad as they did a review embargo to damage control the pre-orders. So, how does it work the press review system? Do they make a review and then send it to the developers to check the score? How did they know the reviews would be bad?

 

[tommib]

DX12 performance is indescribably horrendous. It's basically a definitive stutter fest experience no matter which settings you're using, screen resolution etc.

That’s fucked up. And people call me a wimp for dropping PCs in the late 2000s but I was totally burned out at that point. I have more faith in Valve and their steam deck OS and their future full OS than Microsoft.

 

[Lions Gate]

im 3 hours in, if you love horror something special wating for you. spectacular graphics btw

 

[Nautilus]

I'm reading those reviews and man, a lot of those negatives sound like positives for me. Tough, brutal survival horror? Hell yes!

Maybe it relies a bit too much on its inspirations on Dead Space? Hell fucking yeah!

And other complains such as a lack on enemy variety: Reviews complained as much on RE 7, and while yeah that was a bit of a problem, it still was a fantastic experience.

I'm buying this as soon as a manage to get my hands on a copy.

 

[winjer]

I know nothing about PCs these days but is this a DirectX thing? Why hasn’t this been fixed yet? Is it windows? I don’t get it.

Low level APIs have to compile a lot of shaders, be it on consoles or PC.
But on consoles, hardware is static and devs program the game targeting a version of the consoles firmware. So shaders can be compiled by the devs and shipped with the game.
On PC, there are many driver versions, and many GPUs version. So shaders have to be compiled for each PC.
Competent devs will compile PSOs and force a compilation the first time game loads. This way, there is no stutter from shader compilation.
Incompetent devs will will not compile PSOs and will have shaders being compiled during gameplay. Leading to shader compilation stutters.
UE4 requires the devs to manually gather the PSOs, to latter compile them. But this is both for consoles and PC.

The issue is not so much DX12 and PC, but lazy, incompetent developers.
For example, Gears 5 have not one bit of stutter from shader compilation.
Borderlands 3 in DX12, compiles shaders during the first run. So during gameplay, there aren't stutters.
Sackboy, when first released on PC, it compile shaders during gamelay. But on a latter patch they fixed this, and had shader compilation being done during load.
These are just a few example of games that did well shader compilation, on UE4.

But it seems that the first AAAA game, can't be bothered with proper optimization.

BTW, there is another big issue that PC has to deal with: Denuvo.
This DRM has been found to cause performance issues and stutters on several games. Especially on low and mid end machines.
And this game also uses Denuvo, as if performance wasn't bad enough.

 

[tommib]

The thing is they knew reviews were bad as they did a review embargo to damage control the pre-orders. So, how does it work the press review system? Do they make a review and then send it to the developers to check the score? How did they know the reviews would be bad?

I don’t think they did but they might’ve been cautious knowing that the game wouldn’t be universally acclaimed taking into account the status quo of what’s popular and their performance issues. It’s clear it was some kind of damage control.

 

[tommib]

Low level APIs have to compile a lot of shaders, be it on consoles or PC.
But on consoles, hardware is static and devs program the game targeting a version of the consoles firmware. So shaders can be compiled by the devs and shipped with the game.
On PC, there are many driver versions, and many GPUs version. So shaders have to be compiled for each PC.
Competent devs will compile PSOs and force a compilation the first time game loads. This way, there is no stutter from shader compilation.
Incompetent devs will will not compile PSOs and will have shaders being compiled during gameplay. Leading to shader compilation stutters.
UE4 requires the devs to manually gather the PSOs, to latter compile them. But this is both for consoles and PC.

The issue is not so much DX12 and PC, but lazy, incompetent developers.
For example, Gears 5 have not one bit of stutter from shader compilation.
Borderlands 3 in DX12, compiles shaders during the first run. So during gameplay, there aren't stutters.
Sackboy, when first released on PC, it compile shaders during gamelay. But on a latter patch they fixed this, and had shader compilation being done during load.
These are just a few example of games that did well shader compilation, on UE4.

But it seems that the first AAAA game, can't be bothered with proper optimization.

One thing about the shader compilation so if you run once then that’s it. Next time you load the game from scratch you won’t have these issues again?

 

[Mister Wolf]

I know nothing about PCs these days but is this a DirectX thing? Why hasn’t this been fixed yet? Is it windows? I don’t get it.

It's an UE4 and/or Direct X 12 issue for developers that don't know what they're doing. Gears 5 runs fine. Big difference in skill between The Coalition and Striking Distance.

 

[Gudji]

That’s fucked up. And people call me a wimp for dropping PCs in the late 2000s but I was totally burned out at that point. I have more faith in Valve and their steam deck OS and their future full OS than Microsoft.

I'd stick with consoles only too if it wasn't for the shitty 30 FPS only games I'm still hopeful we'll keep getting performance modes down the road.
Another thing that I hate is that sometimes libraries don't carrying over to a new generation (it did from PS4 to PS5 but who knows what PS6 will be), at least in that regard MS is doing better but still not perfect.

 

[Mister Wolf]

One thing about the shader compilation so if you run once then that’s it. Next time you load the game from scratch you won’t have these issues again?

Anytime you update your GPU drivers the initial stutter of seeing new assets for the first time comes back.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

It's an UE4 and/or Direct X 12 issue for developers that don't know what they're doing. Gears 5 runs fine. Big difference in skill between The Coalition and Striking Distance.

Big? I'd say it's enormous. I mean, hell, I can run Gears 5 almost maxed out in 4K 60 no problem with every new GFX feature they've added later.

 

[tommib]

I honestly don’t think this is the disaster people are making it out to be. PC performance though will kill the game.

You can find me quoting that the game would be a 75.

 

[winjer]

One thing about the shader compilation so if you run once then that’s it. Next time you load the game from scratch you won’t have these issues again?

Once shaders are compiled, it's done.
UE4 caches these shaders. And so nvidia and AMD drivers. And there are no more stutters.
The only issue is if we update drivers, or change GPU. That forces shaders to be recompiled again.

UE4 games also have another issue that causes stutters. Asset streaming. But this can affect consoles and PC.
Sometimes a game will load a new area of a game. New textures, meshes, effects, etc.
And if these are not in the memory, the game will have to load it from HDD or SSD.
Unfortunately, a lot of people mistake these for shader compilation.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

I honestly don’t think this is the disaster people are making it out to be. PC performance though will kill the game.

You can find me quoting that the game would be a 75.

Considering that the scale that "video game critics" use is 6 to 10, this is not very good.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Low level APIs have to compile a lot of shaders, be it on consoles or PC.
But on consoles, hardware is static and devs program the game targeting a version of the consoles firmware. So shaders can be compiled by the devs and shipped with the game.
On PC, there are many driver versions, and many GPUs version. So shaders have to be compiled for each PC.
Competent devs will compile PSOs and force a compilation the first time game loads. This way, there is no stutter from shader compilation.
Incompetent devs will will not compile PSOs and will have shaders being compiled during gameplay. Leading to shader compilation stutters.
UE4 requires the devs to manually gather the PSOs, to latter compile them. But this is both for consoles and PC.

The issue is not so much DX12 and PC, but lazy, incompetent developers.
For example, Gears 5 have not one bit of stutter from shader compilation.
Borderlands 3 in DX12, compiles shaders during the first run. So during gameplay, there aren't stutters.
Sackboy, when first released on PC, it compile shaders during gamelay. But on a latter patch they fixed this, and had shader compilation being done during load.
These are just a few example of games that did well shader compilation, on UE4.

But it seems that the first AAAA game, can't be bothered with proper optimization.

BTW, there is another big issue that PC has to deal with: Denuvo.
This DRM has been found to cause performance issues and stutters on several games. Especially on low and mid end machines.
And this game also uses Denuvo, as if performance wasn't bad enough.

Perfectly summed up. My reward to them for not doing their job properly is refunding on Steam and buying from CD Keys down to line for $30 - $40 once they get their shit sorted.

 

[tommib]

Thanks for the explanations, guys. Really appreciate it. Sending love to all of you.

 

[tommib]

xxxx


Considering that the scale that "video game critics" use is 6 to 10, this is not very good.

Like I said my game of the last generation was a 75. It’s my preferred score.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Big? I'd say it's enormous. I mean, hell, I can run Gears 5 almost maxed out in 4K 60 no problem with every new GFX feature they've added later.

Like comparing an ant to an elephant.

 

[FunkMiller]

Eh. Sounds like a wait for sale game to me. Can’t say I’m all that’s surprised. This never felt like something extraordinary in the run up. Was hoping for it to exceed expectations, but sounds like it doesn’t do that.

GamePass/PS Plus /Second hand on eBay for me.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Thanks for the explanations, guys. Really appreciate it. Sending love to all of you.

I really hope the PC port of Returnal doesn't suffer the same fate. At this point this Shader Compilation thing is like a basic competency test for the ability of a developer. Even Tri-Ace managed to pass this test with their latest release.

 

[Giallo Corsa]

Its jank as fuck. I didn't want to say anything when the one low score review popped up recently with everyone thinking it was the reviewer. But its not...up to par.

Hey Kar, question :
Remember when the 1st Evil Within came out back in the day and the reviews it got due to the fact that it was pretty jank-y due to the (pretty bad) framerate, difficulty spikes etc etc? And yet, it was one of the most memorable action- horror games from the past gen.

What I'm trying to say is : How would you compare it to the first Evil within when it comes to the jank and general quality ? Is it something that can be overlooked or...?

Also, what's so jank-y about it friend ? Is it the framerate? Animations? Combat? General lack of polish?

Cheers

 

[Moses85]

60€?

Its always the same. Reviews on the street days…

Games are nothing special or waste of Money.

 

[tommib]

I really hope the PC port of Returnal doesn't suffer the same fate. At this point this Shader Compilation thing is like a basic competency test for the ability of a developer. Even Tri-Ace managed to pass this test with their latest release.

Hoping for the best, man. Returnal is a twitch action shooter. It’s like those scrolling bullet hell shooters. One stutter and you’re done.

 

[winjer]

One thing about the shader compilation so if you run once then that’s it. Next time you load the game from scratch you won’t have these issues again?

Just to add some extra information.

Some games on PC have an internal benchmark. Usually, it's a pass on a few levels of the game and having some NPCs shooting things and blowing stuff up, to push the hardware.
This means that a gamer can just run the benchmark on the first run, it will stutter like hell and give off a bad score. But it will compile most shaders.
So after this, during gameplay, there will be less stutters.
Chernobylite is one such example, of a UE4 game, that has issues with shader compilation, but that can be minimized by just running the internal benchmark before starting to play the game.

 

[tommib]

Hey Kar, question :
Remember when the 1st Evil Within came out back in the day and the reviews it got due to the fact that it was pretty jank-y due to the (pretty bad) framerate, difficulty spikes etc etc? And yet, it was one of the most memorable action- horror games from the past gen.

What I'm trying to say is : How would you compare it to the first Evil within when it comes to the jank and general quality ? Is it something that can be overlooked or...?

Also, what's so jank-y about it friend ? Is it the framerate? Animations? Combat? General lack of polish?

Cheers

From my 2 hours it’s The Evil Within in space as I was expecting.

 

[winjer]

The Callisto Protocol has shader compilation stutters and optimization issues on PC

The Callisto Protocol suffers from shader compilation stutters. Not only that, but there are numerous optimization issues currently on PC.

www.dsogaming.com

 

[tommib]

Just to add some extra information.

Some games on PC have an internal benchmark. Usually, it's a pass on a few levels of the game and having some NPCs shooting things and blowing stuff up, to push the hardware.
This means that a gamer can just run the benchmark on the first run, it will stutter like hell and give off a bad score. But it will compile most shaders.
So after this, during gameplay, there will be less stutters.
Chernobylite is one such example, of a UE4 game, that has issues with shader compilation, but that can be minimized by just running the internal benchmark before starting to play the game.

Hoping for pc Returnal to have a benchmark mode for you guys. I actually think I remember seeing the option in of the leaked screens.

 

[SLB1904]

im 3 hours in, if you love horror something special wating for you. spectacular graphics btw

Yeah I don't need reviews for this game. The videos I saw looks great.
I'm just waiting for someone to confirm dualsense support on PC.

 

[tommib]

The Callisto Protocol has shader compilation stutters and optimization issues on PC

The Callisto Protocol suffers from shader compilation stutters. Not only that, but there are numerous optimization issues currently on PC.

www.dsogaming.com

This will kill the game.

 

[winjer]

Hoping for pc Returnal to have a benchmark mode for you guys. I actually think I remember seeing the option in of the leaked screens.

The thing is, gathering PSOs and having a proper shader compilation wen the game loads the first time, it not that hard.
Sackboy released without it. But just a week later, it was fixed in a patch.
Gamers and reviewers called out the studio on the issue and they promptly fixed it.
And Epic has documentation on this process. And there are tutorials on the web.
So when a studio fails on such an important thing, you can be sure it's really incompetence and lazyness.

 

[RoadHazard]

About what I expected. The AAAA talk was ridiculous all along. Why would this game ever be more AAA than, say Sony's first party stuff? (Not that more As necessarily mean better game, but still.)

Will play this when it's on PS+ in a year or two.

 

[winjer]

The game is already at a 27% user score on Steam.

The top review just says:

the stutter protocol

 

[mansoor1980]

27% is really bad