The Videogames Tab

Wow, that's a pretty game.



Performance wise I'm hitting a steady 55-60 with everything on High (not Ultra, although I can't tell much of a difference at 1080p) apart from the new Nvidia hair physics. With it on I immediately drop 20 frames and, honestly, the vanilla hair models are as good as anything I've seen in a game so I'm not losing anything.

Of course, I could lock the game to 30 like the consoles and turn everything up but where's the fun in that?

Bed now. Witcher (hopefully) tomorrow.

__________________
"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

I see on Steam you own Salt, Dave. Did a quick search but it looks like you haven't said much about it. I'm a sucker for stripped down survival games, so how is it?

Seems to have a degree of polish (not to be confused with Witcher 3, which has loads of Polish, arf ) not often seen in these types of game but I've only played a few minutes and won't touch it again until it's out of Early Access. Last EA game I bought was Darkest Dungeon and I'm holding fast in my promise not to pay for a demo.

DiRT Rally has me conflicted, however.

Witcher 3 reminds me of my late wife - Lovely to look at but a bit unstable.

3 hours in and 5 crashes, each one locking up the PC and forcing me into a hard reboot. Seems only to be affecting Nvidia users.

I've rolled back my drivers so am now not using the Witcher 'optimised' ones. Things seem stable with no performance loss...

Cool, good to know. I'm still playing GTA V and The Long Dark so I can probably wait a week or two until they patch any weirdness.

There is no worse feeling than being mid-game in League and your right-click just stops working...

Witcher 3's now running solid as a rock for me. I'd advise against Nvidia users touching GeForce Experience - The W3 settings were all over the place compared to what my game options were set to and Optimise changed a load of different things too. Had to do a fresh install of the drivers (the new ones this time) and left GeForce Experience well alone. Set Power Management Mode in the Nvidia Control panel to 'prefer maximum performance' as well, just to be on the safe side. It was a fix I saw posted that seemed to work for some.

Am really enjoying things so far. Review coming in approximately 100 hours.

Anyway:

Just bought my copy of Witcher 3. I hope it was worth it!

Still a few perks to buying physical in the digital age. You get a nice looking slip-cover case along with a detailed game world map, wolf-head stickers, a compendium and a game manual. It also comes with the official soundtrack, but I'm not sure if digital buyers get that also.

I've got the first two games on physical disc and haven't had to put either in my disc drive. The serials inside work with both GOG and Steam. Didn't bother this time because I'm impatient, live 40+ miles from a store which would stock it these days and, most importantly, don't have a DVD drive on my PC now.

Oh, and golg, in case you were thinking of buying it here's a post on the GB forum's Witcher 3 section:

Happened to me while playing Diablo III.

__________________
“By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.”

Oo good to know, their games are normally famous for being demanding aren't they.

I've still got my bargain basement W2 to play, so happy to hold off for now. Current plan is to see if the 970 has had a price drop by November for BF too

And in the meantime I'm all about the l33t geekout

__________________
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

970s have actually gone UP in price these last few months.

I'd expect them to drop again once the new AMD cards come out in the summer.

Still chugging along with my 560 Ti

I am sure I will run into a problem sooner rather than later!

__________________

I'll probably install Witcher 3 on the old PC just to see how the Phenom/560ti combo will run it.

Last time I did that was with Shadow of Mordor. It worked but it wasn't exactly fun.

Even the rabbits in this game are at it like rabbits...

The one complaint I have so far are the controls. All of Geralt's moves seem over-animated so you need to wait for each one to finish before pressing a button for the next, which takes some getting used to in combat.

Dark Souls this is not, but the deliberate nature of combat leads to things being much more tactical. I'm playing on Normal but have used more bombs and Signs in 10 hours than an entire playthrough of Witcher 2 at that difficulty level.

Your horse is called Roche, which is cute.

A couple hours in and I'm liking it so far. It is a very pretty game to look at, and I'm enjoying just walking around the first area. The Combat is much better than Witcher 2's which I remember being really underwhelming. I also like Geralt much better in this one, I remember the second one starting off with that awkward looking sex scene and it kinda threw me off of the character a bit. The whole monster-hunter thing in this one is good.

So far, I like it much better than Dragon Age: Inquisition, the other big next-gen RPG that's been released (which I traded in to put towards getting Witcher 3) it's a shame cause Dragon Age: Origins was such an awesome game and Inquisition just seemed kinda lame with a bad story, boring characters, and a whole bunch of political correctness forced in.

I'm 13 hours in, at level 6 and starting to explore the world a bit before hooking up with the main quest again. Pro Tip: There's a good barber in Oxenfurt.

I like saying Oxenfurt. A lot.

Anyway, CDPR have been making a big thing about Geralt's dynamic hair growth, aided by the new Nvidia HairWorks tech. Asides from robbing me of 10 frames with it on, I actually think it looks worse than the normal hair, which still grows as you progress.

With:



Without:



Apparently Nvidihair looks great on monsters but I've been too busy killing them to notice.

13 hours? I got some catching up to do lol. I'm hoping to get a couple more in tonight. I'm just about to hunt down the griffin, the build up to it is nice and I'm pretty excited for the actual hunt to go down.


Oh and I agree, the hair does look better with it off.