Recent reviews by жэф

I don't understand the negative reviews at all, I feel bad for the people who are experiencing all these issues. The shader does take a long time to compile, yes, but so did Uncharted.

I just ignored the shader compiler and started playing anyway, and have 0 stuttering issues or lag (plus the next time I launched the game the compiler was @ 100%, so it just kept compiling them during the opening cinematic and during the first bit of gameplay in the background). I did have a single crash the first time I opened up the game, but my gpu drivers were outdated so I remedied that and haven't had another crash or any problems since then.

I'm playing with everything on ultra/maxed out(including RT) @ 3440x1440 on a 6950xt+5800x3d w/ 32gb ram and game installed on a p41 sk hynix. Getting a smooth 60fps average.

The game is now officially DRM-free thanks to the last update, and DL1 ragdoll physics have now been reinstated into DL2. They're also currently revamping the CO-OP system, fixing and patching it up with every single hotfix and major patch that gets released.

These were the 3 biggest/major complaints the game had received at launch (with the 4th being lack of guns), and in traditional Techland fashion, they listened to their community.

As a launch day Dying Light 1 player, I've stuck with Techland for the last 8 years, and I don't regret any of it. They are my favorite AAA developer, and they are constantly showing their playerbase and overall community exactly why they're the best. THEY GENUINELY LISTEN TO US and never fail to deliver to us what we actually want. They also give us a constant string of community events in game, so that the campaign isn't the only content to enjoy--opening up the game's open world for a whole range of side quests and alternative gameplay possibilities which ensures that your time in the Dying Light universe doesn't end when you finish the main story. It's an amazing experience that can't be said for the likes of industry behemoths like EA/Ubisoft/Activision/Blizzard/etc.

Do yourself a favor and finally dig into the greatness of DL2. It's a much different experience than DL1, and has no gunplay in it, so don't go in expecting a DL1 clone. If you genuinely open up your mind and embrace the fact that you're in for a new and different experience, you'll definitely enjoy yourself and have a great time.

Extremely fun rogue light with all that Darkest Dungeon aesthetic but none of the massive stress induced agita brought about by DD's insane micromanagement revolving around stress and mental conditions. The only thing you have to do here is manage your corruption levels and then kick monster asses to buy, equip, upgrade skills, improve stats, rinse and repeat. And just like true roguelight, there's a veritable ton of carry-over progression between runs to keep you playing for an umpteenth amount of hours depending on your resilience against burnout. The weapon design and graphics are nothing state of the art, something more akin to Warcraft 3 Reforged, but the polish is on overdrive and the gameplay loop is brief and fantastic. Despite the corruption micromanagement and boss bullethell tool kits, the game's more of a stress reducer than an inducer.

$8 is an excellent price, grab it now.

next gen update is gorgeous. well worth the wait.

playing ultra+ on all settings with RT on (including reflections and other RT options) in 21:9 1440p (3440x1440) on my Alienware 34'' curved monitor is immersive bliss. the game already looked fantastic but this new update was an excellent idea and really helped reinvigorate a game that's already nearly 8 years old. it's the same feeling when they brought the 4K remaster of Dragon's Dogma to the pc a couple years ago.

playing it on a 6950xt/5800x3d/32gb ddr4pc4000 with zero issues or lag. averaging 144fps with monitor's vrr forced on but vsync disabled ingame.

this game would already be a must play highly recommended title even without the next gen update, but now we get to have our cake and eat it too! :D

Game plays flawlessly on my 6950xt/5800x3d/32gb pc4000 @ 3440x1440 on max settings. Average 140fps.

Love the fact that there's crossplay, too. I have the game on my Series S and now I can switch between my X|S and PC and save my progression on the same file between both systems flawlessly. I was just playing on my X|S last night and played for half an hour on the PC today to test it out.

BTW the sale is a steal, $49 for the entire game is awesome. Usually it's like $130-150 for the base game and all of the available DLC, which comes with a ton of content and some amazingly sick starter armor that will easily carry you well into the game assuming you keep up with upgrading your armor and socketing runes into each piece of equipment as you progress in the early-to-mid story. Plus, it looks amazing to boot: ice and molten lava mixed with animal furs and darkened hard leather really brings out a mystical kind of aesthetic to the game's heavy-handed Norse lore that really looks fantastic in game and translates well to the highly intuitive combat system.

I love this game's story, and its open world is pretty much the ultimate AC open world experience that is an obvious culmination of all of the mechanics and innovation from both Origins and Odyssey.

Just be forewarned, the complete edition was 158gb after full install. But you're getting an absolute TON of content here, several maps worth of content to climb and explore and raid and pillage.

5/5, game is a work of art alongside God of War and Elden Ring.

Lol, once again the inmates are running the asylum as the steam store is flooded with negative reviews from people who are angry that they can't run the game on max settings with their budget grade hardware.

I just dumped 2 hours into it on Maximum Security difficulty and got to the chapter Aftermath, which is like the 4th or 5th chapter in the story and approximately 15% completed of the estimated 12 hour single player campaign time; by this time in the game you'll have been exposed to a majority of the game's mechanics and have had enough melee and ranged enemy confrontations to get a good idea of what the rest of the game's gameplay will be like.

The story itself is actually quite gripping, although it feels almost identical to Dead Space, especially the second installment. The parallels are impossible to draw when playing Callisto, so it's unavoidable to make the comparison. You even stomp on your fallen enemies to get item drops, so I doubt Striking Distance Studios was trying to break the creative mold. It's obvious they were more interested in crafting a gripping sci-fi horror narrative, and in that vein they definitely succeeded.

The gameplay mechanics are actually quite intuitive and refreshing for a third person combat game, the pace is a little slower than what most players are used to, but the fighting itself is very weighty and feels physically satisfying. You can't really just spam attack here, to be successful (especially in Maximum Security difficulty where you die in 3 hits from full health) you must be very cautious and watch your enemy's body language carefully. Carelessly spamming attack will not only exhaust your character and leave you wide open for an enemy's riposte, you'll also slow down your character's momentum and make it harder to recover in combat which is an almost guaranteed death on highest difficulty. Medium and Minimum Security difficulties are far more forgiving in this regard though.

The visual fidelity of this game is some of the best I've seen. I'm running on maximum settings with all raytracing options maxed out using AMD FSR upscaling with a rendering resolution of 2310x990 on a native 3440x1440 21:9 ultrawide monitor, and according to my AMD Wattman panel I averaged 45.4 fps over my first play period. This is with a 6950XT, Ryzen 7 5800X3D, 32GB of DDR4@PC3000, on an Asus Dark Hero mobo.

While that sounds like a low/laggy fps number (and it would be for most game engines), Callisto Protocol was obviously designed with consoles in mind and the engine itself was developed for a target FPS of 30 at maximum settings. The game itself plays extremely well at 30fps and anything over it, feeling butter smooth with no input lag of any kind. It's hard to explain but given the game engine's physicality amongst its mechanics and the weightiness of movement and combat, I have a hard time imagining playing this at anything higher than 60 fps. To put this idea in perspective, think of the way Bethesda games go bananas and their game engines break if you happen to go above 60-100fps. The mechanics and physics of the game itself goes berserk and nothing feels right, which is exactly how I imagine Callisto Protocol playing at super high framerates like the kind we are used to from FPS titles like CSGO.

I haven't experienced any kind of microstuttering or visual lag, and I have found the game itself to be extremely rewarding in both combat and narrative progression. The melee combat is wonderfully gory and challenging, with an inventive dodge and block system involving the left stick that is highly intuitive and innovative. I'm pretty sure we will see it in future games because of how well it works here in Callisto. I also like the game's return to survival horror roots with its limited inventory capacity and extreme combat difficulty on the highest difficulty setting. Fans of oldschool survival horror like the original Resident Evil trilogy, Dino Crisis, Parasite Eve, et al. will love Callisto's difficulty familiarity. In this respect, it easily excels Dead Space.

I honestly haven't found anything I've disliked about this game yet.

I also forgot to mention, the character models in this game are easily some of, if not THE, best I've ever seen in a game. The quality is insane, whatever motion capture technology they used in the game's development is obviously some of the best in the industry. Facial expressions are incredibly life-like, and you can see every bead of sweat, every skin pore, every singular facial hair on the character's skin and faces during cutscenes and combat sequences. Even the attention to vascularity is impressive, with veins and knuckles looking photorealistic. The artistry in the character design is undeniable, and the developers deserve a well-earned tip of the hat here. I definitely see some awards headed Callisto's way in the future.

Do yourself a favor and ignore the negative reviews. It's become par for the course on day 1 for new releases, the only games I've seen survive this neg-bomb phenomenon are PlayStation PC ports. The game's twitter page made it very clear that you would need the absolute best in current generation hardware to run the game at high settings, so it's amazing to see (actually, it's really not that surprising honestly) the vast ignorance here in the Steam reviews.

There's no way this game deserves a 22% rating, what a joke! This is one of the best single player AAA survival horror's I've played in recent memory. And for the hardware enthusiast, Callisto is definitely the new Crysis for hardware testing. The visuals are jaw-dropping, stunning, just downright gorgeous. But don't expect to be able to play this with high settings on anything less than a non-CPU bottlenecked 6900XT/3090 and M2 4.0 SSD (I have mine installed on a P41 Hynix), otherwise you'll end up with egg on your face like the sadsacks who are neg-bombing the Steam store page right now crying that they can't hit CSGO fps on their 3070s/3080s/6800XTs.

I look forward to your flames and hateposts saying I'm clueless :D

Call of Doodie

lol, doodie

It suffers from the same exact issues Necromunda has. A beautifully inspired aesthetic dripping in some of the best Warhammer lore ever put to screen, completely marred--if not outright destroyed--by a psychotic level of unoptimized jankiness and nightmarish performance. Microstutters are relentlessly consistent; this game could be crowned the king of 1% averages. Hitbox registration nears satirical levels of atrociousness, and nearly all combat and environmental mechanics lack any sort of harmonious mellifluousness; the bad far outweighs any of the game's good and all of its layers coalesce into one clunky, putrid onion of an experience.

There's an undoubtedly blockbuster level of ambition interwoven throughout all these pixels, and that realization just makes the grotesquely botched execution of the dev's obvious vision so much more disappointing. This could be a fantastic co-op action experience, and it could have been a highly immersive single player real time strategy fps. But it isn't and never will be since the Necromunda sequel has already been released, relegating Deathwing to the abandonware pile like a straight-to-video b-movie to the Walmart budget bin in the electronics section of the store.

The only reason you should bother installing Deathwing is if you want to savor an excellent sci-fi slice of Warhammer aesthetic different from the usual dark high-fantasy inclinations of its legendary universe. There's nothing else even remotely redeeming about this absolutely stellar pile of forgettable janky junk, and what makes it insulting as well as saddening is that they had the audacity to call this dumpsterfire trainwreck the ENHANCED EDITION, lol. It's almost as if they were actually being purposefully ironic when putting this project together and naming it, as if it were some not-so-esoteric inside joke.

What a missed opportunity Deathwing is, the potential here is brimming to the seams and the scope of ambition is palpable.. but ultimately, you're left with an unpolished turd once the honeymoon period with the excellent atmosphere and inspired art direction/design wears off. And it wears off, QUICK.

1/5, I wouldn't even recommend this to someone I didn't like, unless I was truly wanting to be a sunnuvabish. Stick to Vermintide for your Warhammer co-op yearnings instead, and save your money for a hooker and some blow instead or something.

There's something very unique and special here. The first time opening Kenshi, a wave of nostalgia rushes over you like the time when you were a young teenager getting lost aimlessly in Morrowind for several hours just trying to figure out what the hell you're actually doing and need to get done in order to advance your character's story even a little bit--all while trying to acclimate to a brutal learning curve of complex mechanics supplemented with a massive variation of keybinds and controls.

It's a daunting experience, no doubt. But it's strangely charming, in a very old school kind of way when roleplaying games refused to hold your hand with automated waypoints and shiny clickable objects. It's really incredible how Kenshi takes the old school and coalesces it with the new to create a fusion of third person and real time strategy genres sans an isometric camera that somehow manages to feel extremely fresh despite its initial clunkiness. It's a game that will definitely require your focus and your dexterity, even just for the seemingly simple tasks. And while that would be a negative experience in nearly any other game, Kenshi manages to get you to ENJOY the chore of playing it. The seemingly paradox of it all fascinates me.

If you're an old school roleplayer, this is definitely the game for you. If you're the kind of gamer who likes high-APM strategy games and want to try something unique and challenging, this is also definitely the game for you. You carve your own path to manifest whatever destiny you desire after creating your character and selecting from a wide variety of backstories (I personally chose A Man and a Dog), and the only thing that can stop or limit you is yourself.

The game isn't completely unfriendly; your screen will be peppered with links that describe and delineate the various mechanics and character states you will encounter as your character experiences and endures them for the first time, so be sure to pay attention. There's a little bit of everything in Kenshi, and a lotta bit of many things as well--the genre blend is ecumenical AF. Nearly every kind of archetype you can imagine is present or waiting to be discovered in some way. But the most prominent way to describe this brutal AF roleplaying survival life simulator, if I had to choose previous game titles to do so, would be: Morrowind + Rust + Fallout + Soulslike + Sim City + Total War + Star Wars Galaxies, just to name a few ingredients in this deliciously addictive pixel smoothie.

Lo-Fi has definitely done something magical here. Most games this ambitious never come close to being executed even one half as well as Kenshi ultimately has. Jump on the hypetrain, but only if you're the kind of hardcore nerd who is ready to timesink some serious hours into its seemingly infinite layers. Kenshi is by no means a casual experience, so if you're looking for a relaxing game sesh or something you can play absent-mindedly while knocking back beers and doing dabs with a playlist booming, you probably would be better served playing something else. It's not to say that you CAN'T approach Kenshi in such a carefree manner, you definitely can, you just won't get nearly as much out of it as you would if you went full nerdcore and did an immersive deepdive that its complexity and ambitious scope unapologetically demands.

10/10

i'm on a 5800X3d and 6950XT 16gb with 32gb Ripjaw pc4000 and have the game installed on my SK Hynix P41 m2 ssd. In 1440p max settings, I get 55-60fps.

That's absolutely terrible, considering this game doesn't look any better than Thymesia. The character models certainly don't, they're reminiscent of Xbox 360 or PS3 character models. If you notice the screenshots they chose for their Steam store page, you'll notice most of them are filled with bricks/gravel/rocky surfaces or surfaces with baroque looking artwork. That's because they can pump up the tesselation and ambient occlusion which give these specific types of polygons softshadows and other fidelity enhancements, and at a low resolution it does an excellent job of tricking your eye into thinking everything on screen is of equivalent quality. They just slapped a lot of bloom all over everything like they did in Greedfall.

I don't mean to sound like a complete hater, but the negative reviews are absolutely correct. Spiders really screwed the pooch and jumped the shark with optimization here, it's absolutely ridiculous. My machine should only be getting framerates like this @ 2160p with Ultra quality and extensive raytracing enabled, ie. Cyberpunk 2077.

It's too bad the framerates and 1% averages are so awful. After you've gotten acclimated to 120fps/240fps+ gaming for an extended period of time, anything below ~85fps starts to look really choppy and can even feel unplayable if it dips further. It's amazing how much a good machine spoils you.

As is usual with Spiders titles, however, the setting is immersive and absolutely fantastic. I love Greedfall on my Series S, the Rennaisance-era/Early Spanish fusion for the aesthetic is unique and gorgeous despite the mediocre player models. Steelrising is the same exact way, this French Revolutionary era aesthetic is uniquely beautiful as well and despite some (once again) mediocre player models, still manages to create a distinctly original setpiece for the game's environment and backdrop. Spiders really does know how to create realistically immersive locales and ingame worlds, it's easily their strong suit next to combat mechanics.

After playing Thymesia, Combat in Steelrising just feels kinda -meh-, like an average Soulslike game if you will. The atrocious stamina limitation is the main culprit here, you can barely string together a combo and a dodge before your character starts to overheat. If you can spam alchemical effect resistance potions to prevent getting frozen from instantly recharging your stamina bar (pressing E during overheating), than it doesn't feel that bad. But that of course isn't really feasible, especially early game, since they're rare. This jilted level of early game stamina leads to some really boring encounters, like the unstable automaton in the early garden level. Talk about a snore fest.

I can't recommend Steelrising until they fix the game's performance. The quality of the game does not warrant the 9 gigabytes of used VRAM when you consider how poorly it performs. RDR2 on Ultra everything uses 2-3 less gigabytes of VRAM and looks much better than Steelrising. And I average 120+ fps in 1440p in RDR2 with everything maxed out and raytraced.

PS. In fact you can tell for sure optimization is broken, because using 1080p->1440p FSR/enhanced scaling gives identical performance as just playing in 1440p direct scale regardless of the profile you've selected (ie. ultra/quality,balanced,performance,etc). Spiders needs to address and fix this issue immediately.. the longevity of this game is going to be a literal blink of an eye if they don't, I almost gauarantee you.