Farcry 4

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Painkiller has them all beat for atmosphere (and gameplay for at least those that I have played).

The shooting and gameplay indeed is simple but old-school satisfying (strafing and shooting). The levels and environments were well done, and the bosses were humongous. The expansion Battle out of hell was also excellent.

Originally Posted by JDR13
No, Crysis 2 wasn't entirely linear, but most areas generally were. It was indeed fantastic from a visual standpoint, but the story and gameplay were unispired to me. Other than the graphics, it was a basic run-of-the-mill shooter, nothing more.

To each his own. I found it an above-average shooter - but still just a shooter. More or less like Crysis, minus the open world feel and with console limitations on technology.

Not that it's important, but it seems most people agree that it's better than Rage - if we go by metacritic

Rage definitely doesn't perform like crap. I have to assume whatever issues you had were a product of your setup. In fact, it was one of the smoothest running games I played in a long time. As far as the environments go, well that's subjective. It doesn't surprise me that you didn't like the setting though, as you've stated many times that you're not a fan of post-apocalyptic worlds.

I tried it again recently with an Nvidia 670 card - and it was better, but it still had some issues. Naturally, this is with everything on max. The textures still visibly loaded as you turned, though it was near-instantaneous.

I'm not sure how you managed to get it to be one of the smoothest running games you've played on subpar hardware, but whatever.

Overall, I don't consider Rage to be above average, but I think it's worth a playthrough for most people.

I certainly don't agree it's worth a full playthrough for "most people" - but I'd recommend giving if you're a dedicated shooter fans.

Painkiller was boring crap and I never really played Quake 4. I've meant to try it on several occasions. Maybe I should try soon

PK had the card system and combo shots which made it very entertaining for me (specially the jiggling mechanic for gold coins). And the challenges / unlocks. Pretty graphics aren't enough but they were excellent at the time.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Not that it's important, but it seems most people agree that it's better than Rage - if we go by metacritic .

Well that most certainly settles that then.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
I tried it again recently with an Nvidia 670 card - and it was better, but it still had some issues. Naturally, this is with everything on max. The textures still visibly loaded as you turned, though it was near-instantaneous.

I'm not sure how you managed to get it to be one of the smoothest running games you've played on subpar hardware, but whatever.

Interesting that you would try it again considering how much you hated it.

I played it with everything maxed except AA, on much less than a geforce 670, and it was indeed smooth throughout. There was that visible texture loading in *some* areas, but I'm talking about performance, not visual glitches.

Interesting that you would try it again considering how much you hated it.

I played it with everything maxed except AA, on much less than a geforce 670, and it was indeed smooth throughout. There was that visible texture loading in *some* areas, but I'm talking about performance, not visual glitches.

I tried it because I was curious about performance on my new card, and I never really intended to actually play it.

Visual texture loading/streaming is a part of performance and NOT a visual glitch. It's part of the mega-texture technical implementation. The Unreal engine does something similar for performance reasons - where you clearly see the textures being loaded.

When I originally played it, it was on an ATI/AMD card - and the texture-loading was much slower and painfully so. They never bothered to optimise it for those cards, apparently.

Dart, for someone who claims gameplay is most important you sure spend a lot of time critiquing graphics quality.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Dart, for someone who claims gameplay is most important you sure spend a lot of time critiquing graphics quality.

You mean that if I value love above looks, I can't call an ugly girl ugly?

That sounds like some seriously black/white thinking, but that's par for the course

That said, I'm pretty sure I spend more time bashing gameplay than graphics.

I'm more amazed that he apparently reinstalled a 25GB game he doesn't like just to test his graphics card.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Visual texture loading/streaming is a part of performance and NOT a visual glitch. It's part of the mega-texture technical implementation. The Unreal engine does something similar for performance reasons - where you clearly see the textures being loaded.

Cool… but I'm talking about speed here. The texture loading didn't seem to affect the FPS rate for me.

Iirc, there were also some config tweaks floating around that pretty much eliminated that entirely.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I'm more amazed that he apparently reinstalled a 25GB game he doesn't like just to test his graphics card.

Yeah, it's mind-shattering that I'd let my computer install for 10 minutes to test a game that performed like crap before and which was supposed to be much better on Nvidia cards.

You must be REALLY bored if you think that's amazing stuff

Would it shock you to death if I said I also installed 3DMark, even though you can't play it?

Cool… but I'm talking about speed here. The texture loading didn't seem to affect the FPS rate for me.

Iirc, there were also some config tweaks floating around that pretty much eliminated that entirely.

Make up your mind, then

You're talking about FPS, ok. The time it takes to load textures could be attributed to "speed" - but whatever.

I was talking about overall performance - and if you had visible texture loading too, then it makes sense.

I don't like visible texture loading on that scale, but that's just me - I guess.

Also, I found the controls somewhat imprecise and awkward for a shooter. It just didn't feel good. Probably because they were designed around a console controller - and they didn't bother tweaking it properly for mouse/keyboard.

As for config tweaks, you could be right. But I've lost all interest by now.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I'm more amazed that he apparently reinstalled a 25GB game he doesn't like just to test his graphics card.

Uh huh. Case closed.

Wow, you guys sure got me there - like always

I think that's enough of a derail for now, though.

Originally Posted by CountChocula
Once you buy or receive free three or four cool weapons such as the recurve bow, sniper rifle, the GL-94 perhaps a couple more, and then add modifications, there is really nothing else to spend money on in this game, other than replenishing your ammo from time to time. I think it could have been improved by making you save up to purchase vehicles.

Well the signature weapons you can unlock aren't free and are also pretty nice.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Make up your mind, then

You're talking about FPS, ok. The time it takes to load textures could be attributed to "speed" - but whatever.

I was talking about overall performance - and if you had visible texture loading too, then it makes sense.

I don't like visible texture loading on that scale, but that's just me - I guess..

Ok, DArtagnan. Whatever you say.

I've been talking about the same thing since the beginning. What do you think most people would be referring to when they talk about "smoothness". That certainly doesn't sound like something visual to me.

But the texture loading certainly seems to bother you, and even though it's a different topic imo, it's still a valid complaint.

Maybe we should get back on topic though. Let's talk about how Far Cry 1 is superior to FC3.

This is good news, I just bought the game yesterday and it already got patched (version 1.04). Haven't studied what's fixed exactly, but there is a protest already on unfixed/unadded issue on ubisoft forum:
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php…-other-options

EDIT:
So far it's fun, I'm hunting animals to get those "containers" upgraded, but seems to me that reds are apperaing too much… Dunno if they'll be removed from the region if I clear the next outpost… Would be nice.

Four maps down and munitions storage blewn up. Solved all sidequests on those four sections (kill, hunt, med-race, exclamation).
Steam says I've been playing the game for 6 hours, that ain't true, it was more than that.

The game crashed on me 3 times so far, not a biggie. And it seems that when the game crashes, Steam doesan't record how many hours you've played it before the crash.

Savegame system is not very bad actually. You have only one slot - those three mentioned in this thread mean you can play parallelly three games in fact three characters and each one has his own slot. The only bad thing is that you lose all ammo you used if you fail, you can't buy more at towers where you sometimes respawn but you can't quicktravel to those towers - and sometimes they're closest to your mission objective, quest giver or hunting ground.

In any case, cash, weapons, ammo and other stuff are not really a problem. The problem however is unbelievably hard to kill animals. Dunno if it's me, but I had to, for example, use 7-8 arrows to kill the black panther (hunt quest where you have to use a bow, and I didn't have pots for dmg boost unlocked!). Killing a "cow" (buffalo skin) with sniper oneshot in it's head is impossible. Two shots needed? No. More. You need to waste 5-6 bullets to bring it down. Etc etc, it's not realistic or those are GMO animals.

But those are just nitpicks, there is only one thing I really dislike. It's the design of sneak/kill/drag system (F-S keys). The one in DX:HR was way better, here, if you drop the body too soon, that's it, you can't drag it more. Okay, Farcry3 is FPS and not RPG like DX:HR, but still it's lousy system. Luckily, once you get a sniper and put a silencer on it, you don't have to worry about body dragging however.

So far I'm really enjoying the game. It's not boring, it's not annoying, area mob respawns (reds, not animals) stop when you clear their bases which is awsome, relics are sometimes hidden very well and you have to explore area more thoroughly, fall somewhere, climb somewhere and use knife or machete (F) to clear the passage, etc.
I have to add also that the cave with mushrooms was a masterpiece mission.

Based on what I've seen so far, the game definetly deserves 9/10. I've numbered the minuses above. Good job Ubi Montreal.

Originally Posted by joxer
But those are just nitpicks, there is only one thing I really dislike. It's the design of sneak/kill/drag system (F-S keys). The one in DX:HR was way better, here, if you drop the body too soon, that's it, you can't drag it more. Okay, Farcry3 is FPS and not RPG like DX:HR, but still it's lousy system. Luckily, once you get a sniper and put a silencer on it, you don't have to worry about body dragging however.

You mean there is a way to drag bodies? How do you do this exactly? My keys are remapped to my Nostromo and I have all the HUD turned off, so there are no button prompts.

First you have to unlock that skill. When you unlock it, it has a sort of tutorial where it displays keymaps or possibly another way of doing it if you're not using a keyboard on PC.

The trick is when you sneak and then kill someone silently by hitting F key, just press and hold key S - you'll automatically start moving backwards and drag the dead body till you unpress S. Once you drop the body this way, you can't drag it more - this was made much better in DX:HR where you can drag bodies with E anytime and anywhere. Also don't forget that throwing a stone (key T in my case) shouldn't be neglected - by doing that you can make an enemy come closer to you where noone will see when you kill him silently or you can make watchdogs move away from the spot where you need to make a kill. At least early in the game when you have no other options and getting 1500XP for clearing a base without being seen is too juicy to skip…

Remember that you won't get button prompts about body dragging as it's not really QTE.

I'm unsure why you don't get button prompts and you should report that on Ubisoft forums (or I'll test it in my game by turning HUD off and report it myself). More than once I got surprised by a crocodile, a panther or some other animal you can shake off or kill by holding or spamming a random key - if you don't see prompts you can't know which key you need to use. And if you ask me, that's a huge issue that must be fixed ASAP.

Originally Posted by joxer
I'm unsure why you don't get button prompts and you should report that on Ubisoft forums (or I'll test it in my game by turning HUD off and report it myself). More than once I got surprised by a crocodile, a panther or some other animal you can shake off or kill by holding or spamming a random key - if you don't see prompts you can't know which key you need to use. And if you ask me, that's a huge issue that must be fixed ASAP.

I don't get button prompts because the only way to disable the HUD currently is by using a hex edit program, that disables all HUD elements.

I can hold down the primary weapon button to see the HUD temporarily, in order to learn what items I have looted, for example, but there are no button prompts. Probably why those darn crocs always kill me

Ubisoft mentioned they are working on a patch that will allow us to disable the HUD using the in-game settings. Hopefully it will be available soon, but that giant mini-map and HUD are so huge and immersion-breaking, there is no way I could go back to playing with them enabled.

Oh cmon, it's not like you're playing the game on iPhone/iPad where the minimap would take half of the screen…
Maybe this mod would help - it unlocks HUD on QTE or if crouched, otherwise HUD is removed:
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php…=1#post8818960

So far nothing bothers me much that I would go use mods, especially when I'm playing the game for the first time.