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Frozencry
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 Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 3:34 pm Post subject: The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings Review |
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| The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings Review by Denny |  | | PC Review: A CDProjekt guide on how to make an amazing RPG. | | [View Article] |
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Moistflaps
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| Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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Ok so the plan is order it from OS next week so it arrives the week after exams - my will power isn't strong enough to let it sit on my desk whilst I study Workplace and Tax law...
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Benza
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| Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 4:02 pm Post subject: |
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I was half expecting your review to just be this picture posted repeatedly.
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Frozencry
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| Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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I was going for that bit for some reason they didn't wanna approve it.
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Shadow Wave
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Frozencry
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| Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 6:34 pm Post subject: |
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Depends.
What I mean by that is if you've finished the first, you'll have a strong familiarity with the world and many characters, so there'll be a lot of nostalgia and you'll get things a bit better.
With that said though it's not mandatory, it's just nice to have beaten the previous as you'll click in with a lot of what's going on almost immediately.
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BigBoss
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| Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 9:21 pm Post subject: |
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perfect aside from the battle mechanics
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Cyph
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| Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 10:58 pm Post subject: |
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My hat off to you sir Denny, an excellent review.
I posted earlier that I was having issues getting back into The Witcher 1. Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent game, but having played it numerous times already, a third playthrough was too much. That said, if you haven't played it, do so immediately.
I've only seen the beginning of Witcher 2 but so far I'm amazed. The graphics are amazing and the attention to world detail is masterful. Be warned, the game requires an elite rig and while not necessary, it would be almost sinful not to play this game in its full glory. A word of warning, even with the first patch I've encountered a number of bugs, nothing groundbreaking, but I'm thinking this may be a game that would be polished in the near future and thus might be worth waiting for.
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OropherX
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| Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 11:43 pm Post subject: |
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waiting for the Xbox 360 release =D
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Cyph
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 11:24 am Post subject: |
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I seriously could not image playing this game on a console OropherX, the current gen just wouldn't do it justice.
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Benza
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 11:36 am Post subject: |
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I know you've got a beast of a machine Denny, but any word on how well it scales for lower end systems? The first one seemed to scale fucking horribly, chugging up on my pc that can run far newer and prettier games without a hitch.
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Cyph
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 12:20 pm Post subject: |
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To give you an idea Benza, my rig follows;
core2duo E8500 @ 3.8GHz
Radeon HD5850
4GB Kingston HyperX DDR2800
Asus P5B Deluxe mainboard
Dell U2711 Monitor @ 2560 x 1440
I haven't had too much time to mess around with the settings for Witcher 2, but at 2560x1440 with no AA, full distance, medium settings and SSAO turned off, the game is generally smooth (I'll update with an FPS later). SSAO turned on absolutely kills the frame rate, I would say it hovers around 20 fps and dips when busy.
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jesuslol
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 12:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Benza wrote: | | I know you've got a beast of a machine Denny, but any word on how well it scales for lower end systems? The first one seemed to scale **** horribly, chugging up on my pc that can run far newer and prettier games without a hitch. |
It actually scales pretty well. On the official forums there are some people playing it on some pretty dated hardware (although on low). I think graphic card wise the oldest you could have would be around a 9800. CPU wise my brother has a Core2Duo 2.4 and he can play it on medium.
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jesuslol
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 12:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Cyph wrote: | To give you an idea Benza, my rig follows;
core2duo E8500 @ 3.8GHz
Radeon HD5850
4GB Kingston HyperX DDR2800
Asus P5B Deluxe mainboard
Dell U2711 Monitor @ 2560 x 1440
I haven't had too much time to mess around with the settings for Witcher 2, but at 2560x1440 with no AA, full distance, medium settings and SSAO turned off, the game is generally smooth (I'll update with an FPS later). SSAO turned on absolutely kills the frame rate, I would say it hovers around 20 fps and dips when busy. |
Have you updated to the first patch yet? If you purchased it through retail it could add like 10-20 fps by getting rid of the DRM. If you are having trouble installing the patch like I was, just uninstall the game and when it reinstalls it will automatically update and download the DLC as well.
Also ATI are releasing a new driver soon that is expected to improve The Witcher 2 performance.
For people with NVIDIA cards, download the latest BETA driver (Version 275.27. Released the day after launch if I remember so it had support). Also uninstall the 3D vision drivers. They cause the game to run slower for some reason that I do not know.
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Cyph
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah I did. As I said, I haven't had time to tweak the settings (if anyone knows a good tweak guide, please share it).
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jesuslol
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Cyph wrote: | | Yeah I did. As I said, I haven't had time to tweak the settings (if anyone knows a good tweak guide, please share it). |
Make sure ubersampling is turned off. It is meant only for the biggest of the big. You really don't need draw distance at max, it is fairly large at any setting fom the middle up. Turning motion blur off gave me a fair FPS boost, 5-10, and it made me feel sick anyway.
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Cyph
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:07 pm Post subject: |
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Heh yeh, definitely have ubersampling turned off.
I can't remember if motion blur is turned off, I think I did turn it off as I also don't like it. I'll mess around with the draw distance and see how that fairs.
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Frozencry
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Benza wrote: | | I know you've got a beast of a machine Denny, but any word on how well it scales for lower end systems? The first one seemed to scale **** horribly, chugging up on my pc that can run far newer and prettier games without a hitch. |
Yeah it scales pretty well. I tried it on my old setup as well and with medium-high it's far more optimised than the first. The first had an issue with high memory usage and leaks (primarily due to the engine they had at the time from what I know), but yeah this one is far far easier to run. On max I can easily say it's about on par with Crysis in demand (and even more so if you turn on ubersampling), but medium-low you'd be looking at a standard UE3 game imo, which are mostly quite easy to run.
| Cyph wrote: | | I seriously could not image playing this game on a console OropherX, the current gen just wouldn't do it justice. |
Definitely agree that consoles will have a hard time running this especially with the texture work, but I REALLY want this to go multiplatform, solely because it deserves the attention more so than any other game this year imo. This is the best, most polished and in-depth cRPG I've played since Baldurs Gate II and even though it's great to have a PC exclusive that also goes on to use the full power of PC, no gamer should be denied their right to play such an incredible game.
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Last edited by Frozencry on Tue May 31, 2011 1:18 pm, edited 1 time in total
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Jarrod
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:15 pm Post subject: |
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This review went up the same day as my copy finally arrived.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
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Cyph
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:32 pm Post subject: |
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I don't want it to go multiplatform, ultimately it never goes well and the core product is diluted for the general audience.
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Benza
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Cyph wrote: | | I don't want it to go multiplatform, |
Then it will continue to sit around in obscurity.
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Cyph
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 2:03 pm Post subject: |
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That's fine by me, they've hit the ball out of the ballpark in their first two outings. A game doesn't need to be multiplatform to be successful. Done right, then great, but on the current gen platforms, as I've already said, they couldn't do The Witcher justice.
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Jarrod
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 2:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Cyph wrote: | | I don't want it to go multiplatform, ultimately it never goes well and the core product is diluted for the general audience. |
The Witcher 2 was made with consoles in mind.
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Fetidchimp
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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as long as the lead was the pc i don't see why it matters....i don't care if it was done in 8 bit graphics as long as the game is fun
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Benza
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| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 2:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Cyph wrote: | | That's fine by me, they've hit the ball out of the ballpark in their first two outings. A game doesn't need to be multiplatform to be successful. Done right, then great, but on the current gen platforms, as I've already said, they couldn't do The Witcher justice. |
So you don't want CD Project to make lots of money on it that they can put into further development?
The Witcher is an incredibly niche title simply because it was PC exclusive. I think I read somewhere it might have even lost money on the first one. If they want to continue to develop at this scale they will need to go multiplatform.
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