Try before you buy.
by AC - permalink
So I bought Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter last week. I dunno why. I knew it wouldn't run very well on my PC, but I guess I was thinking optimistically. I mean, I figured I could always turn the specs way down to get a good framerate, and the gameplay wouldn't be affected. I was wrong.
First off, I'm a huge fan of the original Ghost Recon. I think it's an all-time classic PC game. It took the tactical elements of Rainbow Six and added a streamlined, real-time control system, then took the whole show outdoors and set it in a military environment. When you consider Ghost Recon and its two official expansion packs, Desert Siege and Island Thunder, as a whole, you've got a good hundred hours of solid single-player tactical FPS gameplay. And the game holds up to this day, five years after its release.
When I first picked up Ghost Recon, it was with an underpowered PC that just met its system requirements. But I was able to play and enjoy the game with a small amount of in-game tweaking. Unfortunately, Advanced Warfighter doesn't scale so well. My PC meets or exceeds the quoted recommended requirements, but to be blunt, it runs like stagnant mule shit. Even after tweaking Advanced Warfighter to get as much out of my hardware as possible, the game just is not playable enough to be enjoyable. It's a game based on precision and reflexes, and jerky, stuttering framerates and jagged, blurry textures are somewhat counterproductive.
I knew in advance that this game's engine, inexplicably, does not support any anti-aliasing whatsoever. The problem is, unlike the Doom 3 engine, this is one that really needs it, especially at low resolutions. And on a system-heavy game like this, you have to run at a low res to get a good framerate. So it pretty much just has to look like shit, HDR or no.
Still, I don't necessarily consider it a bad buy. Eventually I'll upgrade my video card or CPU or whatever, and the game will run like a champ. What's disappointing is that this game was released with visuals so demanding that they virtually eliminate 90% of all PC owners from even being able to play the game at all. I mean, according to the back of the damned box, my PC should crush this game, but in reality it's so hard to find a compromise between framerate and sharp visuals that I've actually uninstalled and shelved it.
By the way, I realize that there's an official patch for Advanced Warfighter that addresses a few performance issues, including the one where the game assigns itself a high CPU priority, making itself unplayable (way to play-test that one, guys). But it's 273MB, so I'll have to borrow my neighbors' bandwidth for that and burn it onto a CD. I'll try the game again once I have it, but I really don't think it's going to make a significant difference.
Next week on One Hundred Horseless Carriages: I buy F.E.A.R. and then uninstall and shelve it.
by AC - permalink
So I bought Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter last week. I dunno why. I knew it wouldn't run very well on my PC, but I guess I was thinking optimistically. I mean, I figured I could always turn the specs way down to get a good framerate, and the gameplay wouldn't be affected. I was wrong.
First off, I'm a huge fan of the original Ghost Recon. I think it's an all-time classic PC game. It took the tactical elements of Rainbow Six and added a streamlined, real-time control system, then took the whole show outdoors and set it in a military environment. When you consider Ghost Recon and its two official expansion packs, Desert Siege and Island Thunder, as a whole, you've got a good hundred hours of solid single-player tactical FPS gameplay. And the game holds up to this day, five years after its release.
When I first picked up Ghost Recon, it was with an underpowered PC that just met its system requirements. But I was able to play and enjoy the game with a small amount of in-game tweaking. Unfortunately, Advanced Warfighter doesn't scale so well. My PC meets or exceeds the quoted recommended requirements, but to be blunt, it runs like stagnant mule shit. Even after tweaking Advanced Warfighter to get as much out of my hardware as possible, the game just is not playable enough to be enjoyable. It's a game based on precision and reflexes, and jerky, stuttering framerates and jagged, blurry textures are somewhat counterproductive.
I knew in advance that this game's engine, inexplicably, does not support any anti-aliasing whatsoever. The problem is, unlike the Doom 3 engine, this is one that really needs it, especially at low resolutions. And on a system-heavy game like this, you have to run at a low res to get a good framerate. So it pretty much just has to look like shit, HDR or no.
Still, I don't necessarily consider it a bad buy. Eventually I'll upgrade my video card or CPU or whatever, and the game will run like a champ. What's disappointing is that this game was released with visuals so demanding that they virtually eliminate 90% of all PC owners from even being able to play the game at all. I mean, according to the back of the damned box, my PC should crush this game, but in reality it's so hard to find a compromise between framerate and sharp visuals that I've actually uninstalled and shelved it.
By the way, I realize that there's an official patch for Advanced Warfighter that addresses a few performance issues, including the one where the game assigns itself a high CPU priority, making itself unplayable (way to play-test that one, guys). But it's 273MB, so I'll have to borrow my neighbors' bandwidth for that and burn it onto a CD. I'll try the game again once I have it, but I really don't think it's going to make a significant difference.
Next week on One Hundred Horseless Carriages: I buy F.E.A.R. and then uninstall and shelve it.
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