Month: January 2019

Yesterday was the original Half-Life’s 20th anniversary, so happy birthday Gordan Freeman! You don’t look a day over 47! To celebrate the occasion, the Black Mesa team reveal a new Xen trailer for its Half-Life remake, showcasing the bizarre alien worlds that formed the back chunk of Valve’s seminal shooter.

There aren’t many people that would disagree with Xen being the worst part of the original Half-Life. It was a little bit, umm, haphazard and incongruous compared to the earlier stages of Half-Life. The Black Mesa devs are doing a pretty massive rework, in fact being largely original work compared to the earlier portions of the game. The content and design of Xen are now locked in and it’s just a case of polishing the game and tarting up the art between now and the expected launch in Q2 2019.

I have to say though, what’s already there looks absolutely stunning. The Black Mesa team have truly made Xen look like an alien world, and there’s the potential here to make one of the greatest games of all time even better.

Black Mesa: Xen will have a playtime of around six hours, so it’s going to much, much longer than the original it’s based on. It’s also obviously going to be folded into Black Mesa, which is currently available through Steam Early Access.

Has anyone else been holding out until the full game’s done until diving in? What do you think the Xen rework? Share your thoughts below!

Resident Evil 2 Remake
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User Review

8.21

Optimisation

9.4

Most Demanding

94

Resident Evil 2 Remake is available to play right now thanks to a demo on Steam. We’ve been busy putting this top-to-bottom remake through its paces to see how Resi Evil 2 runs on PC. Resident Evil 2 Remake is, without question, a fantastic looking game, but it can also be quite a performance hog if you’re not careful. A number of graphics options in Resi 2 can tank the frame rate.

This Resident Evil 2  PC performance guide can help you hit the sweet spot between graphics and performance. Using the chart below, you can find out just how demanding each graphics option is in RE2: Remake, demonstrating the percentage drop in frame rates when turning the graphics setting from Low to Ultra. This can provide an at-a-glance look at which graphics settings affect the frame rate the most in Resi Evil 2.

Together with this, we’ve given priority scores based on how important we believe it is to enable these graphics options for the optimum PC gaming experience with Resident Evil 2.

Resident Evil 2 Remake System Requirements

For the benchmark results below we used a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, an Intel Core i7-5820K processor, and 16GB DDR4 memory. The tests were performed in DirectX 11 mode. I ran through the same zombie/water-filled of an early area multiple times and took average frame rates.

Resident Evil 2 Remake Graphics Options Performance Breakdown

The further right the bar goes, the more demanding the graphics option is. In the case of a bar going left of zero, such as Shadow Cache and Rendering Mode in the Resident Evil 2 Remake performance chart below, this indicates that enabling this graphics option actually improves frame rates.

First things first, a large number of RE2 Remake’s graphics options are related to post-process effects and therefore have little bearing on performance. Options such Bloom, Lens Flare, Depth of Field, Film Noise and Lens Distortion are all optional visual features with barely any impact on frame rates. These settings all come down to personal preference rather than performance. Capcom has gone in really heavy with these effects. Turning everything on can lead to a slightly blurry, indistinct image quality. At times, playing on Low can actually look better than Ultra because of this. When it comes to these effects you’ll need to choose between cinematic quality and clarity.

Aside from this, we’ve got a handful of standout graphics options in Resident Evil 2 Remake that have a big impact on frame rates.

What are the most demanding graphics options in Resident Evil 2 Remake?

Firstly, there’s Image Quality, which is actually just resolution scaling. Set this to 200% and you’re effectively doubling your render resolution and halving your frame rate. Volumetric Lighting is the other big performance hog. It tanked the frame rate by 38% in the benchmark tests but it also looks fantastic. 

One option that goes other way is Shadow Cache. Enabling this option actually improves the frame rate in Resi Evil 2 really quite considerably. We average 128 fps with Shadow Cache off, then went all the way up to 176 fps with Shadow Cache enabled.

Resident Evil 2 Remake Graphics Settings

Rendering Mode

Change the method used to render Resident Evil 2, whether that’s Normal or Interlaced. Interlaced rendering reduces the image quality by rendering intermittent lines and producing a composite image.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 5/5

 

Image Quality

Image Quality refers to the resolution scaling. Keep this at 100% to render RE2 at your default resolution.

Performance Impact – 5/5

Priority – 0/5

 

Texture Quality

Change the quality of object textures in RE2. This setting is heavily reliant on your available VRAM (Video Memory) on your graphics card.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 2/5

 

Texture Filter Quality

Texture Filtering, otherwise known as Anisotropic Filtering, affects the clarity of textures when viewed at an angle.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 2/5

 

Mesh Quality

This setting changes the quality of polygonal meshes in Resident Evil 2 Remake. Its effect on visual quality is minimal.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 1/5

 

Shadow Quality

Does exactly what it says on the tin. Shadow Quality affects the resolution of shadows cast in Resident Evil 2. It does have a noticeable impact on performance but can significantly improve visual quality.

Performance Impact – 4/5

Priority – 3/5

 

Shadow Cache

Enabling Shadow Cache actually improves performance. This setting turns on dynamic shadow caching for moving objects.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 3/5

 

Contact Shadows

This setting affects the rendering of detail shadows at points of contact. Looking at the files in the box for an example of this in the image below.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 4/5

 

Screen Space Reflections

Screen Space Reflections handles surface reflections. primarily in puddles and other wet surfaces. Its application in Resi Evil 2 looks fantastic, albeit at a large frame rate hit.

Performance Impact – 4/5

Priority – 5/5

 

Subsurface Scattering

This setting is specifically related to the quality of skin rendering and, in truth, it looks arguably better Off than On. Considering the frame rate dip this setting causes in Resident Evil 2, we’d recommend you switch this off.

Performance Impact – 4/5

Priority – 1/5

 

Volumetric Lighting Quality

The single most demanding graphics setting, yet also probably the best looking. Volumetric Lighting allows for cascading light effects that really help build Resident Evil 2’s atmosphere.

Performance Impact – 5/5

Priority – 4/5

 

Particle Lighting Quality

Changes the quality of particle lighting. In truth, this is only slightly noticeable during gameplay but it’s not going to cost you many frames.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 1/5

 

Ambient Occlusion

Changes the rendering of shadows cast by ambient lighting, particularly noticeable on edges and other contact points.

Performance Impact – 3/5

Priority – 3/5

 

Bloom

Bloom causes light to bleed from bright light sources. This comes down to personal preference but I personally think it contributes a lot to that classic Resi Evil visual quality.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 3/5

 

Lens Flare

Lens Flare shows light scattering, simulating a camera lens. Again, entirely down to taste although Lens Flare arguably adds little to the overall quality of an image.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 1/5

 

Motion Blur

Always controversial and with no definitive answer, Motion Blur adds a blur effect to moving objects.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 1/5

 

Depth of Field

DoF adjust the focus of objects depending on their distance. This is a cinematic effect with no effect on performance.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 3/5

 

Lens Distortion

Adds a barely noticeable lens distortion effect.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 1/5

 

Film Noise

Adds a post-process film noise filter that can significantly blur the overall image. Turn this off for a sharper image if Resident Evil 2 Remake.

Performance Impact – 0/5

Priority – 1/5

Windows 7 Professional
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User Review

7.5

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10

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We’re now into the final year of Windows 7 receiving security updates. Mainstream support for Windows 7 finished back in 2015 but now it’s almost time for extended support for Windows 7 to wind down. On January 14th, 2020, Windows 7 users will no longer receive any security updates for the operating system.

On this day in a year’s time, support for Windows 7 will be dead. It will be a legacy operating system that has been abandoned by Microsoft. Naturally, Windows 7 users will still be able to continue using Windows 7 after 2020, it will just become more vulnerable to security threats and won’t be updated to be compatible with newer hardware.

Windows 7 is still a massively popular OS though, accounting for roughly 28% of all PC gamers according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey. This number is shrinking month by month, however, with Windows 10 now in a commanding position and 63.79% of the surveyed Steam user base.

Millions and millions are still clinging onto the decade-old operating system though, and they’re running out of time to make the switch without opening themselves up to potentially significant security vulnerabilities. The biggest impact will undoubtedly be felt in the enterprise sector, many of which will require large-scale OS upgrades or simply rely on software that isn’t made to run on new operating systems.

From my personal usage, I’ve never really run into many issues with Windows 10, despite hearing plenty of anecdotal horror stories. It may be the luck of the draw, or just very specific use cases causing issues, but Windows 10 always seems to do the job just fine. The lure of the new OS clearly isn’t enough for a significant portion of the PC user base though, but abandoned security support may be the final push some people need.

How many of you fine folks are still using Windows 7? Will you finally upgrade once Microsoft’s support ends? If not, why?

OK, this is starting to get a little ridiculous now. THQ Nordic is continuing in its march to hoover up as many videogame IPs as humanly possible, like some sort of all-consuming  beast, announcing it has “acquired the intellectual properties for the Expedition Series.”

Logic Artists’ Expeditions: Viking launched last year to a ‘Very Positive’ reaction on Steam, and was the follow-up to the cult favourite Expeditions: Conquistador.

Evidently, THQ Nordic likes what it’s seen because it’s acquired the rights to the Expeditions franchise from Logic Artists and also announced a third game in the series has now started development. Logic Artists will once more be the development team.

This news follows closely in the footsteps of THQ Nordic buying both Coffee Stain Studios and Wreckfest developer Bugbear. THQ Nordic now owns Koch Media (Shenmue 3, Metro Exodus, Saints Row), as well as the rights to TimeSplitters, Alone in the Dark, Act of War, Delta Force, Joint Operations, Jagged Alliance, Red Faction, Darksiders, Kingdoms of Amalur, Biomutant, Stuntman, and about a billion more. At last count, THQ Nordic had over 55 games in development.

At this point, it’s getting to the stage where even Valve should be sitting up and taking notice. THQ Nordic’s net sales have risen 1403% over the last 12 months. This is a publisher very much in the ascendancy, and one building up a truly formidable catalogue of games and IP.

Most Demanding Score?

Valve has outlined some of the big changes that’ll be coming to Steam throughout 2019 and beyond. Competition is heating up in the weird and wonderful world of PC game clients and Valve is no doubt feeling the pressure to adapt, if not survive.

A grand total of eight changes are planned, some of which will affect you, some won’t. Chief among these is enhanced Store Discoverability. With more than 30,000 games now on Steam, Valve is working on a personal AI-based solution using machine learning to recommend games to players based on their exact individual tastes. This will be joined by more broadcasting and curation features to help better direct Steam users to the content they could be interested in.

A second big change will be the introduction of Steam China. From the sounds of things, Valve is looking to spin the Chinese market into its own separate client and this involves a partnership with Perfect World who’ll bring Steam onshore into China. As you can see in the chart below there has been a huge surge in the number of Asian players on Steam lately, causing a few, er, community scuffles along the way. Valve’s solution is for a more integrated client for Chinese users.

The change that I’m perhaps looking to most though is the proposed Steam Library Update. Valve has promised some long-awaited changes to the Steam Client will be coming our way, somehow reworking the tech in Steam Chat to deliver a revamped library. It’ll be interesting to see what form these changes take, or potentially if Valve is even looking at stronger library integration with other clients.

And the remaining planned changes for Steam in 2019 are as follows:

New Events System

While there’s already an events and notifications system in place, Valve is working to upgrade events so players can highlight particular events, streams, tournaments or challenges and schedule them appropriately.

Steam TV

Twitch and YouTube have come along and eaten Steam’s lunch in this respect but Valve is at long last working on expanding Steam TV support to all Steam games, as well as broadcasting more tournaments.

Steam Chat

Overall the improvements to Steam Chat last year were decent, and much needed, and this year Valve is planning to expand the increased functionality to mobile users through the launch of a new dedicated Steam Chat mobile app.

Steam Trust

Back in 2017, Valve rolled out the Trust Factor system for CSGO. This is a means to identify the trustworthiness of a player through a series of mostly undisclosed factors. It tracks things like cheating reports and time spent playing other games to build up a profile of how likely you are to cheat. It then matches you up to players with a similar Trust Factor. In theory, this means the cheaters end up playing with other cheats. In 2019, Valve is going to be applying this system client-wide on Steam. Users will have a Steam Trust score that will be available in all games.

Steam PC Cafe Program

This one’s a bit niche for most of us I should imagine but Valve is beginning a PC Cafe Program so that Steam is properly catered to in “hundreds of thousands of PC Cafes worldwide”.

And that’s your lot. Which of these changes are you most eager to see Valve implement first? Are there any major oversights you think they should be addressing first?

PUBG Corp has announced it’s temporarily halted its ‘Fix PUBG’ campaign earlier than anticipated. The Fix PUBG initiative was introduced to address core performance issues and long-standing bugs, but PUBG Corp has now acknowledged that dedicating its entire development resource to Fix PUBG has, bizarrely, caused several new major stability issues to arise.

“I apologize to the players on behalf of the Dev team for the postponement until now, but while we’re a little late from the posted FIX PUBG schedule, we still feel it’s important to share the results of this campaign,” said Taeseok Jang, executive producer on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

The Fix PUBG campaign began in August and was designed to tackle four key problem areas for PUBG – client performance, server performance and net code, anti-cheat, and matchmaking and bug fixes.

Jang explains that PUBG Corp has had some degree of success over the past three months. Client performance is now a little smoother, with frame rates improved across the board. The early game server performance has also been improved in the region on 20% compared to in July, allowing for more stable early game play immediately after the drops. However, there is a lingering issue of desyncing that is a result of server tick-rates fluctuating.

Going forward, build stability and quality will be the top priority for PUBG updates. “At first, this is likely to slow down our build cadence, but as these processes become more proficient, we hope to provide new content as fast as before, while maintaining our new stability and quality-first goal,” Taeseok Jang said. “While we cannot say how long this will take, we promise you that we will give our best efforts to reach this stage as quickly as possible.”

Ultimately though, there are still a lot of issues with PUBG that are yet to be fixed, and a number of fans aren’t too happy. Development has been slow and monolithic in a way that hasn’t allowed PUBG to advance and adapt as quickly as it could, or perhaps should.

There’s a real feeling that PUBG Corp has massively dropped the ball in regards to the game’s long-term success. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was nothing less than a phenomenon last year but it’s increasingly withering on the vine. Peak Steam player counts are dropping and there’s little doubt it’s been well and truly usurped by Fortnite these days. The two games are incredibly different but they’re often uttered in the same breath, and while Fortnite enjoys weekly content updates, wholesale map changes, and major events, PUBG is fairly static and, well, unfinished, in comparison. There’s also the small matter of COD: Black Ops 4’s Blackout mode, which has earned plenty of plaudits during its first month. Despite that, PUBG is still the number one most played game on Steam, so there’s plenty of reasons to rescue it if PUBG Corp can avert the slide.

How are you finding PUBG these days, were you pleased with the results of the Fix PUBG campaign? Is it in danger of slipping out of favour? Let us know your thoughts!

Cloud Imperium Games have just added Hurston to Star Citizen, the game’s first fully explorable planet. The celebrate the event, CIG is offering a Free Fly even in Star Citizen next week.

From November 23rd through to December 1st, players will be able to download the most up-to-date version of Star Citizen and play for a week, free of charge. In what I believe is a first, players will be able to try out each and every flyable ship and vehicle during the Free Fly week. Ships cost anywhere from tens to hundreds of dollars, so this should be a great way to see what the fuss is all about, and also to judge of Star Citizen is worth dropping down a wodge a cash.

“Starting on November 23rd, every day, a different ship manufacturer in the game will make its entire flyable fleet available for a 24-hour test flight period,” said CIG.

“There may also be some surprises in store for those of you who make the trek out to Hurston and see what Lorville’s all about, as well as some fun interactive activities here on the website, so stay tuned.”

The full schedule for the Free Fly event can be viewed here. There are different ships rotating in and out of the selection every day, so if you’ve got one you’re keeping an eye on then you’ll have to be fairly organised.

The prospect of an explorable planet has me interested, I have to admit. Will it be a featureless void of a genuinely exciting place to traipse around? I guess there’s only one way to find out.