Slaughtahouse

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom , 1080p output NOTE: Images are story spoiler free BUT if you don't want to see any changes to Hyrule... spoiler tags are there.

Honestly, these past few months, and even last couple years have been really good for gaming. Sure, not every PC port is in good condition. Refer to Digital Foundry recent reviews for, Callisto Protocol, Dead Space, that Square Enix RPG, The Last of Us, RedFall. But still, there are a lot of GOOD quality games. Whether triple A or indie. I've probably never played as much games in my adult life (6-8hrs a week) as I do now. Since the pandemic started, I've been playing.... Hades (PC + Switch) Resident Evil Series (Remakes 2, 3, + new entries 7, and 8.) Catching up on Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, Elden Ring (PC) Inscryption (PC) Doom Eternal (PC) Hitman 3 (PC) Pentiment (PC) Streets of Rage 4 (PC + Switch) TMNT: Shredders Revenge (PC + Switch) God of War 2018 (PC) All of those titles are past couple years. This year with titles like Dredge, RE4 remake, Tears of the Kingdom... Hell, the next month has 3 absolute bangers: FF XVI, Diablo IV, SF VI.

I was doing an update (see above) and I discovered a game I've never heard of called "Humanity". Reminds me of Lemmings. Check it out here -> HUMANITY HUMANITY.GAME The fate of all humanity is in your hands. Er, paws. AVAILABLE NOW.

2023-05-16- Updates Added the following title(s): Humanity (PC, Playstation) Layers of Fear (PC, Xbox, Playstation) Metacritic scores (PC) for the following titles: Darkest Dungeon II - N/A -> 81% Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection - N/A -> 80% The Last of Us: Part I - 54% -> 57% Metacritic scores (Consoles) for the following titles: Humanity -> 85% The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - N/A -> 96% Dates: Humanity - May 15, 2023 Layers of Fear - June 15, 2023 Misc: Layers of Fears was renamed to Layers of Fear. The original title Layers of Fear from 2016 is now referred to as Layers of Fear (2016). Hella confusing... xD A demo is also now available too. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom takes the number one spot for a new game in 2023 with the highest rated Metacritic score (96%).

Shipping time for the mug conflicts with a travel but I will check back in a few weeks. I really like the 2.0 mug

Just saw this thread... woah awesome designs on the mugs. Tempted.

Is there a title that has been or will be released this year? If so, I can add it to the list.

2023-05-09 Updates Added the following title(s): Endless Dungeon (PC, Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch) Metacritic scores (PC) for the following titles: Company of Heroes 3 - 81% -> 80% Crime Boss: Rockay City - 51%-> 52% Dead Island 2 - N/A -> 75% Dredge - 81% -> 80% EA Sports PGA Tour - N/A -> 71% Minecraft Legends - N/A -> 67% Redfall - N/A -> 55% Star Wars Jedi: Survivor - N/A 79% Metacritic scores (Consoles) for the following titles: Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re-Boot Camp - N/A-> 82% Blood Bowl 3 - N/A-> 59% Dead Island 2 - N/A -> 74% Dead Space (2023) - N/A -> 89% Dredge - N/A -> 80% EA Sports PGA Tour - N/A -> 76% Meet your Maker - N/A -> 73% Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection - N/A -> 78% Minecraft Legends - N/A -> 71% (XB|X) Redfall - N/A -> 57% (XB|X) Star Wars Jedi: Survivor - N/A -> 86% Dates: Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon - August 24, 2023 Endless Dungeon - October 19, 2023 Misc: Updated "systems" by including consoles for various titles including Final Fantasy XVI, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Hogwarts Legacy and other titles. I'm sure I am missing more updates but been busy these past few weeks. I'll try to revisit this every month to do a QC pass (where possible). The Metacritic updates are br00tal... xD

VANQUISH 1440p, Max

I could populate this with more RE4 but... I've recently finished it and finally starting to carve on my backlog. Here's Vanquish, an excellent action 3rd person shooter by Platinum Games from the 360 era. Which was lead by Shinji Mikami, the director of the original RE4 The port on Steam is fantastic. Runs really well, scales up nicely. Constant 120fps no sweat. VANQUISH 4K, Max

Keep in mind that console architecture is different, including latency between memory, storage, gpu etc. I know you know this... but still, its worth flagging in this discussion. Generally speaking, looking at a quantity of memory on a console in isolation doesn't translate when the pipeline on a PC trying to render the same game is different. We know from years of data, it generally takes X% more PC system power to drive a similar console experience. Consoles are becoming more like PC's but they're still different. 12GB will likely be the min. for high quality textures, assets at 4K... but I suspect that the recommendation will be closer to 16GB in the next couple of years. You need that buffer for all those bad ports out there... If Nvidia wants to resolve things, they'll do so when their shareholders lash out. For now, they can continue with the "deal with it" sentiment. What do we have... maybe 6-8 months more of interest hikes in the US? When we're at peak inflation, maybe, just maybe, the ship will start to correct itself. Consumers and businesses are already cutting spend. Nvidia can only respond in one way. Lower prices. On the flipside, Nvidia is thirsty right now, and they got a few fish on the line (tech companies with deep pockets throwing money at "AI"). Anyway, I digress with my tinfoil hat tech / economics theory TL;DR -> PC gamers need to be aware of VRAM, Memory, and storage requirements this gen if they want full details. If you're not keeping up with the 16GB GPU VRAM, 32GB System RAM, SSD drive, just get ready to lower your expectations and lower some settings like DLSS / FSR (lower rendering resolutions).

You should download Unreal Engine 5 and give it a test. Even if you're unfamiliar with modeling or creating scenes, there are the Megascans (Quixel) library and you can play with the tools. It's all free. I'm sure there are full scenes beyond just the Matrix demo which you can download and play with too. I

Ray Tracing and Path Tracing will eventually become the norm for games pushing the boundaries (visuals.) Both these technologies have been around for quite some time. Just not for gaming. These aren’t gimmicks. This isn’t even really a question. It’s just the first time (~2018) we’ve had real-time rendering for both techniques. Just consider for a moment that it would take large, render farms, which would be dense racks full of CPUs / GPUs, a considerable amount of time and effort to produce millions of static frames that are stitched together for movies at 24fps. Now, whilst we don’t have that level of accuracy (upscaled resolution, noise, limited number of bounces etc.) compared to films, we are pretty close to getting that effect in real-time. The reality is that the scene geometry needs to be pretty simple with current hardware at modern resolutions. Otherwise the hardware gets choked. No surprise to anyone here DLSS and all these upscalers in my mind, are simply the short-to-mid term solutions to help developers keep this technology viable and usable whilst developers learn how to leverage the new tools in a rendering pipeline. Also, most importantly, ship products that sell to help drive the purchase of more RT / PT capable hardware. Maybe there will be more advancements in upscaling to help significantly offset the computation load and, that technology will become the norm. That I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball but until we’re there, I wouldn’t rely on them when native remains superior and that SHOULD be the target if we’re aiming for CG Film level fidelity. My honest gut is that we’re probably closer in the range of 10 years to 15 out before we meet that point in the curve. The point where modern games with modern features at modern resolutions can be rendered with full path tracing in real time but… I believe it will come. I’m very happy to see some developers continue to get sponsored or maybe more objectively, continue to collaborate with Nvidia, AMD to implement this tech because it will drive the medium forward. Just on the consumer side, I know it’s futile to invest so heavily into RT / PT right now. Kudos to those who can afford to buy and play with 4090s and CP2077 and I hope this tech to grows exponentially with more R&D. Hard to ignore the complexity and costs of producing the latest and greatest GPU dies, at scale, whilst utilizing the latest tech. Anyway, this is just a long winded post to say… I love ray tracing and path tracing, but i’ll be on the sidelines for now until it becomes viable without significant compromise.

I'm not really sure who is in the market for such a console. They're probably prototyping a custom RDNA 4 chip that can deliver X% more performance at the total system power package of ~200w. Will it actually release? Seems unlikely in 2024 considering the context of this generation. That's basically it. This generation has had an extended cross-over period with last gen. Heck, big releases are still rolling out on last gen. RE4, Harry Potter, Callisto, God of War etc. Most games that will push the hardware, exclusively on this gen, are slated for later this year, next year, or simply don't have a release date. Examples: Starfield, Wolverine, Dragon Age, Perfect Dark, etc.

Reserved

Delete

^

Thanks for sharing Just one other small note, I've identified my post with the google sheet as the "solution". I wanted to test out that feature and it works as I would like. Now everyone has a link at the top, no matter what page they're on, to the post with the google sheet. Of course, it's not "the solution" but treat it as a short cut.

2023-04-06 Updates Added new column in the Data - 2023 sheet called "Metacritic Score (Console)" All titles in the PC - Pivot Table sheet will only show their average review score by "Metacritic Score (PC)" All titles in the Console - Pivot Table will only show their average review score by "Metacritic Score (Console)" In the event a game is on both PC and Console, please use the Pivot Table sheets to filter average review scores. In the event a game is on multiple consoles (PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch etc.), the PlayStation 5 score will take first priority. Reason: Most popular current generation console in 2023. In the event a game is exclusively on a single platform (E.g., The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on Nintendo Switch) than the Console Metacritic score for that platform will be included. Added the following title(s): Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re-Boot Camp Crime Boss: Rockay City Hi-Fi Rush Live A Live Meet Your Maker PC Metacritic scores for the following titles: Crime Boss: Rockay City - N/A -> 51% Everspace 2 - N/A -> 83% Hi-Fi Rush - N/A -> 87% Meet Your Maker - N/A -> 78% Console Metacritic scores for the following titles: Hi-Fi Rush - N/A -> 87% Metroid Prime: Remastered -> 94% Dates: Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re-Boot Camp - April 21, 2023 Crime Boss: Rockay City - March 28, 2023 Everspace 2 - Early Access -> April 6, 2023 Hi-Fi Rush - January 25, 2023 Live A Live - April 27, 2023 Meet Your Maker - April 4, 2023 Notes: If a game has been on console for sometime and is released in 2023 on PC, it will be added to the list as a new title. E.g., Live A Live. Reason: This is a PC enthusiast website... I need time to continue updating the Metacritic scores for consoles. Please standby. It will take some time until I can implement some type of automation.

Any games you think are worth mentioning or adding to the list, just post them here or leave a comment on the sheet. I’ll add Dredge tomorrow. First time hearing about it

Honestly, I have no idea what "Gollum" is about, either than the fact that you will play as Gollum. That can go 1 of 2 ways. Either its very innovative or... it's just a generic movie / lore tie in. This image doesn't give me a vote of confidence -> but hey, my assumptions have been wrong before. Dune: Spice Wars is currently in Early Access. Let me fix the sheet... Reviews are good but full release is soon. Looks like an RTS. Haven't played or studied it all that much

2023-04-04 Updates Metacritic scores for the following titles: The Last of Us: Part 1 - N/A -> 54% WWE23 - 77% -> 78% Dates: Ark 2 delayed to late 2024 Final Fantasy XVI - June 22, 2023 Dune: Spice Wars - April 26, 2022 Early Access Endless Dungeon - May 18, 2023 Goodbye Volcano High - June 15, 2023 Last Epoch - Early Access The Lord of the Rings: Gollum - May 25, 2023 System Shock (2023) - May 30, 2023

New Driver -> AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 23.4.1

One step at a time... curious to see if they can get to a competitive state in ~5 - 10 years on the workstation side (Dell, HP, Lenovo etc.)

At least for me, yes