Let me start by saying that Starbreeze is a talented studio. After the amazing Chronicles of Riddick and the first Darkness game, we were expecting big things from them. However, something is really off with their latest games. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena was not something special and Syndicate feels like a generic FPS that basically mixes Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s style and FEAR’s combat mechanics. But we are not here to judge its gameplay. And ironically, although the game feels like a big let down, its game engine is awesome and performs great on the PC. Continue reading Syndicate PC Performance Analysis→
Alan Wake is a game that a lot of PC gamers have been waiting for. Some people think that the game changed from an open-world title to a linear horror action adventure due to X360’s exclusivity, but that is not true. First, we’ve seen open-world titles in X360 so Remedy wouldn’t have any – technical – issue with developing such a title for Microsoft’s console. Truth is that the open-world tech demo simply didn’t work. It was cool but as a horror game, it just couldn’t work. Therefore, Remedy decided to make it more linear and offer the experience they have been targeting for all this time. Quick forward two years and here we are, with its PC version finally hitting our platform. Alan Wake has been released for the PC, so it’s time now to see how Remedy’s little gem performs on a modern-day PC. Continue reading Alan Wake PC Performance Analysis→
The Darkness II has just been released on the PC, and it’s time to see how Digital Extremes’ little baby performs on our beloved platform. Some of you might be initially disappointed with the fact that the game is not developed by Starbreeze, developers of the first part, but from what we’ve seen so far, The Darkness II performs amazingly good on a lot of PCs and is quite friendly to low-end PC configurations. This is not surprising at all as the game uses Digital Extremes’ in-house engine, the Evolution Engine, that was used to Dark Sector, a third-person game that was also well optimized. Continue reading The Darkness II PC Performance Analysis→
Okay, this is a game for which we really wanted to write a performance analysis. Given the fact that Rocksteady was preparing a patch for it, we decided to hold off and see whether the update would introduce any performance boost to the DX9 path. Unfortunately though, Batman: Arkham City is an un-optimized mess when it comes to its PhysX implementation. In other words, Rocksteady relied on PC’s additional raw power to overcome any performance issues. This is not shocking at all as Rocksteady used an old version of the PhysX SDK. But let’s start with our analysis, shall we? Continue reading Batman: Arkham City PC Performance Analysis→
At last, Croteam’s old-school FPS is finally here with us and it’s time to see how this bad boy performs with a modern-day PC. As usual, we used an overclocked Q9650 at 4.2Ghz, 4GB RAM and a GTX295 with Windows 7 64-Bit and Nvidia’s latest ForceWare drivers. First things first though; we have to congratulate Croteam for all those graphical options that are available. PC gamers can tweak pretty much everything, from the parallax occlusion mapping quality to the textures’ quality and the LOD amount. These are by far the best in-game options we’ve ever seen and every developer should take a good look at them. Continue reading Serious Sam 3: BFE PC Performance Analysis→
Modern Warfare 3 has been out for two weeks, and we felt the need to provide you with a performance analysis for it. The reason for our delay is quite simple; Activision hasn’t provided us with a review code, so we had to purchase it ourselves. This also explains why we’ve covered games like Jurassic Park and JANE’s Advanced Strike Fighters before most of triple-A games. When a publisher/developer sends us a review code, it will be covered immediately, whether it’s a triple-A game or not. Continue reading Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 PC Performance Analysis→
Saints Row: The Third is out now, and it’s time to see how this bad boy performs with a modern-day PC. Volition has stated that this is not a console port and although that might be true, we are really puzzled with its abnormal performance. We’re pretty sure that AMD/ATI will obviously know that it is a technical mess. This performance analysis, however, shows that Nvidia users will also encounter various issues with this game, especially if they want to run it in SLI mode. Continue reading Saints Row: The Third PC Performance Analysis→
At long last, Jurassic Park: The Game has finally been released. This is a great Heavy Rain clone that is addressed mainly to fans of those dino movies, as well as to those that are in love with the adventure genre. This is a Telltale game after all, the studio that was behind the Tales From Monkey Island and Sam & Max series. Obviously, we can’t expect it to look as drooling as – let’s say – Crysis 2 or even Heavy Rain. However, it’s quite interesting to see how the game performs with a modern-day PC, what are its ‘real’ requirements and what kind of visuals does it sport. Continue reading Jurassic Park: The Game PC Performance Analysis→
Being a huge fan of pretty much every JANE’s game, I was really looking forward to Jane’s Advanced Strike Fighters. Could this be the comeback of our favorite flight sim games? Apparently not as the game is more similar to Ace Combat than to the older JANE’s sims. To be honest, it was to be expected, especially after hearing that the game would actually be a multi-platform title. And although I don’t have any problems with arcade flight games, Jane’s Advanced Strike Fighters doesn’t provide anything to justify its purchase. Continue reading Jane’s Advanced Strike Fighters PC Performance Analysis→
Let us say that we love indie developers and especially Bohemia Interactive. The ArmA series is one of the best military simulation series ever, although its graphics engine is a bit problematic and rough around its edges. So when we heard about Take on Helicopters, we were skeptical. You see, instead of using the brand-new ArmA 3 engine, Take on Helicopters uses ArmA 2’s engine. And believe us, we tried. We really tried to enjoy Take on Helicopters but the game is currently plagued with performance issues and a – possibly – broken SLI profile. Therefore, if you own an SLI system, stay away from Take on Helicopters, for the time being. Why? Keep reading to find out. Continue reading Take On Helicopters Performance Analysis→