Initial Thoughts on Starfield

Originally I'd written up a big fleshed out piece for this, outlining the good and bad. But I'll summarise it a little more, as I don't think writing about it is worth that much effort. I'll put it this way instead.

War in the North Performance Solutions

Recently decided to give The Lord of the Rings War in the North a try, which unfortunately required buying a key off a third-party site for the PC version, as it's no longer available for sale. That said, I'd noticed as soon as I reached the second area, the performance absolutely tanked.

I've got an Intel Arc A770, so I'd wager it's more than likely a driver issue on Intel's side. That said, I found two solutions that seem to fix it.

Solution A (recommended): just use the latest DXVK (x86 binaries) from here. This appeared to fix the issue completely for me, though I can't be entirely sure if any other issues are introduced as I've not yet played through the entire game, but it seems more stable regardless.

Solution B: just turn off shadows. Under video settings, there's a toggle for shadows. You can turn them down to minimum, which will help, but I still saw dips in other areas, so it's probably just a good idea to turn them off altogether.

With that done, you'll hopefully have no issues with the game.

Finally Finished Alan Wake

And uh, yeah, it was alright. Can't really say the way the game ended felt, very rewarding? The narrative was great. The combat was awful.

Generally, it probably could've done with more variation in encounters. It took me a long, long time to finish it, as it felt pretty repetitive to me.

Anyway, that's a quick dump of my thoughts. Slightly shorter post than usual as it was spread over such a period of time that I can't even recall everything that happened.

Review: Forspoken

If you're here getting all excited to see me jump onto the bandwagon of slandering this game into oblivion, I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you. 

I'd just come away from reading some performance review for the game that Google had recommended me, only to groan upon seeing all the comments outlining how they either felt sorry for anyone that played the game (why did you bother reading the article then!?) or suggesting the game was nothing more than some form of "woke" media, and some other pretty messed up comments I'm not even going to get into.

There's a line between not enjoying something, and going out of your way to ensure that everyone knows how much you dislike the game, that borders on mental illness. It's a game. Use the capacity of your brain to do something more productive, please.

sigh

Is Forspoken flawed? Yes. It falls short of what I'd expect from a AAA game. Is it a terrible game? No. Which probably summarizes my review, but I hope you'll stick around to read the rest of my thoughts on it.

I must also warn you that this review is a bit rawer than those I've written prior. I'd originally attempted to write it a bit more orderly, but it didn't pan out, so in the end it felt worth just throwing myself at it instead and letting those emotions flow.

Oh, and, spoiler warning! I'll try to avoid talking about what happens at the end of the game, but might drop little clues, so something to keep in mind!

Review: Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry

No screenshots this time, I'm afraid, so I'll keep this one a bit more brief.