[Toy Soldier]

So for a quick first impressions update; framerate is fine (but I had to lock it at 60, which stings as I've gotten used to first person @144)... had to mix up the settings between medium and high but runs fine with shadow distance and quality all on high and textures on max (most important settings, IMO).

Cons;

- Framerate tanks when you look in a mirror. I think that's a patch issue. Also probably not an issue if you have RT as it'll handle reflections differently.

- It has some sort of weird ****ing mouse smoothing that you can't turn off. WHY. WHEN will developers learn that PC players don't want mouse smoothing??? Sigh. Someone will mod out/find a setting hidden in the code for that within the next few days, no doubt. But it sucks. Feels like moving the mouse through syrup, to the point where I'm almost tempted to use a controller like some dirty console n00b

[Toy Soldier]

Oh nvm that last part, locking to 60 seems to have mostly solved syrup-mouse AND allowed me to bump most settings back to high and stay at 60 . I shall inform Steam

[Toy Soldier]

Oh... definite Bethesda vibes already . (my very first bug)

Spoiler:

Not to mention that he's in the middle of the road and I skidded to a stop missing him by inches.

[Toy Soldier]

Promised performance update:

It runs fine out of combat but in combat was dropping to 35 - 40 fps even on low settings (which look horrible - this is def what the OG consoles are using). Weirdly though, putting to a mix of medium and high only drops the average by 2 or 3 frames which makes very little sense.

Dropped down to 1080p and getting a steady 60 - 70fps with everything on ultra, even during intense scenes... so, that's what we're going with for now. ... it'll do ... it's weird going back to antialiasing to get rid of jaggies in 2020, and the menus look a bit off, but the game looks (far, far) better on ultra @1080p than it does on medium @1440, and plays nice 'n' smooth sobut overall verdict is that you need an RTX for this to be comfortably playable above 1080. Probably at least a 3080 for 4k.

Which makes me think it'll look OK on the 4Pro and OneX ***i******* they have a performance option to run at 1080p. Knowing what the console market is like, though, it might be locked at 4k in which case I have to say I can only see it running like trash. This needs some serious beef to run at 4k.

I really want my 3080 . BUT we shall forge on with 1080p . If I take off my glasses I can't even tell, heh.

[Toy Soldier]

OH, also, by default for some bizarre reason it has post processing that makes it look slightly muddy, which I have removed with ReShade and the colours look so much better with it off. So... again... sux 2 be console I guess, you're stuck with that.

[Toy Soldier]

The reshade doesn't affect performance, in any way. Am I over-reacting? It's comparatively so ugly and I can't figure out why they would do this

ALSO, the game has no anti-aliasing options by default, I had to force it in nVidia Control Panel. Best guess is that this is because AA doesn't play well with HDR so they've removed the option entirely... expecting the status quo to be 4k+HDR when no one actually has the graphics horsepower to run that.

I reiterate what I said earlier; they've made and released a game that will run well and look amazing on next-gen consoles and 2021-and-beyond gaming PC's (RTX30-series+) and released it for the current gen. I think it might tank reviews tbqfh, most people are nowhere near geeky & patient enough to go through all of this optimising.

On the bright side, I've not had this much fun tweaking a game to run well since Fallout 4 . At some point I should get on with playing the game...

[Tom4784]

I've heard the game is basically broken on base consoles but it's not too bad beyond bugs on the Pro and such. I'm very tempted, almost bought it last night on a whim but I shall hold off for the moment.

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Dezzy

I've heard the game is basically broken on base consoles but it's not too bad beyond bugs on the Pro and such. I'm very tempted, almost bought it last night on a whim but I shall hold off for the moment.

I think the framerate drops in combat combined with it being first-person-shooting would make it extremely difficult to play on base console... the enemies thus far have been a bit bullet-spongey if you can't hit headshots combat would be tedious (not in a bad way necessarily, they are wearing padding/body armour so it's not unrealistic that headshots do a lot more damage than centre mass)

[Toy Soldier]

To be fair in 3 hours of gameplay I've not had a HUGE number of bugs/glitches and they were both pretty funny. There was the sitting fella above, and I also had a corpse start breakdancing, but that's it so far. It needs some patching but it's not mammoths falling from the sky or anything.

[Brother Leon]

Mine arrived. Won’t be able to play it until the morning though. Which life path has everyone chosen?

I’m already torn on the first game choice

[Scarlett.]

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Scarlett.

How's it running on the PS5?

I'm still tweakin' here, I'm determined to get 1440p 60

[Scarlett.]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

How's it running on the PS5?

I'm still tweakin' here, I'm determined to get 1440p 60

It's not too bad, can't wait for the proper PS5 version though xD

[Toy Soldier]

In all honesty I think as great as the game is so far the launch is a disaster... I stand by what I said above; they've made a next gen game and pushed it out on old hardware. They should have delayed for a full year back in April and just made it a next gen title.

I've given up on getting it to run at 1440p even on low settings... To do it with all the settings turned up, it clearly needs an RTX3080. It's an amazing looking game even at 1080p, and runs well at that res, but like I said earlier, stepping back down to 1080p sort of feels like going back a couple of years. It's also not my monitor's native res so it makes text look a little fuzzy. I'm actually considering hooking up my old 1080p monitor .

[Toy Soldier]

I threw a load of bloom at it and now it's PROPER cyberpunk. Neon everywhere. Bloooooom

[Scarlett.]

Yeah making it a multigen game probably hurt it quite a bit

[Ramsay]

Originally Posted by Brother Leon

Mine arrived. Won’t be able to play it until the morning though. Which life path has everyone chosen?

I’m already torn on the first game choice

Nomad bby

[Scarlett.]

I chose Nomad too xD

[Toy Soldier]

I too went Nomad . I went back and forth between the other two and then as a total wildcard chose Nomad at the last second. However, I have just realised...



My guy looks like ****ing RYLAN! I can't unsee it!

[Toy Soldier]

Anyone encountered these two sadsacks yet?

[Ramsay]

Aw that was so good hahah

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Ramsay

Aw that was so good hahah

Did you notice that the guy playing guitar was actually playing? that's a borderline needless level of detail right there

[Tom4784]

I've done the first hour, and rescued the girl in the tub. It's interesting so far. I've not had any issues on my PS4 pro so far. I went for the Corpo background.

[Toy Soldier]

I've played about 4 hours I'd say (steam says 7 but I swear a full 3 hours was spent tweaking the damn thing ) and I have to admit I was worried at first BUT the last three hours or so have been an absolute blast. I've not even gone on the first proper mission after the intro yet, just been ****ing around doing side missions and bounties... but even those FEEL like actual missions. I also did one of the "psycho" missions where the enemy is heavily tech augmented and it was awesome, they were zipping around the place so fast and I couldn't hit them with a gun, so it ended up being a katana fight. I strongly feel that it's going to be excellent. At this point my only gripes are;

- Bugs. Most are funny/not a problem (see below for example) but I did have one game breaking bug. Not hugely so - just a stuck quest and thankfully all you have to do to fix it is quicksave and reload the save - but still.

Car spawn bug:

Spoiler:

The damn thing spawned like this! And there's nothing you can do to right it - you just have to run out of range and summon it again

- It feels poorly optimised. The graphics are amazing, yes, and for their full potential I can see why it needs hefty hardware HOWEVER it's not so far beyond recent titles that it explains the performance issues. That said, after a couple of hours I completely stopped noticing that I'm playing at 1080p (it's not that long ago that all games were, after all) and it was definitely worth the trade off for 60fps. But yeah - I feel like it should have better framerates for the visuals I'm seeing, I don't get why it's struggling so much, or why it totally flatlines on OG consoles. This gripe is nothing to do with the quality of the game of course and it's a "temporary" problem - in a couple of years people will have forgotten that it was ever hard to run.

- 3rd is a minor PC gripe... cars are bordering on impossible to drive with keyboard & mouse . Luckily controls hotswitch to whichever you press... so I have a controller sat next to the keyboard that's purely for driving

I'd struggle with this if I was a reviewer I think. On the one hand the game itself, taken in isolation, e.g. if you were playing it on a bleeding-edge PC with ray tracing, is genuinely brilliant, both gameplay and how it looks. On the other hand the technical problems are beyond anything we've seen in recent years and a lot of people (baseline console owners and PC players with anything less than a GTX1080) are going to have found themselves very dissapointed yesterday morning.

They should have been honest and just said that despite their best efforts, the game simply doesn't work on the baseline consoles.

[Brother Leon]

About to tuck in.

I’m mosted tempted by Nomad too. Being new to Night City myself and all. Will feel
Abit weird seeing some Drifter type fella going around using all this cyber and futuristic gear though haha.

Might have to be blades and melee for realism purposes