Discussion What's your favourite video game you've been playing?

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Will be playing SOMA tonight for the first time. I don't expect much replay value out of sneak and hide type games, and they aren't a big fan fave of mine in the horror genre, but I'm hoping it will be even remotely close to being as good as Alien Isolation was.

Plus I'm a bit bored revisiting old games while waiting for patching and price drops on Arkham Knight, Mad Max, and MSGV, all of which seem to be having certain issues, especially on PC. So I had to get something new.
 
I finally put Windows 10 on my desktop and I just started the Metro Redux games again. Hopefully no game breaking bugs this time.

Just finally installed Outlast as well. Haven't played yet just got it installed. I've had a busy last month or so and haven't been gaming much.
 
I've had it on a test laptop since the first public beta releases almost a year ago so maybe I'm just used to it but I don't have any major complaints. Now that my desktop is done it's on all my computers. I guess I drank the Microsoft Kool Aid on this one. :)
 
Pretty sure there is an antidote. Linux I think it's called :lol:
 
Well crap. Seems like the Metro 2033 Redux problem is with my 980 Ti or other hardware. Game crashes at the same exact place as before after a clean install of Windows 10 Pro x64 and the newest Nvidia drivers. 🙁 Clean install of the game as well, I keep Steam on my C drive.

Guess if I want to play I will have to wait for a full hardware upgrade or play the old version. I'm moving from Sandy Bridge to Skylake in a few months but I have no plans to upgrade the 980 Ti for a couple of years. I only paid $10 for both games but still. I've read that similar problems exist in Last Light Redux so I'm not even going to install it.

Going to try out the Max Payne series. Thinking about another run through New Vegas while waiting on Fallout 4 as well.
 
Wow, sorry to hear that anort. Seems like if it's the 980 Ti it would have to be drivers not hardware. Have you tried betas? Also, some older MBs do better with the latest BIOS update when running a 900 series GPU.

I just started playing Mad Max last night and am just now starting The Phantom Pain.

Mad Max is not bad. On paper the mindless nature of it sounds like boring tedium, but they give you enough environment changes and upgrade variety to keep you busy with different things. There's also different enemy types that take different tactics.

The car handling and on-foot combat is not nearly as bad as many say. One little thing that annoys me though is it auto switches you to shotgun when you get out of your car, and stays that way when you get back in rather than remembering your last weapon equipped in car. Hence I've accidentally wasted a lot of shotgun ammo.

Can't really comment on TPP yet as I've only just started, really looking forward to it though.



 
I think I had a near same experience with Arkham City. I've completed it before, that is, back when it released in 2011. But my little cousin wanted to play through it, as he finished Arkham Asylum by that time.

Problem started in the Mr.Freeze boss fight. It would crash at the exact time, all the time, just when you're about to take him down. I've read around steam forums and many people faced this issue, but resolved it quickly with a driver downgrade to a much older one. The problem for me, is that my current GPU doesn't have those drivers available, as they're not compatible. So my cousin had to give up on Arkham City. I let him play Just Cause 2 instead, and he had a swell time with it. Forgot the whole Batman issue.
 
It's not a motherboard issue with the 980 Ti because it hasn't happened in any other games. I have no idea what the problem is. It doesn't even crash in the same place or after the same amount of time but it crashes every time. If it's driver related then at least 4 different WHQL certified drivers in 2 different operating systems have caused it. I can't roll back too far with a driver because the 980 Ti is only a few months old. Code isn't my thing but it almost has to be the way the 980 Ti or just the Maxwell refresh architecture renders that specific area. I guess I could play the first 4 1/2 hours of the game again when I move to Skylake just to be sure :lol:

Mad Max looks like something I might eventually pick up in a Steam sale or with a Humble Bundle but The Phantom Pain looks pretty good.
 
Sure and I have plenty of times in the past but it in this case I don't see it gaining me anything. Especially since beta drivers usually become certified drivers after bug fixes. Don't forget Nvidia comes out with new drivers for pretty much every AAA game release. 4 is just the number I'm sure I've tried in that specific game with 2 each on Windows 7 and 10.
 


I only asked because you said WHQL specifically, which of course are not beta drivers.

 
Yeah these days I generally only update drivers when the GeForce Experience tells me new ones are available. Those are always WHQL. 10 years ago, hell even 5 years ago I would have tested individual drivers but love em or hate em Nvidia does a great job of keeping everyone up to date. Well at least if you have the newest hardware. Trust me if I though beta drivers would let me finish the damn game I would have tried them 😛
 


From what I'm reading lately it can be a crap shoot trying to find the right Nvidia drivers, whereas as with AMD, generally the latest ones DO fix such problems, though often times they're betas.

 
I've used Nvidia cards in my personal builds since 2002 and the 6600GT. Never had a driver problem.

Now there can be problems finding drivers for older cards but that's certainly not my issue. And AMD has the same or even worse problems there. Most rational people ( not fanboys ) will admit Nvidia has done a much better job with their drivers over the years. One of Nvidia's main selling points.
 


I used to think that, and tried a 660 Ti before buying my 7970. Wouldn't even work with my Panny TV, which it had a hard time detecting as HDCP compliant, even though my prior GTS250 did. Plus I got black screen switching between TV and PC inputs. Something the GTS 250 and 7970 never have trouble with.

I HAVE had driver issues with past red team product, esp when they were ATI, but my 7970 has been pretty solid regarding drivers for going on 3 yrs now. I see a LOT of people on Steam complaining about Nvidia drivers though, so I don't feel it's like it used to be, where Nvidia were solidly in front on drivers.

Where AMD need to catch up most is with CPUs and high end graphics cards. I hope Zen isn't a disaster launch like Fury and the 300s were, because I'm not exactly impressed that Intel's 6000 series CPUs don't do any better than the 4000 series.

 


I've had (most recently) GTX 260, GTX 660, 765M, 880M, 780, 780Ti SLI, 980Ti SLI and R9 290X CF. In terms of single GPU drivers I found Nvidia and AMD fairly close, but AMD seemed less on the ball with updates for newer games. In terms of multi-gpu Nvidia was better and much, much better at updating for multi-gpu profiles. I have had significant issues with Nvidia drivers, especially within the last 3-4 months with 700, 800(M), and 900 series; but at the moment I am not having any. I'm usually wary of updating drivers unless it specifically does something for a game I'm playing.
 
Nvidia also has 82% of the market share so seeing people complaining about their stuff should be much more common than what you see for AMD.

Lot's of people have issues with connecting televisions I believe. I've always used a dedicated monitor so it's not an issue I've dealt with myself but a buddy of mine used to output to a TV and he had a hell of a time around the 8800GTS/9800GTX+ days. So AMD may very well have a lead there.

AMD will never compete with Intel on the high end unless someone like Samsung or Mircrosoft buys them and gives them a multi billion dollar cash infusion. I'd love to see that happen. Intel has not released anything other than incremental upgrades since Sandy Bridge but the good news about that is it's no longer necessary to upgrade every generation. They are more limited by physics than anything else.

Sandy Bridge > Ivy Bridge was roughly 5% faster ( clock for clock ) > Haswell was roughly 10% faster than Ivy > Haswell refresh ( Devils Canyon ) was maybe another 5% faster than Haswell > Broadwell doesn't really count in the desktop space. > Skylake is about 10% faster than Devils Canyon. ( All assumes equal clock speed. )

Since I'm still on Sandy Bridge an upgrade to Skylake makes sense. The newer motherboard features also add to the incentive.
 
Back to gaming I just started Max Payne 3 and got Thief installed. Going to play it a bit tonight. Max Payne 3 is pretty good so far about an hour in.
 


I loved Max Payne 3; not a fan of that Rockstar Social Club though.
 
Max Payne 3 is great game. It's all just shooting galleries and cut scenes, but the narrative makes up for it.

I'm still playing Fallout: New Vegas.I've put in around 55 hours now and I'm nearly to the end of the main quest. I've decided to start with the DLCs as I heard you can't continue after you finish the main quest. I completed Honest Hearts and it was short IMO, but it was pretty good.
I'm currently playing through Dead Money. At first, I thought it was great. But now I'm really frustrated and just want to finish it as soon as possible.
After triggering the Gala Event, the ghosts all sprung up and it just got me sooo annoyed. Fighting one after the other, using tons of sugar bombs to increase my health by like 20-30 HP...Christ, it was a nightmare. After entering the Casino, I'm having a hard time finding Christine in the executive suites. Too many holograms there.

I've also got The Phantom Pain. I only played through the prologue and that was really intense. Great start to the game.
 


That is because there's been a shift from games being developed a lot on AMD, to mostly on Nvidia lately, and it always takes the team that does not get endorsement longer to tweak the drivers. When I got my 7970, there were a LOT of good games endorsed by AMD and they had driver updates ready before the games launched, including some decent performance updates regularly. It also matters how old your GPU is. The 7970 has been out a while, so I don't really go through the growing pains others do on new releases.

On other comments, I will not argue that Nvidia clearly has the larger market share, and also that AMD make a lot of bad business decisions, but even with such lopsided market share and poor choices, AMD a lot of times compares better than one would think they should just because Nvidia piss money away on stupid things that aren't well optimized. For as wealthy as they are, Nvidia should be doing a LOT better.

I'm considering a Pascal for my next card, partly due to the talk of HBM2, and I prefer ShadowPlay over Raptr, but it has little if anything to do with drivers, partly because I won't be planning to use SLI, which I do feel works better than CF. I'm a bit put off that NVLink, after ALL the hype, looks as if it will be exclusive to IBM CPUs in the business market, but realistically, that is not Nvidia's fault. It would take Intel and MB manufacturers to get on board with it to offer it in the consumer market.

Anyways, back on topic.

Max Payne 3 is truly a classic that's going to be timeless. Just love the grit and realism of the mo cap, weapon carrying, dynamic prone shooting, etc. The last chance feature is a bit glitchy though. They didn't really dial in those cover angles as well as they could have. You have to just watch Max twitch and die if they nick you when you're behind something that obstructs you from shooting back at your assailant.

The MGSV prologue was a mixed bag for me at first, but in the end I came to realize it to be a work of art. I'm always the anxious type during long cutscenes, so I was like "Come on, hurry up", but then I'd be sitting back ogling the sheer graphical quality of what they were showing. It's one of those things that even if you only experience it once, is worth soaking in. It's a VERY long prologue though, longest I recall ever seeing, so you need to allow time for it and be patient.





 
Dead Money


Dead Money is frustrating but keep at it. The other two DLC are the better ones with Old World Blues being the best.
 
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