After listening to the Reckoning mini-bombcast last week, I was fairly hyped to play Reckoning. Unfortunately, I wasn't very impressed with what I found.

One of my biggest complaints is the subpar visuals. Maybe it looks fine in 720p on consoles, but it sure looks pretty bad on my PC. A decent amount of the textures are flat or missing, the draw distance is extremely short and the UI looks downright archaic and bland. I really think the game would at least benefit from giving more options to improve the overall visual quality. I'm playing this game on the PC because I actually want to see a bump in graphical quality.

I know this comes with the genre, but in the time that I played Reckoning, it was pretty janky. And not the funny/cute jankiness found in Bethesda RPGs. On my PC with an i7 2600k, 16gb RAM and a GeForce GTX 570, I was experiencing stuttering during combat sequences. The transitions in and out of conversations were also choppy to the point where they took a lot of the seriousness and impact out of them. There is no reason why I should ever experience this on my PC. I spent money on it so games would look noticeably better than consoles, not the same as console games.

My time with the demo wasn't all terrible, however. As I expected, the story seems to be shaping up well. It's hard to get a sense of how good a story is when you only play the first hour of it, but I was impressed with what I saw. The skill and class progression also look promising, as there has yet to be a game that really nailed hybrid classes. Some sound effects and audio bumps were executed well with a cinematic vibe to them. The only problem is that there is virtually no music besides these sound clips. The lack of background music just makes the game feel dead, despite all of the bright and pretty colors everywhere.

Throughout my entire time playing the Reckoning demo, I kept on comparing it to the other 2 RPGs I have recently been playing (Skyrim and The Witcher 1). This brings me to the conclusion that besides the combat system, Reckoning looks and feels like a 2007 RPG. It is definitely miles better than something like Oblivion, but after directly comparing it to Skyrim, Reckoning is far from appealing. Maybe my PC version of Skyrim looks considerably better because I enabled longer draw distances and used 2k texture packs, but everything just seems so much more fluid and seamless (2 words that I thought I would never describe Skyrim with). I realize that I'm comparing a new IP from a new developer to Giant Bomb's 2011 GOTY, but with a 5 year development cycle and pedigree of the developers, I think they are capable of a better game than this. For all I know, we could just be playing an older build of the game. I'll wait for a review before I decide whether or not the final product is good, but Reckoning sure made a bad first impression on me.

K.

I'll have to try this demo soon though to be honest I am not feeling the art direction myself. I loved Skyrim as well and that has problems for sure, but definitely not stuttering during combat, something you have to do a lot of in these types of games (as far as I'm aware anyway).

Still I hope that most of the problems you highlighted get addressed before release and that they make some kind of press release indicating that they are aware of these issues also (it can't hurt to re-assure those who are interested).

It looks clean and crisp and it pops with color. Lovely animations throughout. Dislike the low viewing distance and how level of detail is handled (aka loads of pop-ups). The FoV is too low and takes some getting used to. It makes me feel like I'm wearing blinders. I get a 1-sec stutter at the beginning of every combat encounter, otherwise it runs smoothly. After the initial 'post effects' related black screen bug, I didn't run into any other grievous technical issues.

I did feel somewhat disconnected in conversations. The silent protagonist doesn't help either. The worldbuilding ain't great and the low viewing distance and drawing distance and pop-ups are a gripe, but character progression and combat seems slick and fun and the game is huge - assuming it's a slow burn like Mass Effect, getting grander and better and more fun the longer I play, it is not to be missed. I'll likely bite at release and give the PC version a go.

Consoles do 1080p these days but to be cool in the PC crowd, ya had to make a dig at consoles.

I had no issues on my PC, even though it isn't very great. Have you had issues with any other PC games lately? It just seems surprising that the game ran well on my sorry machine but less than good on yours. I'm also wondering why, other than graphical and sound issues, why your so down on this game. Did you not enjoy the combat and skill stuff, or is this not the kind of RPG your into.

@sins_of_mosin said:

Consoles do 1080p these days but to be cool in the PC crowd, ya had to make a dig at consoles.

Consoles scale to 1080p output, but usually don't render in native 1080p. A big difference. The longer this generation goes on, the more developers are cheating to get more out of the outdates boxes (as in cutting rendering resultion). Evident in games like Call of Duty, Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3.

I'd prefer to play on consoles overall, it's a better consumer experience involving way less hassle and headache, but the more I play on PC, the more I'm getting used to more frames per second, cleaner image quality and games being rendered in 1080p. It gets harder and harder going back to playing games on current gen consoles.

I play multiplatform games on PC now.

I installed it, skipped the intro - had a completely black screen. I did press ESC and saw the menus though. Deleted it. I'm sure it's good though.

@sins_of_mosin said:

Consoles do 1080p these days but to be cool in the PC crowd, ya had to make a dig at consoles.

Most games on consoles are natively rendered in 720p or below (that's the buffer resolution) and are only upscaled to 1080p (that would be the ouput resolution). The only handful of games that do render in native 1080p are graphically non-intensive games (mostly XBLA/PSN titles). So, nothing wrong with his statement.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46241

@sins_of_mosin said:

Consoles do 1080p these days but to be cool in the PC crowd, ya had to make a dig at consoles.

Are you saying Reckoning will run at 1080p on consoles?

Overall I though the demo was fine, the texture pop in and post processing were off putting but the combat was fun. I'm not a fan of putting the run button on a face button, I much rather click in an analogue stick or use one of the bumpers or triggers, it makes the camera easier to manage.To the OP's technical problems with the game, its a 3 month old version of the game.

@BasketSnake:Turning off Post Processing would have fixed that.

From what I've seen the combat and leveling system seems interesting. If that's good I can excuse the art and the jankiness. I'm really itching for another RPG so I'll take what I can get. Though, I haven't played The Witcher 2 yet, hmm.

Anyways, I really hope reckoning will come together.

@Christoffer: Play The Witcher 2 first. A much higher quality title, more deserving of your money and is currently considerably cheaper.

Is it possible that some of the issue stem from the fact that the game is not yet complete? I know it's fairly close to release, but between the fact that drivers change constantly and PCs exhibit a wide range of technical specs, is it possible that during launch the graphical issues will have been dealt with?

I guess what I'm asking is that in your opinion, how much of the jank do you think will actually carry over to release, and how much will be dealt with in the final technical touches being added to the game/first day patches on the PC version?

@SlasherMan said:

@Christoffer: Play The Witcher 2 first. A much higher quality title, more deserving of your money and is currently considerably cheaper.

Oh so you've played Reckoning already? You're pretty important!

@Bwast said:

@SlasherMan said:

@Christoffer: Play The Witcher 2 first. A much higher quality title, more deserving of your money and is currently considerably cheaper.

Oh so you've played Reckoning already? You're pretty important!

Don't be silly. I don't need to play it to completion to form an opinion. The demo was enough to give me an idea of what the game's about.

@SlasherMan said:

@Christoffer: Play The Witcher 2 first. A much higher quality title, more deserving of your money and is currently considerably cheaper.

Yeah, it seems to be the obvious choice. But I recently finnished the first Witcher and might be a bit fed up with grim fantasy for a while... what people says about the difficulty kind of scares me.

@Christoffer said:

@SlasherMan said:

@Christoffer: Play The Witcher 2 first. A much higher quality title, more deserving of your money and is currently considerably cheaper.

Yeah, it seems to be the obvious choice. But I recently finnished the first Witcher and might be a bit fed up with grim fantasy for a while... what people says about the difficulty kind of scares me.

In that case, it might be a good idea to take a break from it. And yeah, TW2 is quite a bit different from the first in many ways, and will take quite a bit of getting used to, especially the combat. I personally still prefer the first game, but that doesn't take away anything from this one. It was still great.

                   

K.

                   

               

@SlasherMan said:

@Bwast said:

@SlasherMan said:

@Christoffer: Play The Witcher 2 first. A much higher quality title, more deserving of your money and is currently considerably cheaper.

Oh so you've played Reckoning already? You're pretty important!

Don't be silly. I don't need to play it to completion to form an opinion. The demo was enough to give me an idea of what the game's about.

No you don't need to play it all the way. You need to play it for more than 1 hour though.

@Gav47: There are a few different options for the run button layout in the options.

@Bwast said:

@SlasherMan said:

@Bwast said:

@SlasherMan said:

@Christoffer: Play The Witcher 2 first. A much higher quality title, more deserving of your money and is currently considerably cheaper.

Oh so you've played Reckoning already? You're pretty important!

Don't be silly. I don't need to play it to completion to form an opinion. The demo was enough to give me an idea of what the game's about.

No you don't need to play it all the way. You need to play it for more than 1 hour though.

Well, that's not possible since the demo doesn't allow it. It did allow me to determine, however, that this game was simply not worth my $60 (and it sure as hell isn't worth buying just to play a bit more of to see if I'm sticking to my opinion of the demo). If at any point the future the game drops in price to a point I find reasonable, and I buy it and play it and find out that I was wrong, I'd be more than happy to change my mind and admit my mistake. But until then, that's my opinion.

@sins_of_mosin said:

Consoles do 1080p these days but to be cool in the PC crowd, ya had to make a dig at consoles.

Most games on consoles are natively rendered in 720p or below (that's the buffer resolution) and are only upscaled to 1080p (that would be the ouput resolution). The only handful of games that do render in native 1080p are graphically non-intensive games (mostly XBLA/PSN titles). So, nothing wrong with his statement.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46241

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

@SlasherMan said:

@sins_of_mosin said:

Consoles do 1080p these days but to be cool in the PC crowd, ya had to make a dig at consoles.

Most games on consoles are natively rendered in 720p or below (that's the buffer resolution) and are only upscaled to 1080p (that would be the ouput resolution). The only handful of games that do render in native 1080p are graphically non-intensive games (mostly XBLA/PSN titles). So, nothing wrong with his statement.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46241

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxzYkTralIA&hd=1 WipEout HD - 1080p @ 60 fps. Gorgeous. Original game released in 2009. Consoles.

Wipeout HD is part of said graphically non-intensive PSN games I mentioned that does render in native 1080p (though even that changes resolution on the fly when it can't keep a steady 60).

@SlasherMan said:

The only handful of games that do render in native 1080p are graphically non-intensive games (mostly XBLA/PSN titles).

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

@SlasherMan said:

@sins_of_mosin said:

Consoles do 1080p these days but to be cool in the PC crowd, ya had to make a dig at consoles.

Most games on consoles are natively rendered in 720p or below (that's the buffer resolution) and are only upscaled to 1080p (that would be the ouput resolution). The only handful of games that do render in native 1080p are graphically non-intensive games (mostly XBLA/PSN titles). So, nothing wrong with his statement.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46241

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxzYkTralIA&hd=1 WipEout HD - 1080p @ 60 fps. Gorgeous. Original game released in 2009. Consoles.

Wipeout HD is part of said graphically non-intensive PSN games I mentioned that does render in native 1080p (though even that changes resolution on the fly when it can't keep a steady 60).

@SlasherMan said:

The only handful of games that do render in native 1080p are graphically non-intensive games (mostly XBLA/PSN titles).

@SlasherMan: If you're comfortable judging the quality of a huge RPG based on a 1 hour demo, that's fine. But don't try and tell other people that it's not a quality game. You haven't seen what all the game offers or even a fraction of it, you can not speak to its quality. I didn't really like the first hour or 2 of the Witcher 2 but when it started opening up and I could run around without having a cut scene every 5 minutes, I liked it a lot more.

Imagine how many people would riot if some reviewer took Skyrim, played it for an hour and said "This isn't worth 60$.". I know it's not your job to review games but you're still trying to influence someone based on incomplete knowledge.

Consoles do 1080p these days but to be cool in the PC crowd, ya had to make a dig at consoles.

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

Non-graphically intensive? I've not seen a smoother, better-looking racer on PC or otherwise.

Then you haven't been looking. Have you seen Dirt 3 running on PC at 1080p60? Hell, even the first Dirt would be enough of a showcase.

http://www.multiupload.com/5CIDL6O6KX

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

But watching this game, arguing that consoles cannot do justice to games if they are 1080p, let alone 60fps, is ridiculous.

I don't know what argument you've been following. The argument here is not that consoles are incapable of producing a 1080p image or that they wouldn't do it justice if they could. It's that they're not capable of producing a 1080p image, on graphically intensive games while keeping up a decent framerate. Wipeout HD is not a graphically intensive game by any measure.

There is a reason why very few games are rendered natively at 1080p on consoles, most games can barely keep up a steady 30 on 720p and below. Feel free to check out the link in my previous post. Also, might want to check Eurogamer's Digital Foundry once in a while.

The game does feel pretty dated, especially when comparing it to something like Skyrim. But if you're going to draw comparisons at least do it to games of a similiar vein, like Gothic, Risen, Fable or (I know you've mentioned it) The Witcher. In my opinion the fundamentals are fine, combat, story, loot, etc. It just lacks polish, the UI is terrible, the font isnt easy on the eyes (especially when sorting through your inventory) and facial expressions are near non-exsistant. But most of these are subjective, (except facial animations but most games fail in that aspect anyway) there's also a fair amount of clipping but practicly all games have that to some extent. It seems like it could do with a few extra months of polish but what game doesnt.

Luckily though these are all problems that seem fairly easy to fix, if through mods, patches or whatever it's nothing too serious. As for the graphics, I dont think you'll be getting your moneys worth with this one, sorry ;(

@Bwast said:

@SlasherMan: If you're comfortable judging the quality of a huge RPG based on a 1 hour demo, that's fine. But don't try and tell other people that it's not a quality game. You haven't seen what all the game offers or even a fraction of it, you can not speak to its quality. I didn't really like the first hour or 2 of the Witcher 2 but when it started opening up and I could run around without having a cut scene every 5 minutes, I liked it a lot more.

Imagine how many people would riot if some reviewer took Skyrim, played it for an hour and said "This isn't worth 60$.". I know it's not your job to review games but you're still trying to influence someone based on incomplete knowledge.

That wasn't a review of the game, but merely my opinion of the demo, which I based my own purchase decision off of. He could of course still play the demo himself and make up his own mind.

You do have a fair point, however, now that you've put it that way.

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

Non-graphically intensive? I've not seen a smoother, better-looking racer on PC or otherwise.

Then you haven't been looking. Have you seen Dirt 3 running on PC at 1080p60? Hell, even the first Dirt would be enough of a showcase.

http://www.multiupload.com/5CIDL6O6KX

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

But watching this game, arguing that consoles cannot do justice to games if they are 1080p, let alone 60fps, is ridiculous.

I don't know what argument you've been following. The argument here is not that consoles are incapable of producing a 1080p image or that they wouldn't do it justice if they could. It's that they're not capable of producing a 1080p image, on graphically intensive games while keeping up a decent framerate. Wipeout HD is not a graphically intensive game by any measure.

There is a reason why very few games are rendered natively at 1080p on consoles, most games can barely keep up a steady 30 on 720p and below. Feel free to check out the link in my previous post. Also, might want to check Eurogamer's Digital Foundry once in a while.

I had a few 1 second freezes in the middle of combat for no reason whatsoever. Other than those it ran great though. Wait, that's what this thread is about isn't it?

I really liked the combat but the FOV is just fucking terrible.

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

Yeh, I've seen DiRT 3. WipEout is what, 3 or 4 years older than DiRT 3? Surprise, DiRT 3 will be bare-bones technically better than WipEout. I'm not arguing that a five year old piece of hardware can outperform modern computers, or come close to their performance. I'm arguing that when a five year old piece of hardware can run a gorgeous game at full 1080p, at 60 fps, in 2008, I cannot accept an argument that states consoles games are restricted to this: " (Running at) 720p... a decent amount of the textures are flat or missing, the draw distance is extremely short" etc. Which is the statement you claimed was 'not wrong.'

I did mention the first Dirt, didn't I? That came out in 2007, and even that would be bare-bones technically better than Wipeout.

You might be suffering from a case of selective reading judging by your posts so far, and by me getting to a point where I have repeat myself. I'll save myself the trouble and just recommend you to re-read my posts, and this time with a bit more effort, and without trying to put words in my mouth.

@Ketchupp said:

I had a few 1 second freezes in the middle of combat for no reason whatsoever. Other than those it ran great though. Wait, that's what this thread is about isn't it?

This is the PC elitist thread GET OUT!! ...j/k ;p

@Vegetable_Side_Dish said:

Yeh, I've seen DiRT 3. WipEout is what, 3 or 4 years older than DiRT 3? Surprise, DiRT 3 will be bare-bones technically better than WipEout. I'm not arguing that a five year old piece of hardware can outperform modern computers, or come close to their performance. I'm arguing that when a five year old piece of hardware can run a gorgeous game at full 1080p, at 60 fps, in 2008, I cannot accept an argument that states consoles games are restricted to this: " (Running at) 720p... a decent amount of the textures are flat or missing, the draw distance is extremely short" etc. Which is the statement you claimed was 'not wrong.'

I did mention the first Dirt, didn't I? That came out in 2007, and even that would be bare-bones technically better than Wipeout.

You might be suffering from a case of selective reading judging by your posts so far, and by me getting to a point where I have repeat myself. I'll save myself the trouble and just recommend you to re-read my posts, and this time with a bit more effort, and without trying to put words in my mouth.

@SlasherMan: I'd have to agree with you completely. Even though I played it in my underpowered laptop for I still can't afford to buy my own rig I still loved every minute of it.

Wow, I didn't think the 1080p comment would derail the thread as much as it did. Like it's been said, I just meant that most 360 and PS3 games are rendered in 720p as opposed to 1080p on the PC.

In my post, it may have come off that I absolutely hated the game. The combat felt pretty good and the leveling system is promising (especially as someone who tried playing a rogue/mage hybrid in Skyrim and had to give up on the mage part). It just lacked any form of polish. Not every game has to look stunning, I just feel that Reckoning falls short of what's graphically expected in a 2012 RPG.

@Gav47: if it's a 3 month old build, then I might give it a second chance. If it still looks and runs bad at launch, I guess mods can clean it up a bit.

@Vegetable_Side_Dish: In his defence, he only ever mentioned graphically-demanding games. The fact you think Wipeout looks gorgeous needn't have very much bearing at all on how graphically intensive it is. Trying to counter his (really pretty well established) point that current-gen consoles have a hard time rendering at 1080p -let alone at 60fps- with a single good looking psn game, is kind of weird.