" I'm looking hard at getting this game. Most of the reviews say that the gun play is the one flaw, but I've found that's with a caveat. If you go in guns a blazing, you might not do well. It seems to be a thinking man's game. One review I read mentioned it was more like Bioshock and Half Life 2 and barely mentioned the STALKER series. That's intriguing as well. We'll see. "

Great reviews and I still think the game looks great.
 
Problem is I had made up this idea in my head that this was gonna be an open, RPGish, Fallout 3 or Stalker kind of game.
Finding out that is was actually more of a linear survival-horror game took a lot of oomph out of it for me.
 
Definitely not a deal-breaker, but with all the potential buyers out there, and coming soon I think I have to demote a linear FPS to rental/bargain price status unfortunately.

" Great reviews and I still think the game looks great.  Problem is I had made up this idea in my head that this was gonna be an open, RPGish, Fallout 3 or Stalker kind of game. Finding out that is was actually more of a linear survival-horror game took a lot of oomph out of it for me.  Definitely not a deal-breaker, but with all the potential buyers out there, and coming soon I think I have to demote a linear FPS to rental/bargain price status unfortunately. "

" @ProfessorEss said:

" Great reviews and I still think the game looks great.  Problem is I had made up this idea in my head that this was gonna be an open, RPGish, Fallout 3 or Stalker kind of game. Finding out that is was actually more of a linear survival-horror game took a lot of oomph out of it for me.  Definitely not a deal-breaker, but with all the potential buyers out there, and coming soon I think I have to demote a linear FPS to rental/bargain price status unfortunately. "

Yeah, that is a real turn off for me.  "

So we did a clean driver reinstall and the problems seem to be fixed.  Decent performance now with tessellation on.  This game looks amazing!  I'm so glad they are still pushing the limits of graphics on pc games.

A couple of gameplay videos I recorded last night (PC version), hope you don't mind me posting them here. I recorded them at Youtube-friendly resolution of 1280x720 at max settings, DX10, MSAA. At those settings the game runs very smoothly, maintaining 60FPS at best, dropping to the 40s and 50s at worst. At my native resolution of 1920x1200 it's a lot less smooth. I'm trying to find the right balance between detail and FPS at the moment. (videos are slightly darker than I recorded them at, I think due to the conversion method I used before uploading)
 
 

The Quick Look is on it's way - Dave Snider has spoken.

They're saying it's typical Eastern Block - unique, but finicky...

I definitely wanna check this game out, but it's something that I'll need to set some serious time aside for.

This game is the bee's fucking knees.

" The Quick Look is on it's way - Dave Snider has spoken. "

" @Linkyshinks said:

" The Quick Look is on it's way - Dave Snider has spoken. "

The Quick Look will probably be from the PC version. If I buy it, it would have to be on the 360, but I've read it's pretty good on the 360 too. The last Quick Look they did on the PC, they turned the graphics down. I don't know why, but they did. "

" @Linkyshinks said:

" The Quick Look is on it's way - Dave Snider has spoken. "

The Quick Look will probably be from the PC version. If I buy it, it would have to be on the 360, but I've read it's pretty good on the 360 too. The last Quick Look they did on the PC, they turned the graphics down. I don't know why, but they did. "

Just finished it (on PC). Very polished, no bugs whatsoever encountered. Run great on Very High DX10 settings, without advanced physx enabled. Only had some big fps dips in certain short spots, and mostly outside action gameplay so it didn't affect the experience. The levels were really large with some room for exploration and the paths felt natural. At times you'd think you were exploring off the beaten path and  yet reach the end of the level. Loading was really speedy.
 
Great game. Extremely atmospheric. Great visuals (perhaps not as great as people say, still some weird character models and stuff). Great audio. I read there are two endings so I'll go back to it after I give it a rest for a while to get the other. It's right up there with the best single player FPS. Certain elements may not be great (hate some damage sponge enemies) but the game's more than the sum of its parts in the end. Personally I enjoyed it far more than Bioshock. If only STALKER was so polished and technically sound I would have loved it as well (games are nothing alike other than setting, just saying).

I don't get it. This game looked really awful in the quicklook.

That's Quick Looks for you, lol.

well also the part in all the reviews where they say the shooting is nearly broken.
and this game is a shooter so that's a problem

My guess is most didn't grasp the basics, like the difference between military grade and standard dirty ammo, or the guns you have to pump, etc. And they still rated it as the great game it is. Otherwise I don't see what can be described as broken, wherever you saw that. There are some damage sponge enemies later on as I mentioned which can be annoying but it's a brief section over the rest of the game. Otherwise, shooting works as in any other FPS with iron sights. And stealth works. If this is broken, so is every FPS ever. @Binman88:  Great videos! My next playthrough will have to be with more emphasis in stealth :-)

Gamespot gave the PC version an 8.0.

" Just finished it (on PC). Very polished, no bugs whatsoever encountered. Run great on Very High DX10 settings, without advanced physx enabled. Only had some big fps dips in certain short spots, and mostly outside action gameplay so it didn't affect the experience. The levels were really large with some room for exploration and the paths felt natural. At times you'd think you were exploring off the beaten path and  yet reach the end of the level. Loading was really speedy. Great game. Extremely atmospheric. Great visuals (perhaps not as great as people say, still some weird character models and stuff). Great audio. I read there are two endings so I'll go back to it after I give it a rest for a while to get the other. It's right up there with the best single player FPS. Certain elements may not be great (hate some damage sponge enemies) but the game's more than the sum of its parts in the end. Personally I enjoyed it far more than Bioshock. If only STALKER was so polished and technically sound I would have loved it as well (games are nothing alike other than setting, just saying). "

  @Linkyshinks said:

@Al3xand3r said:

Just finished it (on PC). Very polished, no bugs whatsoever encountered. Run great on Very High DX10 settings, without advanced physx enabled. Only had some big fps dips in certain short spots, and mostly outside action gameplay so it didn't affect the experience. The levels were really large with some room for exploration and the paths felt natural. At times you'd think you were exploring off the beaten path and  yet reach the end of the level. Loading was really speedy. Great game. Extremely atmospheric. Great visuals (perhaps not as great as people say, still some weird character models and stuff). Great audio. I read there are two endings so I'll go back to it after I give it a rest for a while to get the other. It's right up there with the best single player FPS. Certain elements may not be great (hate some damage sponge enemies) but the game's more than the sum of its parts in the end. Personally I enjoyed it far more than Bioshock. If only STALKER was so polished and technically sound I would have loved it as well (games are nothing alike other than setting, just saying).

 What specs are you running on your PC?. A lot of people on the official forums are having issues running it on DX10 Very High despite having good specs.

Here are a couple of random screens. I wanted to show the godrays which the creature's flapping affected but that obviously doesn't show well in screenshots. The other is just a random boring place, I only just installed FRAPS and loaded a save from my second playthrough. With FRAPS it showed my FPS ranged from 30 to 80+, though I was running it windowed at this point instead of fullscreen as in my first playthrough. With the nice motion blur it has on Very High 30 appears very smooth still, similar to Crysis. I didn't notice it going below 30 yet, but it probably does in the points I mentioned before, which doesn't affect gameplay. Overall I'm very pleased with the performance given my modest specifications and how good the game can look.