[Video Games] What are you playing? (Omikron Edition)

I can confirm Rimworld is super addicting. I haven't played it in a while (early access maybe?), but it is really good. I played a few games that tried to copy that basic formula, but didn't quite connect the same for me at least.


Anyway, back to CP2077, I started looking at mods. Found some mod that applied an AMD CPU fix, and that nearly doubled my frame rate (~30 to ~60 FPS) in a troubled area for me. From ~25% CPU utilization to 75%-80%. So yeah, that game still isn't super optimized.

 

CP 2077 heavily uses RT, which also causes it to heavily rely on image reconstruction to get decent framerates, so not too surprising that AMD GPUs struggle a bit with that. They're still behind Nvidia in those areas, though I think they're catching up. I think benchmarks with RT turned off show the 7900 doing fairly well (especially relative to price). But I'm not sure why you'd spend ~$1K on a GPU and play games with RT disabled.

So that's more on AMD than the CDPR I think. I haven't really looked into what this fanmade patch for AMD CPUs does (and how Intel CPUs do in comparison), but if it just tells the game to use more threads (and/or use them more wisely), then that's probably 100% on CDPR for not taking advantage of that properly. Can't really blame AMD for that.

I'd say they should have spent most of their time optimizing for AMD CPUs and GPUs given console sales, but given how poorly the game did on those platforms (albeit better after patches), guess that was another thing mismanaged.

Oh well, I'm just glad I got my ~60 FPS inside nightclubs now.

 

Yeah, pricing is all out of whack with GPUs still, even with the market kinda crashing relative to what it was a few years ago. Nvidia in particular seems eager to keep these high prices going.

I'm glad AMD is hitting back with FSR 2 and improved RT performance, and hopefully their chiplet stuff works out well (guess that will take a few generations to fully realize). But Nvidia GPUs still seem quite a bit better overall, especially since most games just simply don't play well with AMD GPUs even with improved RT. Portal RTX for example:

That was specifically built with Nvidia GPUs in mind (using their Remix tool I believe), so maybe not a big surprise, but these aren't insignificant unfortunately. At least AMD GPUs seem to run the game, unlike Intel Arc.

I'm super excited by the technologies being utilized by these new GPUs, but not so excited by the pricing from AMD and especially Nvidia.

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Anyway, coming up on 20 hours of CyberPunk. There are some (IMO dumb) gameplay design things I don't like (largely around loot), but I've mostly ignored the main quests and stuck to side quests....and the game is still fairly fun/fresh. The core gameplay loop can be a bit repetitive (i.e., go to location, sneak/kill stuff, go to another location, sneak/kill stuff, OK now leave), but I do like that some/most quests offer multiple ways of accomplishing them, and that includes the combat system in general (sneak/guns ablazing + different routes). It kinda feels a bit Deus Ex mixed with GTA I guess (with some Witcher 3 of course). Also not super in love with some content stuff, but it can mostly be ignored as long as you're enjoying the the core game stuff. Also kinda cool that the Keanu Reeves character pops up in lots of side quests. Might be a bad thing overall (not sure what I think about his character/performance yet), but I figured it would be main quests only.

 

GOG has it I think:
https://www.gog.com/index.php/en/game/saboteur
On sale too.

EA Store has it too, but I'd recommend GOG in general.


Speaking of games of that era, I decided to fiddle around with PS3 emulation on PC (via RPCS3). Only tried Folklore (one of my favorite PS3 games), but it seemed to work fairly well (much better resolution, higher frame rate, fast loading, etc). Of course, that game has the forced motion controls, and my current PC gamepad won't handle that, but I'll figure something out with that (think you can just use a PS4/PS5 controller?).

I'm also playing Tales of Arise casually. Pretty good.