Drasglaf

Maybe it’s just me, but Alan Wake 2 is the first game I’ve encountered that doesn’t give you any other choice beside FSR/DLSS.

With my specs I should be able to run it comfortably at high without ray tracing, even with some ray tracing features on at all times. The game’s optimization isn’t exactly the best unfortunately.

And yes, I can’t understand what they were thinking when they decided to make FSR/DLSS mandatory, I find it crazy.

Speaking of clichés

I advanced a bit further in the DLC, I’m starting to see what you mean about gen AI.

I gave up on the idea of a smooth experience in the base game. I experience hiccups all the time even at the lowest settings. The DLC runs better so far, I even have low path tracing with mid denoiser quality at the moment and it runs ok. FSR 4.1 via OptiScaler looks good at 1600x1200 native.

I’m still playing Alan Wake 2:

The DLC seems to run better than the base game, they probably optimized it better, I don’t know. Overall Saga’s parts are the worst offenders in terms of performance for whatever reason.

When in doubt, comfort food, take 2:

I have nearly 80 hours clocked in Heaven’s Vault, but all those hours have been spent playing it on handhelds (first Steam Deck and then Legion Go). Now I don’t have a handheld to play it on and I can’t get into it that much, so I changed games.

I am reading The Invincible, a book I got after playing the game based on it, so I thought a second playthrough would be a good idea. And it was, I love this game. It’s a short walking simulator with great atmosphere and story, and the graphics are quite good for what it is, they are not too complicated but everything is solid. The art style deserves a mention here, the 60s high tech sci-fi aesthetic is gorgeous, I think they nailed it. It looks gorgeous on my CRT.

I almost forgot, the voice acting is pretty good too IMO.

I’ve played Tainted Grail a bit longer, the game is fine and runs fine, still not sure if I’ll finish it but I think I’m going to keep playing it.

I’m probably exaggerating , I’m in a quite negative mindset at the moment due to other stuff, but I still think the make you run around too much to find stuff in order to advance in Saga’s parts. I’ll keep playing as her, I’m curious about what’s to come now.

By the way, the game performance keeps disappointing, but I got used to it.

I’m still playing Alan Wake 2:

I’ve played Tainted Grail a bit more:

It’s not bad, although so far I don’t find it very engaging. But it’s kept me playing for a bit, so we’ll see.

And when in doubt, back to comfort food. I retook my 4th playthrough of Heaven’s Vault:

I usually can, as long as it’s not the same genre. But lately nothing sticks, it’s obviously a me problem, so I’m going to try to stop trying new games for the sake of it for a while.

I’ll remember the name, I might play Routine at some point. For now my survival horror backlog is long enough with Alan Wake 2, Resident Evil 4 and 9, Silent Hill F and I’d like to replay Silent Hill 2 remake at some point. Judging by how long it took me to play through Cronos, I think I’m going to be playing Alan Wake 2 for a good while. And I don’t usually play 2 games of the same genre simultaneously, I like to mix things up.

That’s the funny part, I’m not a big horror gamer, more like a big coward. But it’s the only genre that seems to be able to hook me at the moment for some reason. I’ve read the name Routine a couple of times but I haven’t even tried it, sorry.

I’ll follow your advice about Night Springs, the 1st chapter did break the pace, especially considering I was ready to stop playing when I started it.

I finished Cronos yesterday:

Overall I’d give it an 8 or 8.5, I didn’t find the ending satisfactory.

I played more Alan Wake 2:

I had to lower some settings to medium for it to not crap the bed constantly. It still looks good. Also, Optiscaler was defaulting the upscaler to XESS instead of FSR4, that’s why it looked kinda blurry to me before. Now it looks great as long as it stays on native, even on quality it gives me some upscaling artifacts on things like hair or telephone cords. It’s probably because I’m playing it at 1600x1200.

As for the game:

I’ve also been trying to play something that’s not a survival horror for a while, but I keep bouncing off most games. Dread Delusion, Pacific Drive, The Alters, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Pragmata… They all fail to grab me, but I think they will at some point in the future, they all seem to be great games in their own right. I started playing Tainted Grail yesterday and maaaybee I’ll stick with this one, I’m still in the tutorial zone, but it seems interesting.

FSR 4 is fine, but since I’m playing on a CRT, it’s upscaling from lower resolutions, which is less than ideal. That’s why I prefer other AA solutions for my use case. I think the hiccups came from the DP to VGA adapter. I bought a high-end Startech in anticipation to receiving my new CRT monitor, but when I received the monitor it turns out the adapter only gave me the option to use 60hz refresh rate at any resolution (it wasn’t the case with the other, smaller monitor, strange). I swapped it with an older Startech adapter I was using until now and I can set higher refresh rates at any resolution with my new monitor and the hiccups are gone. Speaking of which, I might have gone a bit too far, it’s a 20 inch monitor and it’s huge 😅

I’m on Fedora. Unless I’m mistaken, playing in native resolution still uses FSR/DLSS for anti aliasing, there are no other anti aliasing options. I would have liked to have a choice like in most games. The game isn’t a smooth experience, even in areas where I’m at 60 fps. Every turn of the camera makes it go 1-2 fps down breaking vsync, which is quite noticeable playing on A CRT. I also tried on my IPS monitor and the performance is more or less the same at 1440p. I miss HDR, I had an HDR monitor but it started breaking and got a refund, and I spent that money to partially fund my 9070 XT.

I haven’t played Cronos today yet, the hospital was quite tense, but for some reason for me the game isn’t as unnerving as say Silent Hill 2 remake or first person survival horror games. Still the atmosphere is incredible. I survived the morgue quite well, but I spent a lot of ammo and I was left with very few bullets, which is going to be a problem really soon. I already had to punch a mid-boss to death before arriving to the hospital lol.

I keep advancing in Cronos: The New Dawn:

I started Alan Wake 2:

I wish I could play it for the first time again, it impacted me a lot and I consider it one of the best games of the past decade.

I finished Quantum Break, the game is ok, but I don’t find it to be among Remedy’s best games.I think the story has potential to be better than it is, and it’s not bad at all. I still have to watch the rest of the endings, but I’ll watch them on YouTube or whatever. Overall I’d give it a 7, maybe 7.5.

Next stop is Control’s DLCs, but I’m having trouble getting into it. I replayed the base game like 2 months ago and now I can’t get into it again, I’m progressing through the Alan Wake DLC but I’m not really feeling it, might end up looking for a summary if it keeps feeling like this. I might play Alan Wake 2 afterwards, but I’m definitely not giving a cent to Epic, so if I play it, I’ll just borrow it. My PC should be able to play it at a decent quality level and frame rate, especially considering I’m playing all games at 1152x864@75hz on a CRT monitor lately.

I’m still working my way through Cronos: The New Dawn:

Luckily it was just the fourth level. Otherwise that would have been it for me and the game.

I’m still playing Quantum Break and Cronos: The New Dawn. A couple of technical issues have slowed me down a bit.

I’m mid-chapter 4 on Quantum break and I had to restart it yesterday because the game bugged and I fell through a broken bridge and didn’t die when I should have and the game autosaved right there, leaving me with no way of getting out without dying, which took me back there again. I saw the Night Springs easter egg in the beginning of the chapter, pretty funny.

In Cronos I was having trouble with

that was being made even more fun with the help of my dying XBOX Series controller. The USB-C port was dying and I had to hold the controller in a very specific position to keep it connected, but sometimes even the vibration disconnected it, and it sometimes took a couple of seconds for the game to register the controller disconnected. The triggers get stuck while pushing them most of the time now, which made charging shots a unique experience. The extra tension was not welcome. I finally bought a new controller (8bitdo Ultimate 2) and yesterday I was able to get past that section, but it still took me a couple of tries.

Ok, I just played the first chapter and the live action episodes apparently are not that short LMAO

The only thing I remember is there are short live action episodes between chapters, so not much. It didn’t leave a bad impression, but I’m 99% sure I didn’t finish it.

After finishing Alan Wake, I’m playing American Nightmare, which shouldn’t take me long to finish. Then I think I’ll move on to Quantum Break, which I briefly played when it was new but remember nothing about. I’m also playing Cronos: The New Dawn little by little, I like the atmosphere of the game and the story is intriguing. I’m thinking about playing some kind of RPG, but cannot decide on what exactly.

I’m playing Alan Wake, never played it back in the day. I like Remedy’s weirdness, but I’m finding the gameplay a bit repetitive.

I bought a bunch of discounted CRPGs on Steam and GOG last month, I don’t want to buy anything this time. Let’s see if I can resist…