What are you currently playing? Last game played?

[OmarBradley]

On 2/11/2019 at 9:37 PM, DeadSlash said:

I loved the Gothic series when it was new.  Not sure I could play it now, even with updated visuals, I remember it as really true open world where there were not a lot of hints or any guide, just go do wtf ever you want.  I find those games overwhelming in my gaming twilight years.  Good, underrated series though.

There are a lot of mods that try to modernize Gothic 3, further than visuals. Lots of things that change combat, AI, quests, and general bug fixes. It looks pretty appealing for that open world experience. But I don't think I'm going to get it since Metro and Anthem are right around the corner. Maybe in a few months when I have nothing to play.

I did remember why I stopped playing DA:O, I tried playing last night and it's crashing every 2-3 minutes. Must have to do with the mods I have installed, but I don't want to put in the effort to systematically reinstall everything. 

I did pre-order Metro yesterday, but only because I was able to find a good deal on the Gold edition. Epic Launcher is junk, but I'll deal with it for the game. Metro just looks too damn good. I am worried about performance given Denuvo, though a reviewer noted he had excellent performance on a machine similar to mine. Not sure if press copies are DRM-free though.

I also saw this list of why Epic sucks, and while I think some are a bit unfair and not unique to Epic, there is enough here to show that the experience for the user/customer is demonstrably worse than Steam's:

Quote

1) They have terrible security (80 million accounts were exposed last week)
2) They have terrible customer service (just google it)
3) Games are more expensive on Epic due to regional pricing
4) You can't play games offline
5) Limited social features
6) No screenshots
7) No controller support
8) They broke EU laws (and still do)
9) Scummy tactics (you had to tick a box to opt out of emails etc)
10) They are partially owned by Tencent (a company that sells user data to the Chinese government)
11) No achievements
12) No cloud saves
13) No game forums (many people went to steam for subnautica support)
14) Epic make you pay the transaction fee when purchasing games
15)They are anti-consumer (They pay for exclusive rights to games to try and force you to use their store)
16) They can refuse refunds even if you meet the criteria
17) No reviews
18) No Linux support

And there's no preloading on Epic, because the platform can't do it.

Edited February 13, 2019 by OmarBradley

[OmarBradley]

Looks like I'll be able to run Metro at fairly high settings at 1440p. A GTX 1080 system benchmarked 60FPS at 1080p on all Ultra settings. I will aim for 40+FPS at 1440p with mostly Ultra/some High settings. 12AM EST is when I can start downloading it. Hopefully I'll get to play tonight.

[downzy]

5 hours ago, OmarBradley said:

Looks like I'll be able to run Metro at fairly high settings at 1440p. A GTX 1080 system benchmarked 60FPS at 1080p on all Ultra settings. I will aim for 40+FPS at 1440p with mostly Ultra/some High settings. 12AM EST is when I can start downloading it. Hopefully I'll get to play tonight.

Have fun.  Reviews so far look positive.  IGN rates it as the best Metro game yet.  

[DeadSlash]

10 minutes ago, downzy said:

Have fun.  Reviews so far look positive.  IGN rates it as the best Metro game yet.  

The industry has ruined me.  I approach it with the same level of skepticism I do positive GnR news about an album. Everything points to this being a good game, and all I can think is  "IGN has been bought before."

I have a bad feeling about the game ever since the bullshot reveal where it was the pre-rendered demonstration of the game, but it was presented as "actual game play."  Every company does bullshots, and they walked it back later revealing it wasn't actual gameplay, but there is such a high level of sketch, really interested in how it is, let us know Omar. 

[OmarBradley]

50 minutes ago, downzy said:

Have fun.  Reviews so far look positive.  IGN rates it as the best Metro game yet.  

Have tried to avoid reviews to go in 100% blind, but I've seen a few positive mentions. As DeadSlash said, I wouldn't trust IGN as the be-all-end-all. Lots of speculation that gaming journalism is quid pro quo/bought & paid for. I generally look at what the players are saying on forums and Steam reviews, in addition to publication reviews. I definitely expect this to be the best Metro game yet - it's miles ahead of the previous two in terms of versatility. The first two look excellent and have pretty good shooting mechanics, but that's about the extent of what they offer aside from an intriguing story and a few minor interesting game mechanics. I'd say both are worth playing though, especially since they're cheap and can be done in about 12 hours each.

34 minutes ago, DeadSlash said:

The industry has ruined me.  I approach it with the same level of skepticism I do positive GnR news about an album. Everything points to this being a good game, and all I can think is  "IGN has been bought before."

I have a bad feeling about the game ever since the bullshot reveal where it was the pre-rendered demonstration of the game, but it was presented as "actual game play."  Every company does bullshots, and they walked it back later revealing it wasn't actual gameplay, but there is such a high level of sketch, really interested in how it is, let us know Omar. 

That was the 2017 reveal, right? In 2018 what they showed (as far as I'm aware) was in game, and it looked very good.

Speaking of reveals vs. releases though, I just watched a comparison video from Anthem's 2017 demo vs. the 2019 public demo (of roughly the same game sequence/content) and holy hell, the 2017 build looked WAY better - notably in lighting, texture fidelity, and NPC design. And it wasn't pre-rendered, as it was a live demonstration of the game. I guess I'll blame this on console optimization? 

[DeadSlash]

13 minutes ago, OmarBradley said:

Have tried to avoid reviews to go in 100% blind, but I've seen a few positive mentions. As DeadSlash said, I wouldn't trust IGN as the be-all-end-all. Lots of speculation that gaming journalism is quid pro quo/bought & paid for. I generally look at what the players are saying on forums and Steam reviews, in addition to publication reviews. I definitely expect this to be the best Metro game yet - it's miles ahead of the previous two in terms of versatility. The first two look excellent and have pretty good shooting mechanics, but that's about the extent of what they offer aside from an intriguing story and a few minor interesting game mechanics. I'd say both are worth playing though, especially since they're cheap and can be done in about 12 hours each.

That was the 2017 reveal, right? In 2018 what they showed (as far as I'm aware) was in game, and it looked very good.

Speaking of reveals vs. releases though, I just watched a comparison video from Anthem's 2017 demo vs. the 2019 public demo (of roughly the same game sequence/content) and holy hell, the 2017 build looked WAY better - notably in lighting, texture fidelity, and NPC design. And it wasn't pre-rendered, as it was a live demonstration of the game. I guess I'll blame this on console optimization? 

Yeah, I think it was 2017, it was the very first video of it, the player is moving super slow, and when he loots ammo, it's like a whole long animation, with dust falling off the ammo box and he's like shaking it off.  Another part where they shoot a wolf with an arrow, retrieving the arrow after the kill is fully animated with your player bending over and yanking the arrow out of the wolf.  I got into a huge flame war on the Steam forums over it because I made the point that it was scripted, and not gameplay.  I got my ass handed to me.  This was long before Steam decided Metro was the devil because of the Epic store.

 

I wasn't saying the game would be bad, I wasn't saying even saying negative shit like "this reveal is a lie!" I was just pointing out it wasn't actual gameplay.  It's a good thing it WASN'T gameplay. If they had those animations, the game would be boring af.  It took like 3-4 seconds to pick up ammo.  30% of your game would have been watching the "picking up ammo" animations.  Those parts might even still be in the game, but it would be a scripted bit at the beginning, not gameplay.  I've seen the final product, and you loot like you did in the old ones, you click the loot button and it shows what you looted on the right hand of the screen.  Sometimes the corpse rolls, but it doesn't slow you down.

[DeadSlash]

1 minute ago, Oldest Goat said:

A tragic example of pre-release vs released product is BioShock Infinite. Just look at the early trailers. It was going to be a wonderfully dark BioShock in the clouds focusing on criticizing religion and American exceptionalism. Instead we got dumbed down design and gameplay, extreme linearity, cut content and one of the most fucking uninspired, pretentious stories I've ever witnessed. 

I actually hate BioShock Infinite a lot for a bunch of reasons. The way the included examples of racism were said absolutely nothing apart from a kind of desperately cheap reveling #Deep beating over the head. 

It's actually funny, and I thought about making a thread on bullshots.  EVERY company does them, and people generally don't give a shit or ever talk about it if the game is good.  FarCry is a great example.  If you look at ANY of the pre-release or reveal screen caps or videos of ANY FC title, they are 100% bullshit, but the game still looked great, so nobody cared.  I was only half aware of BioShock doing that, nobody talks about this stuff.  Well, a few exceptions, like:

 

[OmarBradley]

Is it because game development rigs are super powerful and they then have to tone it down for release builds (even for PCs)? The Witcher 3 had a pretty notable "downgrade" as well.

[downzy]

1 hour ago, OmarBradley said:

Have tried to avoid reviews to go in 100% blind, but I've seen a few positive mentions. As DeadSlash said, I wouldn't trust IGN as the be-all-end-all. Lots of speculation that gaming journalism is quid pro quo/bought & paid for.

Possibly.  They do give a little gushy when it comes to all things GTA/RDR.  

Then again, they had wall to wall advertisements for Fall Out 76 but their review gave it a 5/10.  

I've been going to that site since '98 or '99 so I suppose I'm just use to their coverage and reviews.  Not too often do I find a lot of space between their assessment and my own.  

[AxlRoseCDII]

Currently playing a JRPG on Wii U called Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. Love everything about this game, from the art style to the music to the fun and intuitive battle system. I’m only ten hours in and find myself addicted.

[OmarBradley]

Just now, downzy said:

Possibly.  They do give a little gushy when it comes to all things GTA/RDR.  

Then again, they had wall to wall advertisements for Fall Out 76 but their review gave it a 5/10.  

I've been going to that site since '98 or '99 so I suppose I'm just use to their coverage and reviews.  Not too often do I find a lot of space between their assessment and my own.  

Giving FO76 a good review would have been basically admitting their crookedness .

I don't know how widespread or detailed the allegations are, but it's something I've heard repeated. Haven't really looked into it myself, as I usually forgo reviews and buy games that I'm intrigued by. 

Haven't loaded up Metro yet. I moved recently and I'm still on WiFi, so the download took several hours and I wasn't waiting for it at midnight. In 2019, you'd think there would be a solution to this issue, like preloading? But I guess not. 

[OmarBradley]

Last night as I was waiting for Metro to unlock, I noticed in Anthem's reddit there was a thread of people giving referral links to play a 10 hour trial of the game. Having missed the public demo a few weeks ago, I was interested.

The convoluted deal presented was: someone who owns Anthem (or is an Origin Access member, still not sure) was allotted X amount of referral links to give to other people for 10 hours of Anthem play (full game, just locked to 10 hours). However, the referral links weren't directly for Anthem's trial, they were for a 7 day free trial of EA's Origin Access, which gives you access to a bunch of EA games and trials for upcoming games (including the Anthem 10 hour trial). Anthem went live for Origin Access members today at noon, so a few minutes ago I went to look for the trial in my Origin launcher. Couldn't find it. I then took to Google to see if there was a delay or if I misread something - turns out while any platform could take advantage of the Origin Access free trial, the Anthem trial was Xbox exclusive. So I went back to the Anthem reddit to ask/confirm: so this is Xbox only? Two people replied, 'yes.' A bit disappointing, but not a huge deal.

I decided to poke around in my Origin launcher a bit more, just in case. Still couldn't find it. Having given up, I then went to my account settings on EA's actual webpage to cancel my trial to avoid getting charged, and lo and behold I stumbled upon a page displaying 10 hour trials for three major EA releases... Battlefield V, Fifa 19, and Anthem. 

It's sitting in my Library and downloading right now. No idea if I'm supposed to have access to it, but I do!

[DeadSlash]

17 hours ago, OmarBradley said:

Is it because game development rigs are super powerful and they then have to tone it down for release builds (even for PCs)? The Witcher 3 had a pretty notable "downgrade" as well.

While it's true that the rigs they have are ridiculous, that isn't the reason for the bullshot.  A lot of times the screens are just airbrushed, or completely false (EA got busted because they f'd up the airbrush and left like 2 basketballs in an NBA live bullsot (or something like that.)  Since the games are in early stages, but have been planned, they know what they "want" the end game to look like, and they render a game to look like that.  Most times they fall way short of that goal.  No Man's Sky is a good example.  They just ran out of time to implement all of the things they wanted to implement, but they keep working on it, and it's 1000% closer to what they promised.  Sadly, this kind of follow up is very rare.     Essentially, early release trailers are a "guess" as to what the final product should look like, almost an artists interpretation.  (Think Atari 2600 game cover art)  They often justify it as showing "what the engine can do" but some companies like EA or Gearbox just lie for the sake of selling more games.  Aliens Colonial Marines is a perfect example of a lie, because the demo was rendered on a DX11 engine, and the game was built on a DX9 engine.  The released product never had a chance at looking like the demo and GBX knew that.

[DeadSlash]

17 hours ago, downzy said:

Possibly.  They do give a little gushy when it comes to all things GTA/RDR.  

Then again, they had wall to wall advertisements for Fall Out 76 but their review gave it a 5/10.  

I've been going to that site since '98 or '99 so I suppose I'm just use to their coverage and reviews.  Not too often do I find a lot of space between their assessment and my own.  

I just want to be super clear, this is skepticism on my part.  It is probably (and I hope is) an awesome game.  I just feel like a good "fucking" is coming and so all data I see, I think the worst. eg "IGN said it was good? They probably got bought."

[downzy]

12 minutes ago, DeadSlash said:

I just want to be super clear, this is skepticism on my part.  It is probably (and I hope is) an awesome game.  I just feel like a good "fucking" is coming and so all data I see, I think the worst. eg "IGN said it was good? They probably got bought."

I'll watch their podcasts from time to time and the reviewers don't sound like guys who were bought.  They're quite transparent with their feelings about most games.  

But I guess we'll never know.  I do think there's a bit of a symbiotic relationship between publications like IGN/Gamespot and developers.  The same can be said with almost any area in tech.  I'm a professional photographer and weeding through the reviews online for gear is painful.  Even when a review isn't fully bought, you can tell they're trying to appease a master.  It's not by accident that many photographer YouTubers get flown around the world by various camera companies to test out their products.  I'm sure the same goes on within video game journalism.  

[DeadSlash]

Looks like Metro Exodous is a 8/8.5 out of 10 range.  No "amazing" but certainly not bad, or the disaster I was afraid of by any means.  I haven't read any of the reviews, just the scores, trying to avoid spoilers of any kind.  Plus, those scores might be artificially LOW given the backlash over incorporating denuvo and using the Epic store.  Either way, good news!

[OmarBradley]

On 2/15/2019 at 5:12 PM, DeadSlash said:

While it's true that the rigs they have are ridiculous, that isn't the reason for the bullshot.  A lot of times the screens are just airbrushed, or completely false (EA got busted because they f'd up the airbrush and left like 2 basketballs in an NBA live bullsot (or something like that.)  Since the games are in early stages, but have been planned, they know what they "want" the end game to look like, and they render a game to look like that.  Most times they fall way short of that goal.  No Man's Sky is a good example.  They just ran out of time to implement all of the things they wanted to implement, but they keep working on it, and it's 1000% closer to what they promised.  Sadly, this kind of follow up is very rare.     Essentially, early release trailers are a "guess" as to what the final product should look like, almost an artists interpretation.  (Think Atari 2600 game cover art)  They often justify it as showing "what the engine can do" but some companies like EA or Gearbox just lie for the sake of selling more games.  Aliens Colonial Marines is a perfect example of a lie, because the demo was rendered on a DX11 engine, and the game was built on a DX9 engine.  The released product never had a chance at looking like the demo and GBX knew that.

Good points, thanks for explaining.

18 hours ago, DeadSlash said:

Looks like Metro Exodous is a 8/8.5 out of 10 range.  No "amazing" but certainly not bad, or the disaster I was afraid of by any means.  I haven't read any of the reviews, just the scores, trying to avoid spoilers of any kind.  Plus, those scores might be artificially LOW given the backlash over incorporating denuvo and using the Epic store.  Either way, good news!

I know there is a pretty large review-bombing campaign going on, mostly due to Steam  Epic and maybe a tiny bit due to Denuvo. At this point, most people seem to accept Denuvo and most games institute it without harming performance. At least, that's what I've gathered from reading about it.

I only got to play 20 minutes or so last night and I haven't really gotten into the game yet. Still very much in the intro - which other than a few short moments, is pretty boring so far. However, of the little I've read in review, they do note the game really kicks into gear once you get out of the metro and into the open world. So far, it does feel like a Metro game in that there is environmental story telling/listening to conversations. But I'm hoping for a fairly mixed experience once I get into it.

____

I did get to play Anthem for about two hours last night. It was a lot of fun and I am probably going to buy it, but there are issues. As far as stability goes, this is probably one of the best multiplayer launches in recent memory. I had one crash to desktop, one several minute instance of lag/frame dropping, and one bug where I got stuck under some textures. Overall, not terrible for a brand new IP/game.

It does not look as good as I hoped, though it looks good. Shame the 2017 build isn't what we got (although, who knows if that was a real build), but it's still a good looking game. There are a lot of long loading screens, even for things like just customizing your suit. And menus are atrocious. But the things that matter: shooting, flying, story, etc. are all very good. The combat is essentially ME:A without the cover system. I'd prefer to have the cover system, but I'm assuming since the player has incredible versatility with travel via flying, they didn't find the cover necessary. The flying feels pretty good and presents a fairly unique experience in gaming, but I haven't mentioned the biggest problem yet: the entire game is a ubiquitous gameplay loop of "get mission," "shoot things and maybe hold a key to turn on a generator", "return to base" and repeat. Hopefully they shake things up at midgame and endgame levels somehow, because this entire game is essentially based around the sole mechanic of flying through the world. I am unsure how varied the environments are, as I'm just starting. I hope my concern about the gameplay loop ends up being unfounded, because I am having a lot of fun overall.

MTX are genuinely cosmetic only, though I haven't looked too much into them. My only other complaint is the lack of a FoV slider. The default FoV is weird, you can't see your character's feet and the model is slightly offset to the left of the screen for some reason. The latter issue won't be solved by a FoV slider, but I'd at least like to expand what my camera is seeing, especially considering this is supposed to be a very visual and aesthetically-pleasing game.

The story is pretty good and intriguing. Not BioWare's best, but much better writing/story than recent RPGs I've played. Also, all dialogue choices (so far at least) are binary, so that's a bit of a head-scratching downgrade from past BioWare games.

Not sure if I like the forced online nature of the game. It's not a problem so far, but it doesn't seem to add to the experience. I'd much rather have 2-3 NPC companions who banter with each other and have personalities than have random players from matchmaking every time. There are memorable characters/NPCs outside of combat, and I really have very little to complain about them.

Regarding performance, both games are running at a stable 60FPS on maxed settings at 1440p. I am pleasantly surprised by this and it's making me rethink about doing a new PC build so soon. 

EDIT: I was a bit quick with that performance figure, for Anthem at least. During combat the frame rate drops to 30-40 at times due to the deluge of visual effects and quick movements that come with combat. I wouldn't have noticed unless I checked the frame rate though, not an issue.

Edited February 17, 2019 by OmarBradley

[OmarBradley]

Got to play about an hour or two more of Metro. The story/game literally started kicking into high gear at the point I left off at, so it was 100% riveting story and action basically the second I got back into the game.

I'm just getting into the open world, but so far I am incredibly impressed. 4A Games has produced a more cinematic experience with better writing and story than BioWare. I like Anthem, but Metro blows it out of the water in the areas of texture fidelity, NPC design, animations, and most importantly: story/writing. I know this is based on a book series, so the story isn't 100% original to the developers, but they have done an excellent job bringing it to digital life. Looking forward to getting more into the game. And performance is much better than Anthem, steady 60-80FPS no matter the situation.

Playing also reminded me how good those first two games were, because Exodus takes everything from the previous games and pretty much makes it better. It is what I expected from this game, yet I am very impressed at the same time. 4A Games is a tiny developer compared to BioWare, R*, and many AAA developers. 

EDIT: Reading a bit deeper into the Metro communities, it looks like a lot of people (on all platforms) are experiencing issues with varying degrees of significance. I haven't encountered anything yet, but it does look like the game would have benefited from more polishing. 

Edited February 17, 2019 by OmarBradley

[OmarBradley]

Have to give a lot of credit to BioWare though. The developers (not just community managers) are actively responding to threads on reddit that criticize the game. They are being very genuine and warm and that is matched in the tone of players reporting issues/design preferences. I don't think I've ever seen developers so blatantly and consistently take part in community discussions for a AAA game. This little bit of effort on their part is generating a lot of goodwill among the players, regardless of Anthem's issues (which do need attention). Other studios should learn from this.

It was only a week or two ago that Bethesda's community managers finally started to participate in the actual community on reddit. It took them 3 months of atrocious PR (not to mention a broken game) to realize they needed more transparent communication. BioWare is staying ahead of the curve.

EDIT: Remembered another complaint about Athem, no photo mode! I believe it's coming though.

Edited February 17, 2019 by OmarBradley

[DeadSlash]

So I broke down and bought Metro Exodus, and I have to agree that it is a 7.5 to an 8 out of 10 type of game.  It's not bad but it isn't anything special either.  A lot of people are complaining that it is short, but I think it's their own fault.  The way this one works is you move from place to place and each place has an objective or 2 plus lots of places of interest.  If you skip the places of interest, you can move forward really fast, but it's pointless imo, because you are skipping most of the game.

 

A lot of stuff people are saying about Epic is kinda false or overblown.  It's too much to type, I could if anyone cares, but let's just say using it isn't handing your info to the devil.  The funniest one I've seen is the incessant "Epic reserves the right to refuse any refund for any reason, at any time without explanation!"  That's fine and all, that line is in their disclaimer jargon, but it is in Steams's also.  Epic literally has the exact same return policy as Steam, but there are about 10k posts on Steam marveling at what a draconian stance that is.  10k post unaware, or ignoring the fact that Steam has the exact same legal jargon.

[OmarBradley]

17 hours ago, DeadSlash said:

So I broke down and bought Metro Exodus, and I have to agree that it is a 7.5 to an 8 out of 10 type of game.  It's not bad but it isn't anything special either.  A lot of people are complaining that it is short, but I think it's their own fault.  The way this one works is you move from place to place and each place has an objective or 2 plus lots of places of interest.  If you skip the places of interest, you can move forward really fast, but it's pointless imo, because you are skipping most of the game.

 

A lot of stuff people are saying about Epic is kinda false or overblown.  It's too much to type, I could if anyone cares, but let's just say using it isn't handing your info to the devil.  The funniest one I've seen is the incessant "Epic reserves the right to refuse any refund for any reason, at any time without explanation!"  That's fine and all, that line is in their disclaimer jargon, but it is in Steams's also.  Epic literally has the exact same return policy as Steam, but there are about 10k posts on Steam marveling at what a draconian stance that is.  10k post unaware, or ignoring the fact that Steam has the exact same legal jargon.

Steam may have that legal jargon, but if you try to return any game purchased on the platform with less than 2 hours of play, you will get a refund no questions asked. And much quicker than Epic will take care of it.

Epic's lack of preload delayed my ability to play the game. Not a huge deal as I could play the next day, but you know the feeling of waiting days/hours for a launch, right? And I did encounter an Epic specific error which prevented me from playing Metro one night. It fixed itself after 15 minutes, but it was a documented bug Epic has that I would not have encountered on Steam. The rest of the stuff, I agree some of it's overblown. But the more I learn about Tencent, the less I like being part of anything having to do with them.

As far as the game goes, it seems I'm liking it slightly more than the crowd, for me it's a 9/9.5 so far. But to each their own. Hopefully you don't run into any major issues. I had my first crash last night and a bug with a quest that caused me to have to load my previous save (only lost 10-15 minutes of play time, so not a huge deal).

EDIT: So I've been having issues using Photo Mode to take photos in Metro. I can get into Photo Mode, but I can't seem to take any photos. It appears as though this is due to Epic. Apparently, Photo Mode relied on Steam's screenshot service, and Epic doesn't have one. If this is true and I can't take screenshots in photo mode, that just about seals the deal in me permanently hating Epic, and Deep Silver. It looks like this may be a PC-wide issue, not just Epic.

Edited February 19, 2019 by OmarBradley

[DeadSlash]

6 hours ago, OmarBradley said:

Steam may have that legal jargon, but if you try to return any game purchased on the platform with less than 2 hours of play, you will get a refund no questions asked. And much quicker than Epic will take care of it.

Epic's lack of preload delayed my ability to play the game. Not a huge deal as I could play the next day, but you know the feeling of waiting days/hours for a launch, right? And I did encounter an Epic specific error which prevented me from playing Metro one night. It fixed itself after 15 minutes, but it was a documented bug Epic has that I would not have encountered on Steam. The rest of the stuff, I agree some of it's overblown. But the more I learn about Tencent, the less I like being part of anything having to do with them.

As far as the game goes, it seems I'm liking it slightly more than the crowd, for me it's a 9/9.5 so far. But to each their own. Hopefully you don't run into any major issues. I had my first crash last night and a bug with a quest that caused me to have to load my previous save (only lost 10-15 minutes of play time, so not a huge deal).

EDIT: So I've been having issues using Photo Mode to take photos in Metro. I can get into Photo Mode, but I can't seem to take any photos. It appears as though this is due to Epic. Apparently, Photo Mode relied on Steam's screenshot service, and Epic doesn't have one. If this is true and I can't take screenshots in photo mode, that just about seals the deal in me permanently hating Epic, and Deep Silver. It looks like this may be a PC-wide issue, not just Epic.

Just FYI, Epic literally copied Steam's refund policy.  Meaning the Epic policy is under 2 hours played 14 days, no questions asked.  That jargon about "we reserve the right to refuse refunds for any reason at any time." Is literally on every TOS ever, not just Steam and Epic.  

https://www.vg247.com/2019/01/12/epic-games-store-return-policy-updated/

 

I haven't had any lock-ups, I've had to restart my rig a few times because the FPS degrades over time, so If I play for like an hour, I probably need to restart once in that time.

 

One thing with "freezes" on the loading screen, by dumb luck, I found out it's not "frozen" but taking it's sweet ass time to load.   I was about to restart because I thought I had hung up on the loading screen, it just wasn't popping up that "Press E to Start" message, and seemed to be in perpetual load.  I got a call and took it and when I came back it had loaded.  Now I just leave it and it loads every time, but sometimes it takes 3-5 min for wtf ever reason.

[OmarBradley]

1 hour ago, DeadSlash said:

Just FYI, Epic literally copied Steam's refund policy.  Meaning the Epic policy is under 2 hours played 14 days, no questions asked.  That jargon about "we reserve the right to refuse refunds for any reason at any time." Is literally on every TOS ever, not just Steam and Epic.  

https://www.vg247.com/2019/01/12/epic-games-store-return-policy-updated/

 

I haven't had any lock-ups, I've had to restart my rig a few times because the FPS degrades over time, so If I play for like an hour, I probably need to restart once in that time.

 

One thing with "freezes" on the loading screen, by dumb luck, I found out it's not "frozen" but taking it's sweet ass time to load.   I was about to restart because I thought I had hung up on the loading screen, it just wasn't popping up that "Press E to Start" message, and seemed to be in perpetual load.  I got a call and took it and when I came back it had loaded.  Now I just leave it and it loads every time, but sometimes it takes 3-5 min for wtf ever reason.

Didn't know that about Epic. Fair enough, I've heard their customer service doesn't honor that, but to be fair everything I've heard is from secondary sources. 

I'm managing a steady framerate, without V Sync (so far, fingers crossed). Have you tried enabling V Sync? A frame lock or dynamic/adaptive frame rate option would be nice, but I don't think the game has that.

Are you talking about the intro loading screen? If so, that confused me as well. For me, the intro cinematic is unskippable until it is about to end and I have sit through basically the whole thing, but otherwise I'd say my loading times are pretty reasonable.

Also, I think I just saw in my Origin Launcher that I can give 4 links/codes to people with Origin for the 7 day Origin Access free trial (which does include 10 hours of Anthem). If anyone's interested, PM me. 

[DeadSlash]

14 minutes ago, OmarBradley said:

Didn't know that about Epic. Fair enough, I've heard their customer service doesn't honor that, but to be fair everything I've heard is from secondary sources. 

I'm managing a steady framerate, without V Sync (so far, fingers crossed). Have you tried enabling V Sync? A frame lock or dynamic/adaptive frame rate option would be nice, but I don't think the game has that.

Are you talking about the intro loading screen? If so, that confused me as well. For me, the intro cinematic is unskippable until it is about to end and I have sit through basically the whole thing, but otherwise I'd say my loading times are pretty reasonable.

Also, I think I just saw in my Origin Launcher that I can give 4 links/codes to people with Origin for the 7 day Origin Access free trial (which does include 10 hours of Anthem). If anyone's interested, PM me. 

Yes, it's the loading into game screen that hangs for me, like when you first load up the game to continue or change areas.  

I got to a new area I really like compared to the ones I've been through so far.  It's just better visuals and a nicer setting, I won't say what it is because spoilers. 

 

I have Origin, I have the up sized, so I can play all of their games, but I haven't tried Anthem yet.  I'll probably fire it up after I finish with Metro.  I tried that game Apex something or other that is supposed to be the greatest shit since the dawn of man, but I didn't care for it.

[OmarBradley]

12 hours ago, DeadSlash said:

Yes, it's the loading into game screen that hangs for me, like when you first load up the game to continue or change areas.  

I got to a new area I really like compared to the ones I've been through so far.  It's just better visuals and a nicer setting, I won't say what it is because spoilers. 

I have Origin, I have the up sized, so I can play all of their games, but I haven't tried Anthem yet.  I'll probably fire it up after I finish with Metro.  I tried that game Apex something or other that is supposed to be the greatest shit since the dawn of man, but I didn't care for it.

Apex looks interesting and is getting great reviews, but yeah it's not for me. And I'm only playing Anthem because it's BioWare. I feel strongly that Anthem would be a better game if it were a regular single-player action-adventure RPG from BioWare. The forced online nature really doesn't add anything to the experience and it really seems to have limited the game design. If they nail post-release content and keep it steady and interesting for a long time (not just a few months), that would make this worth it IMO. But at the moment, I see no reason why this shouldn't be a single-player experience like ME or DA. I suppose EA wanted BioWare to do something live service, but I really hope they don't ruin Dragon Age with this fad.

Does look pretty nice though (but the lighting in Exodus is probably the best I've ever seen in a game).