Moz

It’s great in VR because it adds to the sense of scale and depth. On a screen it doesn’t really add much. I mean it’s just stereoscopy at the end of the day.

Commander Shepherd

Tony Gilroy being interviewed: "It's not political"

This show is a masterpiece.

Those constant crashes aren't going to optimise themselves now. Yeah, it's just... not very good. Seemingly all they've done is hobbled most of the systems from Vermintide. All the weapons feel bad, all the classes feel bad, the game has even worse optimisation, the levelling and perk systems are less engaging, the maps are less interesting. The mix of ranged and melee doesn't really work. You need a 5090 Ti to run it and it crashes constantly. All they really had to do was make Vermintide with guns and they've fallen over themselves to make something a bit rubbish instead. Still, I'll hold out for launch. Hmm.

I really want it to be good, it's playing my tune for sure. But I'm not slamming down 50 notes for a pre-order on the off chance a brand new studio can knock it out of the park. But I'll pay that much for a stonking Dead Space-ish revival if it's decent.

Ha yep. The amount of times I've come out of a menu or walked into a room and Scrappy-doo goes "I THINK THAT WHEEL TURNS!" before I've even had a chance to pan the camera. It ends up playing out like a game of I Spy, where companions jabber about fulcrums, switches and cranes and then you have to look for them. I don't think it's a bug, though I wish it was.

You're simply mistaken, dude. There's no other nice way to put it. Companions are gabbling solutions to puzzles of a type I've done plenty of, constantly and consistently. Eurogamer, Gamespot, Polygon, GMTK, Gamesradar etc have all produced content on it recently. It's frequently mentioned in the discourse online and it'll be mentioned in game of the year discussions by any outlet with common sense. It's been mentioned on every gaming podcast I still listen to including by people who have finished the game. It's a meme at this point especially among tedious Xbox/PC knobheads. I've also seen comments from people with physical and cognitive disabilities complaining about it sapping their enjoyment of puzzles completely because there's no way they can physically experiment to find the answer - it's often difficult enough for me to finish a puzzle before being told the answer even without any impedances. Even silly git David Jaffe, the actual creator of God Of War, has talked about it.

Still happening a fair bit into the game - in telling me exactly how to throw my axe at a bucket of fire before I've gotten within throwing range. Then again while I'm aiming, then telling me it's wrong and I need to move to another perch before the crane has finished moving, then telling me it's right the second my axe hits the crane from the other perch. It's absolutely absurd and ruining my enjoyment of long stretches of the game. It would make sense if it did it for the first mechanic of each type before it moved on and let you figure it out, but it doesn't. It's absolutely relentless. I was wondering if it's tied to framerate ticks because I've got the game running about 90fps on the HFR mode. But I'm sure someone would have figured that out by now. I can't believe it's like this on purpose. The galling part is WE ALREADY SOLVED THIS PROBLEM. Press R3 for a hint. Jesus Christ.

Crashing constantly since the latest update. Constantly. None of this bodes well for a game supposedly out in a few days.

Darktide might be playable by Christmas

It's pretty cool

Weirdly it's running fine-ish now, everything on max/high and getting over 100fps. The DLSS3 frame generation input delay is still there, but it's only about as bad as playing with vsync on. I do agree that the game seems awkwardly plonked between Vermintide/L4D/B4B and GTFO. I want to get a bit better at it and see how it distinguishes itself at the higher difficulties. What is interesting is that no matter what you do, any combination of settings including vsync, DLSS2/3, reflex, turning everything off altogether, it still has this swimmy feel. Like the centre of gravity for the character is too far forward, even though the FOV is OK. It's odd.

Ah OK. I'm trying to do a fair bit more with it but the main issue is it's using about 30-40% of my CPU and GPU. I don't really mind making it look like potato Quake 2 mode but it still dips wildly all over the place even when doing that. Starting to wonder if it's a driver issue or something to do with my system/settings. This guy has virtually the same setup as me and he's getting 120fps near constant at 4k with DLSS quality. I was getting 40fps! His GPU usage is constantly around 90% too. Mine was never above 35%. Frame generation was definitely on for me (turning it off tanked my framerate further) although I'm not a big fan of it as it introduces a weird mousefeel and input lag. Weirdly turning DLSS on/off and changing settings didn't seem to make any impact, so I'm wondering if my DLSS wasn't kicking in properly. I might have to rebuy it and have another fiddle.

I’m always very suspicious when it comes to optimisation from a new studio. Hold fire until launch would be my recommendation.