Quake 4 and FEAR first impressions (spoilers)

Post by **weemadando** » 2005-10-20 06:02pm

FEAR is an enormous system hog whose "trial level" to test options on lies out its tight little arse.

My system (P4 2.8, 512mb DDR400, X800pro) with everything turned off or on minimum (and pixel doubling on) has UNPLAYABLE chug (5-20 second stoppages in gameplay every few seconds). Yet the "trial level" breezes through at 40+ FPS with everything maxed out.

I've put FEAR aside and am waiting for them to patch it to fix that kind of fucking problem (which according to tech support and tweaking boards I'm by no means alone in).

Manus Celer Dei · Post by **Manus Celer Dei** » 2005-10-20 06:19pm

ggs wrote:Is it just me or does the AI say "shit" a lot when you hit the slow-mo and they are out in the open?

I certainly would if I was in their position.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2005-10-20 06:31pm

Manus Celer Dei wrote:
ggs wrote:Is it just me or does the AI say "shit" a lot when you hit the slow-mo and they are out in the open?
I certainly would if I was in their position.

Yes, speaking of which, had an enemy just manage to start saying shit when he got a double boot to the face.

One thing I've noticed, I'm acutaly happy to see the Replicans, Little creepy girls are no where to be seen nomraly where they are around. After spending twenty minutes crawling through dark corridors and scary hallways, I think, ooh good, people I can shoot, Horray!

Oh and I'm terrified of every single ladder.

Dendrobius · Post by **Dendrobius** » 2005-10-20 07:14pm

weemadando wrote:FEAR is an enormous system hog whose "trial level" to test options on lies out its tight little arse.

My system (P4 2.8, 512mb DDR400, X800pro) with everything turned off or on minimum (and pixel doubling on) has UNPLAYABLE chug (5-20 second stoppages in gameplay every few seconds). Yet the "trial level" breezes through at 40+ FPS with everything maxed out.

I've put FEAR aside and am waiting for them to patch it to fix that kind of fucking problem (which according to tech support and tweaking boards I'm by no means alone in).

Dude, you need at least 3x as much RAM, if not downright 4x. 512Mb is just not enough nowadays. I'll bet that's why it's an unplayable chug ingame and ok in the benchmark, because the benchmark doesn't load nearly as much as a normal level.

I'm running AthlonXP 2000+, 1.5Gb DDR333, and 6600GT and it's runing at 1152x864, 2xFSAA and everything on medium/high but no soft shadows fine (bench average 38, in game it feels around the same, no chugging). Mind you I have upgraded to the 1.01 patch, you might want to try that out as well.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2005-10-20 07:33pm

FEAR has to be one of the most poorly coded games of recent times. By many accounts it runs worse than Quake 4, and this is without the "soft" shadows which ruin performance even on sweet hardware, yet look like shit. This is inexcusable for a game that doesn't look better than Doom 3. I know some fanboys might have a problem with that last statement, but I played the demo and it didn't look that great. Screenshots from the retail version don't tell a different story either.

AAAAASSSS!!

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2005-10-20 08:23pm

While Hamels opinion is ... extreme... I do have to agree somewhat. I don't have performace issues (3200/64, 2048Gb, 6600GT), but the game really doesn't look that great. It looks GOOD, it looks 'par for the course'. And those shadows really do screw your framerate.

But hey, it's sold as 'scary' and it isn't, so neh.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2005-10-20 09:41pm

weemadando wrote:(P4 2.8, 512mb DDR400, X800pro)

Your problem is your RAM. 512mb is just not enough, taking the rest of your rig into consideration that amount of RAM is for damn sure the bottleneck. 512mb is the minimum requirement for FEAR, they recommend you have at least a gig. Thankfully, RAM is not too expensive; I'm at 512 right now, but I bought another gig off of crucial.com for US $130 (including shipping) which will be arriving tomorrow. And, honestly, if you plan to continue playing computer games you're going to need to up your RAM before you do anything else; a 2.8GHz processor is not too bad but a small amount of RAM is an evil little bottleneck.

Julhelm · Post by **Julhelm** » 2005-10-20 10:44pm

Having completed it, I have to say I found it kind of lackluster, especially when Monolith have been responsible for such masterpieces as AVP and the NOLF games.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2005-10-20 11:08pm

Julhelm wrote:Having completed it, I have to say I found it kind of lackluster, especially when Monolith have been responsible for such masterpieces as AVP and the NOLF games.

Sigh. Were those not the days?

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-10-21 10:04am

I have the agree, the story is very 'blah.' But I didn't buy it for the story, I bought it for the kickass gunfights.

EDIT: Not that the story isn't important to me, not by a longshot.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2005-10-21 02:29pm

You can't say that you weren't awed by the ending though! Even if you weren't scared, it was so AWESOME!

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-10-21 03:27pm

DPDarkPrimus wrote:You can't say that you weren't awed by the ending though! Even if you weren't scared, it was so AWESOME!

Fuck yes.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2005-10-21 06:15pm

Well it looks like FEAR really doesn't like widescreen after all. At 1920x1200, it locks my computer up when it exits to Windows (regardless of time played), but it doesn't at 1600x1200. All I changed was the resolution. I bet the thing's hardcoded for 4:3 resolutions, and isn't releasing the GPU properly when using a 16:10 res. I might do some more checking with 1680x1050 later on.

Also, I think I'm enjoying Quake 4 a bit more than FEAR...

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-10-21 06:56pm

Fuck, no matter what I do, I can't get the game to run any higher than 1100x800, even changing the config file.

Julhelm · Post by **Julhelm** » 2005-10-21 09:45pm

Actually it was the ending that disappointed me the most.

And especially that Carrie-esque "last scare" ending; yup, never saw that one coming at all...

nickolay1 · Post by **nickolay1** » 2005-10-21 11:35pm

I too thought that the ending was horrible. A sequel is not very likely (most everything was destroyed), so hinting at one was stupid. I'm sure that I wasn't the first to think that the poor little helpless soldiers on the helicopter had to do was pull out their pistols and put a bullet in that bitch's head.

Please shrink your spoiler text next time. ~D

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2005-10-21 11:57pm

You know, talking about the ending of a game that JUST CAME OUT in a thread with NO SPOILER WARNING in ANYTHING OTHER THAN VERY TEENY TINY FONT is considerably rude.

nickolay1 · Post by **nickolay1** » 2005-10-22 12:11am

I apologize. I was under the impression that the thread title gave ample warning.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2005-10-22 12:20am

The title of the thread when you posted simply said "first impressions". Everyone else, when talking about the end of the game, made their text tiny.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2005-10-22 03:16pm

Julhelm wrote:Actually it was the ending that disappointed me the most.

And especially that Carrie-esque "last scare" ending; yup, never saw that one coming at all...

Hey, I didn't see it... I was all in "kickass FPS mode" after the huge explosion, both on the ground and seeing it in the air.

No doubt the scare at the end was just that- thrown in to make you jump one last time. Making a sequel I'm sure they would ignore it.

Julhelm · Post by **Julhelm** » 2005-10-23 11:40am

Massive spoilers below:

Also, what's up with all these strange reactors in games that consist of columns that have lightnings go between them and where the fuel rods can be revealed by the flick of a single switch and shot to pieces with a fucking pistol, and when you destroy it, you still have ample time to get to the surface from a facility at least 500 meters below ground and (in this case) at least 2km's away judging by the size of the blast, all while being interupted by fighting at several points before it goes up? And what the fuck is with games like HL2 and FEAR making the final part the easiest in the whole game? In HL2, you got the ridiculously overpowered super-gravity gun (the normal one of which was stupid to begin with) that killed all baddies with a single shot, and in FEAR the "elite" clones just shut down after you pop Fettle, and instead you're given a single pistol, but the baddies are all these lame demons Alma throws at you, all of which go down with a single bullet, and Alma herself (I would've given her a hug and cooked her some food to deal with those massive malnutrition issues she has) goes down with a couple of rounds to the head, and during this entire time not only do you have your health maxed out to like 160, but you also have enough fucking medikits stashed to survive the whole ordeal without firing a single bullet, with the exception of the scripted points where Alma kills you unless you pop her. I spent nearly the entire game with 10 medikits in my inventory, and never ran out of ammunition for more than one weapon at a time, and all this at the so-called "Hard" level. Not to mention the game being as ridiculously short as Contract J.A.C.K. and the scenery started getting really repetitive 3 hours into the game.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2005-10-23 11:34pm

Yeah, what's with the difficulty? I'm on 'hard' also, and I only dropped below 10 medkits because I missed a nade throw and blew myself up a bit.

Julhelm · Post by **Julhelm** » 2005-10-24 12:26pm

After trying out Quake 4, I will simply say that it's classic ID, classic Quake, amazingly oldschool, and I fucking love it.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2005-10-24 02:40pm

Julhelm wrote:After trying out Quake 4, I will simply say that it's classic ID, classic Quake, amazingly oldschool, and I fucking love it.

Is there a demo out yet? I also heard the rocket launcher has 'Quake-2-Slow' rockets (which sucks), and a really uberpowerful Railgun (which definitely doesn't suck!)

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2005-10-24 04:10pm

Stark wrote:Yeah, what's with the difficulty? I'm on 'hard' also, and I only dropped below 10 medkits because I missed a nade throw and blew myself up a bit.

Dang, I must suck, since I dropped to zero medkits at one point on normal difficulty.