Recent reviews by Bennybonse

FOR ULTRAMAR!

A brilliant modernisation and sequel to the original Space Marine by Relic. It is heavy on your system, but the emperor demands you adjust your settings correctly and the Machine Spirit will sing. There are lore elements present from the previous game but they do not require play(although I would personally recommend going back and giving it a go).

Accuracy to the setting and without any spoilers, Saber has perfectly hit the note of grim dark and how the imperium 'works'.

Thank you for reviving this franchise!

There are few games that I would recommend to anyone. This is one of them. Whether you do not like the style of combat or some other element I recommend you try to stick to this 'game'. It is a triumph of the medium and tells a story beyond what I thought the medium could give and the attachment to companions I thought I could have from the like of Bioware's titles or even Larian's previous entries. I have not felt the level of emotions hitting the end of any game that I have felt with this and it is a masterpiece and I cannot wait to return for a 2nd if not 3rd playthrough with mods and different choices. 10/10

After the patches even act 3 is more performant, but being honest this is not the kind of game where performance should dissuade anyone. Also as the game matures more mods, patches and options will come. Given the content both the devs and modders have already added, doubt there will be a lack of content and replayability going forward!

Having played through the majority of the game, I cannot say my overall experience was bad. The moment to moment gameplay and the overarching story were engaged and improvements over fallen order.

HOWEVER

Even after the latest patch and running a 5800x3D and 4090 at 4K epic with FSR2 at quality(RT off as stutter and crashes were worse) I struggle to recommend this to anyone unless the crashes and stutter are all but eliminated from the game. Important gameplay section towards the middle and at what I think is the end, crashed at crucial emotional points that would have successfully hit, however all they left me with was anger and disappointment.

After cyberpunk and the numerous releases that have come since with poor PC performance at release and beyond it is mind boggling that companies and devs can pride themselves with these releases.

NOTES IF YOU WANT TO BUY AND PLAY

Make sure you are on the latest patch, VRAM use and GPU utilisation have improved and avoid RT like the plague for now until it is fixed

I know this may be in the minority for this particular launch, but I have had fairly minimal issues after waiting for the shader compilation. For reference for other users, this is running 4K DLSS Perf and High settings. It is playable at balanced and quality but I prefer to be above 60 fps and lock for my 120Hz display. Specs: 5800x3D, 2080ti(Driver version 531.41), 32GB 3600MHz and Samsung 980 Pro(non-primary drive). Please wait for the shader comp as per the Uncharted 4 and Uncharted Lost Legacy games as you will experience high CPU usage in game if it is not done in advance, for the most part it is not overly high apart from in scenes(40-60%) with a lot of particle density(60-80%) and it is fairly balanced across all cores, at least on my configuration. Devs seem to be on top of early issues and eager to fix issues.

The recent EAC update was pointless. Main disruption to lobbies is crashers. This update has failed to deal with them along with removing key accessibility features offered by modders. Was happily in a lobby that crashed Quest friends(annoying) and when they joined back fully crashed Steam VR. Deal with true issues first before appeasing stakeholders. I ran VRC+ for many months before the update and have no incentive to reactivate. Dealing with no clip, not an issue. Dealing with VC spam, never a problem. Dealing with problematic(non-crashing) individuals, not a problem. Dealing with crashers, still a problem....

Ignore some of the comments about networking and connecting to servers. Chose a server that you are either happy queuing for or for one that doesn't queue with a slightly lower population.

Game itself is great and has a nice loop to gameplay. The survival-ish aspects fuse well with a nice cooldown based combat system that seems to be a little Souls-like in influence.

Couple of cons that might put people off at this point:
-travelling can be a bit slow without mounts
-fast travelling early is a bit of a grind due to the Azoth usage
-resource contention can also be frustrating especially on boss creatures where respawns can take upwards of minutes

It is still Mass Effect! At this point only played through a good chunk of ME1, but it plays like I remember just a bit tighter and with a fresh coat of paint. This is a remaster and not a remake, so temper expectations to not expect it to be or play radically different from the originals!

TL;DR If you love Mass Effect it is worth picking up again to play it again. If new, you will still have an excellent time with one of Bioware's best games

Note: If you are getting issues Resuming ME2, Start the game from the launcher rather than Resume, there seems to be an issue loading in with Resume on my setup. This may not affect you.

100% recommend, brilliant in it's current state, couple of issues when getting to the 'busier' stages of the game, but the devs seems to genuinely care about the game with constant updates and videos on their social media. Look forward to the full release of the game sometime in the future.

Still one of the best games in the series. With reshade and a texture mod you can get this to look better than the remaster for the current gen consoles. Be warned though, mouse acceleration is quite aggressive so recommend a lower sensitivity setting.