What are you playing?

[lexluthermiester]

It's on Steam as well, and it's quite cheap... Might be worth a buy.

Weird. I wonder when that happened? It started out as an Android game.

Definitely. Realistic graphics definitely have a place, but stylistic graphics do too, and often I prefer them a bit more (truly, a mix of both without being too extreme in either direction ends up being the best for me).

100% this! As was stated elsewhere, games are about escapism and immersion is important.

 

[Frick]

Definitely. Realistic graphics definitely have a place, but stylistic graphics do too, and often I prefer them a bit more (truly, a mix of both without being too extreme in either direction ends up being the best for me).

Art direction is much more imortant than visual fidelity. See for example The Long Dark, which like no other game captures winter.

 

[Space Lynx]

I'm playing Ghost Song tonight, was free for prime subscribers. It's got Metroid Fusion vibes, but a unique atmosphere and so far I am really enjoying it. Looks great in OLED.

 

[Princess Garnet]

Currently playing Dead Space 2 and loving it. The Dead Space games are action shooter games wearing the skin of a horror game and I wish more games would take this approach.

You sound like you'd love Doom 3 just as I did, often considered the Black sheep of the series.

Looks like garbage with PS2 and HDTV even with component cable. But who cares if the game is good.

Seeing the raw graphics output, and then upscaled, is just way too rough on a lot of those older CRT era games. I'd go with emulation and filtering at that point, or look into if Final Fantasy VIII had any asset upscaling love on its PC counterpart like Final Fantasy IX did.

If you want to stick to the original hardware and game, there's always hardware scalers with filters... for a price, haha.

But I'd almost consider that the only acceptable way to go when dealing with the original hardware/games on modern displays. If I played enough of them, I'd honestly consider a few hundred for a good one well worth the investment. Probably not for one game here and there.

I have no idea what that "Comsumer Mode 1" is supposed to mimic insofar as CRTs go, but my goodness does it look gorgeous. I'm not sure if any emulation filters/shaders exist to mimic such a look.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

You sound like you'd love Doom 3 just as I did, often considered the Black sheep of the series.

Seeing the raw graphics output, and then upscaled, is just way too rough on a lot of those older CRT era games. I'd go with emulation and filtering at that point, or look into if Final Fantasy VIII had any asset upscaling love on its PC counterpart like Final Fantasy IX did.

If you want to stick to the original hardware and game, there's always hardware scalers with filters... for a price, haha.

But I'd almost consider that the only acceptable way to go when dealing with the original hardware/games on modern displays. If I played enough of them, I'd honestly consider a few hundred for a good one well worth the investment. Probably not for one game here and there.

I have no idea what that "Comsumer Mode 1" is supposed to mimic insofar as CRTs go, but my goodness does it look gorgeous. I'm not sure if any emulation filters/shaders exist to mimic such a look.

-It was alright, but it definitely is the black sheep of the series.

Dead Space has the benefit of being it's own thing and not coming with th to expectations and baggage of the Doom series before it, but it definitely shares some of Doom 3's "techno horror" DNA.

 

[AnotherReader]

After finishing Mass Effect Andromeda, I'm playing Rise of the Tomb Raider.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I have no idea what that "Comsumer Mode 1" is supposed to mimic insofar as CRTs go, but my goodness does it look gorgeous. I'm not sure if any emulation filters/shaders exist to mimic such a look.

I like the CRT/soft look much better than sharp.. The blocky pixelized look has always irritated the crap out of me.

 

[Ruru]

Playing nhl24 on ps4. JYP vs Avalanche

jyp is my local team

 

[Klemc]

I like the CRT/soft look much better than sharp.. The blocky pixelized look has always irritated the crap out of me.

I see a black grainy idk what it is on soft and prefer the pixeled render myself

 

[Vayra86]

I see a black grainy idk what it is on soft and prefer the pixeled render myself

Yeah it has a LOT more definition to it. Of course you see pixels, but the whole picture is more vibrant, details pop; compare the wood floor behind the character for example.

 

[SN2716057]

Commandos: Origins (demo) it feels like the old game only in higher resolution.

 

[Princess Garnet]

Yeah it has a LOT more definition to it. Of course you see pixels, but the whole picture is more vibrant, details pop; compare the wood floor behind the character for example.

It's different in a thumbnail compared to at high resolutions, although giving the benefit of the doubt I presume you checked it at full screen resolution/maximum 4K video detail, ideally on a high resolution display (just mentioning this in case you didn't or for anyone else who didn't). Those games were never meant to look pixelated, and the 320 x 224 backgrounds just do not survive being scaled up to modern HD resolutions, regardless of whether you do a nearest neighbor approach (too pixelated) look or a filtered look (too blurry/smooth). They need some sort of additional "CRT-esque" treatment to look right, and even then they still lean towards blurry, but well... that's the nature of the original asset size. The PC version with the Moguri mod exists for people who want sharpness/clarity on modern HD resolutions and don't mind the drawbacks of that approach.

You do, however, bring up one good point about the obvious drawback of scanlines and some of those filtered approaches. That is, they dull the image because less of the overall scene is bright (due to more of it being scanlines). This is simply unavoidable to an extent because LCDs can't mimic a CRT. CRTs were "resolution flexible" in that they didn't have native resolutions, so they could show these low resolution assets at larger physical screen sizes without as much deterioration. Of course it would be as sharp as HD resolutions becasue we simply had HD resolution sharpness back then, but it'd be better than how those same HD resolutions show it now.

This is actually part of what made me like the way the "consumer 1 mode" looked, despite it not being as "accurate" to most CRT TVs of the time. It's a balance of a filtered/CRT look while retaining some vividness.

The best bet is to simply use a CRT, but that's not practical for most people. I think really high resolution displays (namely, 4K, and maybe 1440p, hence the disclaimer in that video) help here because these shaders/filters have more real estate to work with when trying to mimic scanlines and other stuff that would work on a sub-pixel level. OLED displays may also be better off here in retaining some of the brightness/vividness.

But at the end of the day... yeah, it's yet another example of why I'll cry "remake when, Square Enix, come on!" Capcom did it (Resident Evil 2). Even Konami did it (Silent Hill 2), and with a series they basically shifted to gambling machine duty. I'm keeping my eyes on Square Enix... it's their turn to do what those other two did!

 

[silentbogo]

The Axis Unseen demo dropped last week. I've decided to give it a try, with all the fuss and game media noise about it.
"From the developer of Skyrim and Fallout and Starfield and whatever"... "Huge heavy metal horror open-world game from former Bethesda dev".... and shit like that.
Basically it ended up being a friggin' garbage dump. Procedurally generated barren map with very few enemies that you can't even kill or do anything with until you level up quite a bit.
Tutorial was an incoherent mess which tried to introduce several in-game mechanics which are not even available in the demo itself (at least I did not have a patience to unlock 'em); all while throwing you randomly between unconnected sets every few seconds.
Worst of all - DLSS doesn't work on my card(GTX1660S) and XeSS(the only available option) for some reason makes it even slower. With 4K monitor I had to downtune everything in order to be able to run it fullscreen, so in my case you can actually see the game for what it really is - a bunch of lazy low-poly models slapped together, spruced up with nanite, fur, GI, and some post-processing.
Not sure what exactly did this dude develop in all of the abovementioned Bethesda titles, but it sure is not gameplay, nor maps, nor graphics, nor UI.

As sad as it sounds, I think I'm gonna go back to torturing myself with Fallout 76.

 

[Vayra86]

It's different in a thumbnail compared to at high resolutions, although giving the benefit of the doubt I presume you checked it at full screen resolution/maximum 4K video detail, ideally on a high resolution display (just mentioning this in case you didn't or for anyone else who didn't). Those games were never meant to look pixelated, and the 320 x 224 backgrounds just do not survive being scaled up to modern HD resolutions, regardless of whether you do a nearest neighbor approach (too pixelated) look or a filtered look (too blurry/smooth). They need some sort of additional "CRT-esque" treatment to look right, and even then they still lean towards blurry, but well... that's the nature of the original asset size. The PC version with the Moguri mod exists for people who want sharpness/clarity on modern HD resolutions and don't mind the drawbacks of that approach.

You do, however, bring up one good point about the obvious drawback of scanlines and some of those filtered approaches. That is, they dull the image because less of the overall scene is bright (due to more of it being scanlines). This is simply unavoidable to an extent because LCDs can't mimic a CRT. CRTs were "resolution flexible" in that they didn't have native resolutions, so they could show these low resolution assets at larger physical screen sizes without as much deterioration. Of course it would be as sharp as HD resolutions becasue we simply had HD resolution sharpness back then, but it'd be better than how those same HD resolutions show it now.

This is actually part of what made me like the way the "consumer 1 mode" looked, despite it not being as "accurate" to most CRT TVs of the time. It's a balance of a filtered/CRT look while retaining some vividness.

The best bet is to simply use a CRT, but that's not practical for most people. I think really high resolution displays (namely, 4K, and maybe 1440p, hence the disclaimer in that video) help here because these shaders/filters have more real estate to work with when trying to mimic scanlines and other stuff that would work on a sub-pixel level. OLED displays may also be better off here in retaining some of the brightness/vividness.

But at the end of the day... yeah, it's yet another example of why I'll cry "remake when, Square Enix, come on!" Capcom did it (Resident Evil 2). Even Konami did it (Silent Hill 2), and with a series they basically shifted to gambling machine duty. I'm keeping my eyes on Square Enix... it's their turn to do what those other two did!

Yeah I think you're right in that specific scenario, but going from just the video (didnt watch it full screen) and also from my own experience emulating games I really don't mind a pixelated look all that much. There are limits, but as long as the picture conveys what's going on well, I'm fine, really. That's personal more than anything else. I'm not saying the crt approach is bad though.

The upscale generated from emulators like pcsx2 doesn't quite have these issues or hurdles to overcome; and there I just don't mind looking at pixels. They were always there. Similarly, lots of SNES games. I'm also familiar with the somewhat dulled look some implementations can have, I've never been a big fan of it. Vibrant color can do a lot especially for older games; and also quite specifically because when they were viewed natively, they were similarly bright and vibrant on a CRT or a cathode ray TV. Colors were always quite pure in my memory, and digitalizing the scanlines or even mimicing the spaces between 'pixels' on a TV isn't doing much good on an LCD in my view. It simply darkens the picture and if you compensate that with additional brightness from the monitor, you're also brightening the blacks. On LCD, you want the space between pixels to be impossible to see, because it creates artifacting or breaks motion resolution. Effectively, its also 'a grid of squares' you're placing on the image, except now they're black instead of a nearest neighbour.

 

[Kapone33]

Been on a bit of a sim racing/driving rampage lately playing some LeMans Ultimate, and iRacing, and as far as driving just truckin' on American Truck Simulator. I'll sprinkle some A Plauge Tale: Requiem in there in between.

View attachment 366076

Since the new Update Le Mans ultimate has been insanely good.

I had to delete Dead Space 1 which I got free on Ubi or EA, because I found it too scary. Those creatures with long, razor arms scared the sh*t out of me

Try Fear or Fear 2. That will effect you.

 

[Vayra86]

I had to delete Dead Space 1 which I got free on Ubi or EA, because I found it too scary. Those creatures with long, razor arms scared the sh*t out of me

DS1 is like a cocktail of suspense, jump scares all over the place and a constant pressure like you're in a submarine with its air running out. Probably one of the best horror games I've come across to be fair. And it gets worse over time, the monsters at the beginning aren't even the worst. By far not. When I met those super soldiers the first time (the really quick ones) I quite literally shat my pants.

Higher difficulties add a constant lack of resources on top of the whole thing, too.

There's probably one game I rank as high as DS1 and that's Silent Hilll 3, in terms of just pure horror and fear playing it.

For some reason I felt like doing a playthrough or five of this again. Let's see how silly I can upgrade my weapons this time (Shadow Warrior 2)

 

[Kapone33]

DS1 is like a cocktail of suspense, jump scares all over the place and a constant pressure like you're in a submarine with its air running out. Probably one of the best horror games I've come across to be fair. And it gets worse over time, the monsters at the beginning aren't even the worst. By far not. When I met those super soldiers the first time (the really quick ones) I quite literally shat my pants.

Higher difficulties add a constant lack of resources on top of the whole thing, too.

There's probably one game I rank as high as DS1 and that's Silent Hilll 3, in terms of just pure horror and fear playing it.

Excelsior! Gaming has been that good.

 

[Ruru]

DOA5 on PS4 :3

Try Fear or Fear 2. That will effect you.

The best horror FPS games. Hella glad that I'm not the only who loves them

 

[KrazyT]

fatal frame
There's probably one game I rank as high as DS1 and that's Silent Hilll 3, in terms of just pure horror and fear playing it.

Did you try the Fatal Frame / Project Zero series ?
Real gems tends to be forgotten now :/

 

[Klemc]

Nobody on SH2 right now ?

 

[Kapone33]

DOA5 on PS4 :3


The best horror FPS games. Hella glad that I'm not the only who loves them

Yep I could not sleep after playing Fear for the first time. That Game is not for Friday nights but when the sun is in the sky. Then I got Fear 2 on a Steam summer sale and played it with my headphones on. That was the only time I have done that with a Fear Game and I will never do it again but the immersion was real. I am not someone who is into Horror since the Night of the living Daylights when I saw that as the last movie on a Friday night in high school. Fear was that good though where it transcended genres and just became an experience not to be missed. Just to prove the point I never got into Stalker. Even though that Game could be considered similar. Dead Space is also WTF but I think I was playing Section 8 or Mass Effect so the lack of weapons was jarring. I probably won't go back as if I thought 2023 was good for Gaming 2024 has been insane with releases. If you watched Grendizer as a kid the Grendizer Game is that good. Even has the music from the show. It even has a some seriously SHump levels and Starfox style levels as well. "Spin Saucers!. Yep Gaming has been that good since I was 7 when my Dad brought home that Tank Game with 2 controllers that my brother and I played the snot out of but when he brought home the TRS80 it was over. My first Game was Kareem vs Bird and I played the s$%$ out of that too. Then I got a Spy Game that was like the one in the Arcade but better. Then I got Space Racer and what a blast that was. Silpheed and Budokan were the end of my journey with PC Gaming as the SNES was taking no prisoners. Of course that led to the PS1 and I fell in love with Psygnosis, Konami, Namco, Capcom, Tieko, Broderbund and EA. That was when EA was the bomb, if you were into Sims. Today is that good because nothing before can compare to the best examples of what we have to trigger our imagination today. Dragon's Dogma 2 and 40K Rogue Trader are 2 completely different Games that will be just as good as Everspace 2 if you are a kinetic Gamer. That means that you played the pants off of Torchlight 1 and 2 and found Diablo meh as a result of sinking your teeth into Grim Dawn. You also know that Ascent is as much Cyperpunk as you would want but CP2077 is insane but the contorls are not Devil May Cry.

 

[Ruru]

Yep I could not sleep after playing Fear for the first time. That Game is not for Friday nights but when the sun is in the sky. Then I got Fear 2 on a Steam summer sale and played it with my headphones on. That was the only time I have done that with a Fear Game and I will never do it again but the immersion was real. I am not someone who is into Horror since the Night of the living Daylights when I saw that as the last movie on a Friday night in high school. Fear was that good though where it transcended genres and just became an experience not to be missed. Just to prove the point I never got into Stalker. Even though that Game could be considered similar. Dead Space is also WTF but I think I was playing Section 8 or Mass Effect so the lack of weapons was jarring. I probably won't go back as if I thought 2023 was good for Gaming 2024 has been insane with releases. If you watched Grendizer as a kid the Grendizer Game is that good. Even has the music from the show. It even has a some seriously SHump levels and Starfox style levels as well. "Spin Saucers!. Yep Gaming has been that good since I was 7 when my Dad brought home that Tank Game with 2 controllers that my brother and I played the snot out of but when he brought home the TRS80 it was over. My first Game was Kareem vs Bird and I played the s$%$ out of that too. Then I got a Spy Game that was like the one in the Arcade but better. Then I got Space Racer and what a blast that was. Silpheed and Budokan were the end of my journey with PC Gaming as the SNES was taking no prisoners. Of course that led to the PS1 and I fell in love with Psygnosis, Konami, Namco, Capcom, Tieko, Broderbund and EA. That was when EA was the bomb, if you were into Sims. Today is that good because nothing before can compare to the best examples of what we have to trigger our imagination today. Dragon's Dogma 2 and 40K Rogue Trader are 2 completely different Games that will be just as good as Everspace 2 if you are a kinetic Gamer. That means that you played the pants off of Torchlight 1 and 2 and found Diablo meh as a result of sinking your teeth into Grim Dawn. You also know that Ascent is as much Cyperpunk as you would want but CP2077 is insane but the contorls are not Devil May Cry.

View attachment 366677

FEAR2 was also good!

 

[skizzo]

Commandos: Origins (demo) it feels like the old game only in higher resolution.

man, this franchise fell from grace a bit with the 2 and 3 remasters. so much so for me that I never even put this game on my wish list. I heard it was coming, but never gave a crap to follow it at all. I feel like a bit of a poser since Commandos was literally the game franchise that made me think playing games on the PC was cool. This kinda stuff wasn't really possible on a console at the time, and when it was done, it was clunky.

Fingers crossed they have captured the feeling of Behind Enemy Lines, Beyond the Call of Duty, and/or Men of Courage. Your comment gives me hope!

I still liked the remaster of 2, but it was comical how many bugs were left in or introduced. I kinda stopped liking the franchise at 3, that game wasn't as good, and whatever Strike Force was, it sure wasn't for the fans of the previous games. I never even bought it, let alone played it once.

I have a high bar set for this new game! Got it on my wish list now and I'll obviously have to try out the demo too!

 

[Splinterdog]

DOA5 on PS4 :3


The best horror FPS games. Hella glad that I'm not the only who loves them

I didn't find the Fear games in the least bit scary and I did enjoy the shooting!

 

[rtwjunkie]

I didn't find the Fear games in the least bit scary and I did enjoy the shooting!

Alma scared the hell out of me in the first game. I had to have all the lights blazing. Fear 2 didn’t scare me though. I was wise to her ways. That just turned out to be a good shooter.