Tech Analysis: Mass Effect 2

By Richard Leadbetter Published 13 February, 2010

Adept.

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There was always the sense that Mass Effect was a console game where the ambitions of the developer were held back significantly by the technology utilised. BioWare's use of Unreal Engine 3 was an inspired choice in creating the look and feel of its epic space opera, but in terms of the basic performance level the Xbox 360 version of Mass Effect was legendarily disappointing.

Digital Foundry's first, brief hands-on with the sequel was uniformly positive. But a hand-picked demo of a specific level is one thing, and in-depth analysis of the complete game is quite another. In this feature we'll be measuring Xbox 360 performance of both Mass Effect titles, then factoring in and evaluating the PC build of the sequel.

To get an idea of the many improvements BioWare has made to the new game, it's important to generate some context by going back to the original.

The sins of the original Mass Effect are many and varied, running with a multitude of frame-drops, texture-popping and torn frames. It's a shame in many ways because the overall art direction in the game, and the sheer scale of what BioWare created, is still extremely impressive, even in the present day, to the point where the recently released Dragon Age: Origins feels technologically more backwards in many ways.

But just how badly did Mass Effect run? It's a curious game in that certain sections operated relatively smoothly, while others performed horribly in comparison. Let's take a look.

The good, the bad, and the fugly. Performance analysis of the original Mass Effect, running without a hard disk install.

While overall screen-tear at 24 per cent isn't hugely impressive, it even gets worse in context of a large array of duplicate frames. Dropped frames are followed by torn frames, emphasising the effect of poor performance. At its nadir in these clips, we can see frame-rates at 13FPS. Combine this with the poor streaming tech (Mass Effect is one of the few games with palpable gameplay advantages when installed to HDD), and the reputation for poor performance is well-deserved.

So, how have things changed in Mass Effect 2? While we have no direct like-for-like scenes that would represent any kind of useful measurement, we can still check out overall performance across a range of different scenes.

Mass Effect 2 still has its own performance issues, but there's no doubting that the frame-rate and tearing issues have been dramatically improved over the first game.

There are similarities with the first game. Cut-scenes can and will drop down to 20FPS in order to maintain the excellent detail levels BioWare demands from its characters, and there are still jumps in places between 20FPS and 30FPS during the arcade sections, but overall performance, particularly when it comes to tearing (now at 2.5 per cent in these clips - most of the time ME2 passes as a v-synced game), is obviously smoother.

This has all been achieved with a range of technological improvements across the board, combined with sharper level design more in tune with the limitations of the engine.

Another interesting element is the removal of anti-aliasing. The first Mass Effect included Unreal Engine 3's somewhat selective 2x multi-sampling AA. It's selective in that it appears to be applied to edges midway through rendering the frame, so while some of the image gets edge-smoothing lots of it doesn't. You can see this in a range of UE3 games, Gears of War 2 being a standout example.

For Mass Effect 2, BioWare appears to have turned off the anti-aliasing completely, presumably saving memory and GPU cycles in the process. Depth of field and bloom are used instead, doing a surprisingly good job. While not quite up there with the likes of Final Fantasy XIII, the DOF effect works extremely well in producing a great cinematic effect during the cut-scenes.

BioWare's implementation of cut-scenes from a conceptual standpoint is simple but effective, and hasn't changed much from the first game. The developers impart their plot by making you a part of it, directing the dialogue. The actual choices you make vary dramatically from one scene to another, but the point is that you feel more attached to the story because you become a part of it. You're still playing the game, not just watching it. Mass Effect 2 introduces QTE-style push-button "events" to further mix up the action.

Technologically-speaking, the key innovations in the cut-scenes concern improvements in the rendering of the characters. While the models themselves appear to be similar in terms of detail level from Mass Effect through to its sequel, the implementation of what looks like sub-surface scattering makes for more impressive skin-shaders and thus more realistic-looking characters.

me1-1
me2-1
me1-2
me2-2

While the actual 3D models of the characters are similar, superior skin-shaders in the sequel produce a more realistic appearance.

Shadowing has been vastly improved (flickering penumbras are much better), plus shadows remain consistent when multiple characters are in play, something that wasn't the case in the first game. The flickering penumbras of the first game that impacted on the quality of the characters have also been improved in the sequel with higher-quality shadowmaps and superior resolution.

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Comments (57) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • StooMonster #1 2 years ago

    DF: On the minus side, those with bleeding-edge systems get more frames and more pixels than those playing on Xbox 360, but little else: those textures were designed for 720p.

    Yeah, the video cut scenes are sudden jump to lo-res if you've been running at 2560x1600, wish they did those with in-game engine instead. :|

    Richard, can you please do an article on different output settings of same game? e.g. I want to set my consoles to 1080p output but do I get more tearing if I do? (Resident Evil 5 on Xbox 360 spring to mind here). It would be great if I could just set to 1080p but I get the feeling I need to run somethings at 720p and others at 1080p which means I have to change output all the time, which is annoying.

  • dirk_aircool #2 2 years ago

    good Idea. and what about the VGA output.

  • sammyc #3 2 years ago

    The Flickering Penumbras, great name for a band.

  • Lord_BeeJee #4 2 years ago

    Imagine what if could have looked like if it were developed with the pc as target platform. Its still a great looking game but the low-res scenery textures give it an old game feeling.
    Loving every minute of the story though
    Edited by Lord_BeeJee at 13/02/10 @ 13:03

  • BadBoyBonner #5 2 years ago

    @Stoo

    In complete agreement with the lo-res videos and I would also add the videos seem to be at 30fps or less; or/and the output of the source is locked at 30fps or less.

    It feels very strange that you can tell when the pre-rendered movie ends and engine cuts in because the quality rises substantially. Seems we have come full circle - CGI renders are now worse than ingame! ;-)

    Surely they could have used a different type of encoding to produce much better results on the PC with very little effort or expense. Seems such a shame when clearly a great amount of effort has gone into them.

  • Yetipants #6 2 years ago

    Thanks for a comprehensive and thorough article, as usual. It's interesting to note the side-effects of the mostly console-focused developments in video game graphics we've had lately; as stated in the article, the optimisation in current-gen game engines coupled with the improvements in PC performance means more people have PCs capable of running the latest games at decent levels of detail. I'm excited to see what this will lead to in the future. Hopefully raw processing power will become less relevant, and we will get games that take advantage of the increased amounts of memory offered by the PC and the next generation of consoles, in order to bring us more expansive game worlds that still look amazing. Bioware is among the leading developers in this respect, and I hope other developers will follow them. Getting a little tired of single-track rollercoaster rides like Modern Warfare 2 and most other shooter games.

  • BadBoyBonner #7 2 years ago

    @Mickey

    Dead Space didn't use Unreal Engine 3. Development was started on it but they didn't like how it rendered dynamic lights.

    Main thing for a "rig" at the moment imo is sterescopic 3d and/or1080p at 60fps

    EDIT:- not even sure it ever used the UE3 engine now - but when it was released it was built on an evolution of the engine from the Godfather.
    Edited by BadBoyBonner at 13/02/10 @ 13:11

  • soviet_ #8 2 years ago

    Nice read. You can force AA on ME2 PC and it looks amazing! Even running at 4x MSAA it looks so gorgeous at 60fps

  • Miths #9 2 years ago

    The PC version looks pretty good at 1920x1200 - certainly with vastly better lighting and shadows than the original, not to mention a much better looking and more interesting and varied artistic style and architectural design.
    There are definitely still some very ugly low res textures here and there though, and as others have pointed out, those pre-rendered cut scenes (particularly shots of the Normandy in space) look almost laughably bad compared to real-time gameplay, a bit like a heavily compressed low res web video. Fortunately there aren't that many of them.

    As for the game itself - if this had been a 360 exclusive I would have been forced to buy a replacement for my dead 360 (which I haven't otherwise had any intentions of doing as I've been getting by fine with my PC and PS3), because this is one game I definitely wouldn't want to have missed.
    Despite some minor flaws here and there, as an overall game experience it's the best I've had in my ~25 years of gaming. I'm currently on my second play through with an engineer, trying out more tactical combat than the solider I used in my first play through.
    Both FemSheps of course - I've gotten so used to Jennifer Hale's voice work in ME1+2 that I just can't picture Shepard as a man anymore :).

  • sarcasmoidosis #10 2 years ago

    Good read, but one question.Why are the PC screenshots less colored than the 360 ones? I had no issue with that.

    I have no regrets buying it on PC. 1080p/60FPS is absolutely awesome for this game even if the graphical improvement texture wise was not that much.

  • thefinn #11 2 years ago

    "Goes to show why p.c. gaming is on the slide when clearly the advantages of running a "rig" are clearly not worth the hassle for minor improvements (for most)."

    Well, there are two ways of looking at that. The other is that you can actually play the newest games at maxed settings on a rig that's affordable and doesn't need upgrading every six months. Speaking personally, graphical bells and whistles were never why I stayed with the PC anyway - it was (and is) always the games, and for multi-platform games, the interface.

  • ZuluHero #12 2 years ago

    "Both FemSheps of course - I've gotten so used to Jennifer Hale's voice work in ME1+2 that I just can't picture Shepard as a man anymore :)."

    Thats the same for me except with the male one. I guess its because games like this are such a personal experience that after 80-odd hours playing as one person you can't imagine anyone else that could fill that role.
    Edited by ZuluHero at 13/02/10 @ 16:56

  • ZuluHero #13 2 years ago

    Do people really think that a keyboard and mouse interface is better on multi-platform games?

    If i choose a game on PC it is because I know that i'm going to get a smoother, higher-res experience (i have my 360 on a SDTV) and (the biggest reason) because its usually cheaper. Even so, i will still plug my 360 pad into my PC as i still want to play the game like its console counterpart...
    Edited by ZuluHero at 13/02/10 @ 14:19

  • Bagpuss #14 2 years ago

    But you dont need £2000 Pc's anymore, except for e-penis waving.

    You can build a £400 Pc that can run this at 1080p 60fps.......

    Its the ONLY benefit of consoles being the main dev platform.

    Thats why i want, ney, DEMAND new consoles from Sony and Microsoft, it will once again raise the bar for gfx performance and so improve Pc gaming at the same time by default.

  • sarcasmoidosis #15 2 years ago

    "Do people really think that a keyboard and mouse interface is better on multi-platform games?"

    Well, I guess it depends on the game. For something like Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 that had some tweaking done for the PC version, it really was much better. For something like Bioshock 1, it really was a much smoother experience playing with a controller. That's for shooters. For other games, like Dirt 2 or GTA 4, controller is clearly superior.

    In the end, it's a "to each his own" type of thing, as I could never play something like Borderlands with a pad or something like Batman with a keyboard.

  • photoboy #16 2 years ago

    @ZuluHero

    I use a joypad while playing on my laptop, it's a much more comfortable way to play, so it's very annoying when games like Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 don't support the 360 pad. In both cases Xpadder does a fairly decent job of doing what the game should have done in the first place, although the hacking minigames in Mass Effect 2 don't take the controller into account.

    One thing I think DF should include in their analysis is the bug in PC ME2 that makes loading very slow. Sometimes it takes over a minute to travel between decks on the Normandy (I dread needing to use the lift). This has been reported in several forums over the web, you have to alt-tab out and reset the processor affinity and the load times drop to seconds. Apparently this is a bug in the Unreal engine that still hasn't been fixed. Isn't it about time that this supposedly mutli-platform engine work properly on the PC?

    Personally, I'm pleased there are so many console ports on the PC these days. The extra horsepower makes them look very good and yet they only need relatively weak hardware. It's a pleasant change from having to buy a new GPU every year or so to get the best performance.
    Edited by photoboy at 13/02/10 @ 14:59

  • Keivz #17 2 years ago

    @photoboy

    Zero problems with load times on my rig (and perhaps the DF rig). You may have just legitimized mickey2010's comments, though.

  • ZuluHero #18 2 years ago

    Sounds like the same memleak/game cache issue that plagued the PC version of Dragon Age? Do people find if they quit out of ME2 and reload the game fresh that the game loads stuff alot faster? Thats what I had to do ever 2 or 3 hours through extended plays of DA as through the course of play loadtimes went up from 30 secs between areas to upto 20 mins and beyond...

  • Cider-X #19 2 years ago

    holy s*** the 360 scales well to 1080p.

  • Geordiemp #20 2 years ago

    shows that with Batman and this you can make good games inspite of the old engine.

  • 43n1m4 #21 2 years ago

    What version to get depends heavily on where and how you play. I play in the living room on a 40" tv - Xbox360 version it is. If for nothing else, then for the gamepad support.
    Edited by 43n1m4 at 13/02/10 @ 17:06

  • TRUTH #22 2 years ago

    PC will always s olok and play better; but it's not the same fun. The problems of running games in the 1st place, all sorts of tech problems that can occur, and the monitor is not the same as playing comfortable on a seat infront of a 42"(+) tv,

    I have a decent PC and only play the odd rts on it...Games like Grid, Street Fighter IV, Fallout 3, Assassins Creed II, Mass Effect 2 etc etc are just more fun and simple to play on console; they may not look as sharp - but you don't really care as they look fine on a HD TV...Simplicity, not worries of memory or graphic update, no worries of setting, no worries of crashes/bugs (though this occasionally happens to consoles too - but not the problems faced on PC's), simple plug and play on consoles.

    This is why I prefer consoles

  • lockload #23 2 years ago

    Still suprises me how well the 360 competes with pc gaming, lets face it the 360 is £120

    Whichever versionb its a great looking game, heres hoping part 3 is out before xmas 2011

  • cianchristopher #24 2 years ago

    That video of the first Mass Effect on 360 is pretty shocking!

    I remember posting in the EG forum before about combat on the 360 version being shit, as the game frequently dropped frames and the engine "chugged" (parenthesis added as that was my exact word)...

    Then, typically enough, I was rebuked - and told, in no uncertain terms, that the combat did not, in fact, "chug" and was quite smooth throughout! "Yes", they said - "there is some screen tearing, but I don't remember a chugging framerate"...

    Fuck it! With some people - you just can't win...
    Edited by cianchristopher at 13/02/10 @ 18:38

  • Widge #25 2 years ago

    They fucked up the textures on ME1 PC, like Garrus. Even on Ultra his textures were really low res. Assuming nothing glaring like that has made the transition this time round?

  • Drpwnage #26 2 years ago

    Saving 10 quid and having the game run at 60fps/1900x1200 with 4 x MSAA with no tearing meant I was very happy with my decision to switch to PC for ME2, in addition I had forgotten how nice it is to aim with the mouse! (although I miss the weapon kick from the rumble of the 360 pad - assuming ME2 includes that).

  • Huffman_D #27 2 years ago

    another nice benefit to having a pc is that you don't necessarily have to pay for games you play on it ;)

    though i DID buy mass effect2, cuz great developers deserve to be paid.

    you can actually tweak mass effect 2 through the cfg file to get MUCH higher quality shadows and anisotropic filtering and such. but, like it was stated before, all texture resolutions were built for 720p so you can't scale those.... total bummer. fantastic game otherwise

  • Demiath #28 2 years ago

    Another article demonstrating why the purchase of a proper gaming PC isn't a particularly meaningful or worthwile investment in this day and age if you're only going to play the big AAA multi-platform titles available on currentgen consoles. Of course, there are plenty of other games you might want a PC for (everything from Risen to The Void to VVVVVV to Knights of the Chalice...although the latter two don't require a "gaming rig" per se).
    Edited by Demiath at 13/02/10 @ 23:09

  • Nebula #29 2 years ago

    "Demiath wrote: Another article demonstrating why the purchase of a proper gaming PC isn't a particularly meaningful or worthwile investment in this day and age if you're only going to play the big AAA multi-platform titles available on currentgen consoles."

    You got it wrong, it is something special to play the game in 1920x1080 resolution having 4-8xAA to smooth all edges, 16xAF to have all textures crisp and detailed far into the distance and at silky smooth 60fps on an averge gaming rig (year 2006 setup, E6600 dual-core, 8800GTX for reference). The game at 60fps with such clean image quality just comes out as much better looking and cinematic. No need to endure big slowdowns like in 360 ME2 dipping down to stuttery 20fps.

    And then many many multiplatform games comes with varying degree of higher graphics settings to improve visuals on PC aswell as modding covers a great deal for many games. Just look at Dragon Age with texture mod..

    So a buy of a gaming PC will reward you even if you play multiplatforms. There is a reason why people buy Hi-Fi speakers instead of Wallmart cheap sales speakers. Might be same tune played but on one of the speaker setups it will sound so damn much better and smoother for the ear! An we all know which one it is! ;)

  • womble #30 2 years ago

    I keep seeing that there's no "anti-aliasing" at all in Bioshock 2.

    But there IS something, at least on the 360 version. I'm not sure whether it's this "selective MSAA" or not, but there is definite anti-aliasing/smoothing going on for a good deal of the time. Some objects are smoothed, others aren't. Little sisters in particular, are antialised, as are the player's left hand and the weapons (the machine gun is the most obvious example).

  • AlStrong #31 2 years ago

    hey womble,

    digging through the ini files on PC, it seems that the 360 version of Bioshock 2 has an edge detect blur filter that fakes MSAA.
    Edited by AlStrong at 14/02/10 @ 04:56

  • womble #32 2 years ago

    Thanks for that AlStrong, very interesting.

  • Widge #33 2 years ago

    I've not bought a gaming PC, I bought a PC to do loads of things (inc. music with a decent amount of rendering). When it came to wanting to play games on the thing, I laid out £100 for a 1GB 4890 and that made my box a gaming PC!

  • dagas #34 2 years ago

    While I'm glad they improved the tech in ME2, I still think ME1 is a great game. Just like DA is great despite it's poor graphics. I think both DA and ME are on the top 5 best games ever.

  • Darren #35 2 years ago

    "Gameplay-wise, it is interesting to note that BioWare has stripped out support for the Xbox 360 controller on PC (BioShock 2 is similarly bereft), forcing the player to make use of the keyboard and mouse."

    It's not so much 'stripped out' as never implemented in the first place as the first game, which was ported by Demure (I think), was mouse and keyboard only too. That version had a redesign user interface though whereas the sequel looks to be lazily ported over from the 360 with Exit/Select buttons added. What's annoying is that double-clicking is not supported so you have to tediously click on these extra buttons during squad selections and at the end of a mission there's a report screen where the Close Report button does nothing!!! Instead you have to click on the Exit button on the right hand side!

    As for the 2.5% tearing in the 360 version; I'm genuinely surprised because I'm very sensitive to screen tearing and I've played the game so far for 28 hours but I've only seen some very minor tearing right at the top of the screen ONCE. I was playing at 1360x768 though so, like GTA IV, I suspect that I wouldn't have seen it at all if I'd played it at 720p with overscan.

    Mass Effect 2 is a very impressive game though, more so on the Xbox 360, where it shows the most improvement.

  • Darren #36 2 years ago

    @mickey2010 - When multiformat games are written with the ageing 360 and PS3 in mind, it's not that surprising that the game on the PC isn't going to look as impressive as it could. Certainly those poorly encoded 720p FMVs look awful alongside the in-game rendered stuff on PC running higher resolutions than 1280x720 whereas they look OK on the 360.

    However, the advantage of these console ports is that most PC owners can ramp up the resolution and image quality and still run the game at double the framerate without ANY screen tearing and fewer framerate drops. On my system for example Mass Effect 2 runs at mostly 60 fps @ 1920x1200 with 16xAF and 16xAA which offers a huge image quality improvement over the 360, which comparatively looks understandly rougher at 1280x720 with no AA. Also most PCs offer much faster hard drivers than the consoles so loading times, which aren't mentioned in this feature, are much shorter, typically two to three times faster than the 360 with Mass Effect 2. For example, moving between levels on the Normandy is practically instant (1-2 seconds tops) so you don't have time to read the text!!!

    Of course, whether you consider a better looking game with faster loading times to be make for a more enjoyable experience when the game itself is the same is down to personal preference but it is nice to have that choice. In a way, games being developed for the consoles has been good for the PC because there's now less need to upgrade components like expensive graphics cards.

  • Darren #37 2 years ago

    @womble - If you ask me the graphics in BioShock 2 look slightly worst than those of the first game due to screen tearing (the first had none at all) and more noticeable aliasing throughout. So if BioShock 2 is using selective AA then it is not that obvious IMO.

  • Darren #38 2 years ago

    @Tab_Lloyd - If people are saying the PC version is more buggy on their system then it's more likely something to do with the hardware or software running on it than the game itself IMO.

    I've played both the 360 and PC versions for nearly 30 hours each and have reached the point of no return in the story (people will known what I mean). In that time both games have ran without any freezing or crashing issues but I encountered two issues on the 360 compared with one on the PC (which I'm playing under Windows 7 64-bit). The one issue they both had was being able to walk into thin air whilst walking up or down a ramp and getting stuck thus requiring me to reload the last save game. The 360 also had a sound glitch which caused the audio to completely cut out until I quit back to the main menu where it magically started again. Both those issues have been widely reported in the forums though so I wasn't surprised to come across them given the complexity of the game.

  • VMerken #39 2 years ago

    Apart from being able to use much higher resolutions and getting higher framerates etc, pc games also tend to be a fair bit cheaper than their console counterparts (about €10 on average). Sure, a console tends to be cheaper than a pc, but this fact kind of evens things out.

  • freakzilla #40 2 years ago

    aawwww man! I only just got me a new PC (minus the GPU); I was hoping I'd leave behind aliasing and blocky characters for good. Makes me so sad that for the longest time I've yarned for a decent gaming rig and as soon as I'm close to having one all the devs decide PC isn't worth it.

    With the recent news of Alan Wake I think I'm about ready to... I don't know what to do.

  • dnd #41 2 years ago

    my timings might be off...games being released currently, how long have they been in development for? apart from the whole cross-platform thing, is it possible that another reason that pc graphics have not moved on in a while still the after-effects of the 18 month hole between the geforce 8-series and the geforce 200-series?

    in my (admittedly flawed) memory it's the first time that there's been such a long time when the speed of pc graphics cards essentially stood still - there were incremental improvements, but by and large until the GF200s, if you had an SLI 8-series setup (which you could have got in Dec 2006), then essentially you had the fastest setup (+-10%) money could buy until mid-2008.

    i mean essentially what you're looking at now is a crop of games that run well on an 8-series or equivalent card, which might have been the predominant 'target system' for a lot of games that are only just being released now.

    PS not a PC zealot (much), i have xbox and ps3 too, don't hurt me!

  • L0cky #42 2 years ago

    Pity the first one just constantly crashes on my PC :(

    Might be my card overheating, how can I know for sure? It's a new GTX 275 running at stock speeds so I expect it not to overheat in a fairly average PC otherwise they need to tone it down a bit. Selling a graphics card as 'blazingly fast' but then needing you to underclock it to make it fit for purpose is false advertising.

    So if I underclock it and it works fine then I guess I just answered my own question :)

  • kongzi #43 2 years ago

    It runs better, looks better and plays better.. bioware should do sequels more often.. like Jade Empire 2..

    I got a question: the first game benefitted a lot from installing it to HD, does that still go for the new one? I would like to try but I haven't because I would to have to clear most my HD.

    edit: why in fucksakes does this get marked down?? It's praise for Bioware and a question...woooh..offensive.. bad kongzi..down,boy.
    Edited by kongzi at 14/02/10 @ 20:49

  • Nebula #44 2 years ago

    "freakzilla wrote: aawwww man! I only just got me a new PC (minus the GPU); I was hoping I'd leave behind aliasing and blocky characters for good. Makes me so sad that for the longest time I've yarned for a decent gaming rig and as soon as I'm close to having one all the devs decide PC isn't worth it. "

    This is how first Mass Effect looks on PC and that would run smooth on a E6600/8800GTX from 2006.
    [link url=http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1385449&postcount=1100
    ]http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p...[/link]
    [link url=http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1385450&postcount=1101
    ]http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p...[/link]


    This is Mass Effect 2 on PC.
    [link url=http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1389465&postcount=1136
    ]http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p...[/link]
    [link url=http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1389084&postcount=1134
    ]http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p...[/link]

    Your hard earned cash will give you "hard on" feedback, I promise you! ;)
    Edited by Nebula at 14/02/10 @ 20:34

  • KillerMonkey #45 2 years ago

    "This is Mass Effect 2 on PC.
    [link url=http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p...
    ]http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p...[/link]
    http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p...
    Fuck me silly, that looks good.

  • womble #46 2 years ago

    [sorry, wrong game!]
    Edited by womble at 15/02/10 @ 00:20

  • IneptPercy #47 2 years ago

    Starting to annoy me that games are dropping 360 controller support and I have to mess with other software to get it going again, great if people think a mouse is better but I along with many others like to use a gamepad is that a crime?

  • Chrispynutt #48 2 years ago

    Another issue is the two disc issue. If the PC version had used a third or fourth disc texture size and video quality could have been upped. High end rigs could have taken advantage of it and guys with GT 250s like me could have stuck with 360 quality textures.

  • tossum #49 2 years ago

    I recently build a pc for roughly the price of a ps3 which I consider to be roughly half a generation more advanced in terms of graphical capabilities (with maybe a bit of overclocking here or there).
    e.g. my CPU cost 45 quid (E5200), its a dual core running at 3.5Ghz; my GPU is a radion 4870 and cost 75 quid (both from ebuyer).
    Its my opinion that not since the golden days of pc gaming (early to mid 90's), has there been a better time to get into pc gaming. There are so many things that console gamers (myself included) are/were not aware of. e.g. the modding scene. I have just started playing TES4 Oblivion again looking like this:
    [link url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2T-eBXxVo0
    ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2T-eBXxVo0
    [/link]
    Half life 2 modded for pc now looks like this:
    [link url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFwbLVCxD7M&feature=related
    ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFwbLVCxD...[/link]
    Just check out Alyx's eyes here: [link url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqMNJQs_IzA&feature=player_embedded
    ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqMNJQs_I...[/link]
    Not to metion enjoying obvious pc-specific stuff like Crysis.
    On the 360, GTA4 ran between 25-30 fps. On my pc, even with all settings on high it NEVER drops below 35fps. I'm loving it all over again.

  • 3william56 #50 2 years ago

    Wow. Can a PC fix the horrible stilted voice acting, or does everyone in the future talk... like-William ... Shatner.

    Sorry - compared with something like Uncharted 2, this looks like it's got the emotional range of Lego Star Wars - compare walking through that nightclub to the village scene in UC2. Lovely design though.

  • Nebula #51 2 years ago

    "Chrispynutt wrote: Another issue is the two disc issue. If the PC version had used a third or fourth disc texture size and video quality could have been upped. High end rigs could have taken advantage of it and guys with GT 250s like me could have stuck with 360 quality textures."

    Actually that is more VRAM bound so even something as old as the 7900GT 512MB would be able to pull of far higher detailed textures. A GTS250 which is on par with a 9800GTX would rip the game apart while processing really highres textures and mapping. But I think it boils down to not wanting to use to many DVDs aswell as cheap mans port work. After all having all the characters bodies truly highres would be about ~300MB after compression.. which would fit on second disc...

  • yagisencho #52 2 years ago

    ZuluHero asked,
    "Do people find if they quit out of ME2 and reload the game fresh that the game loads stuff alot faster?"

    There's a bug affecting multi-core procs. If you notice hangs during map transitions:
    1) Bring up Task Manager at the Windows desktop
    2) Right-click on the MassEffect2.exe process
    3) Select Set Affinity...
    4) On the Processor Affinity dialog, deselect all but one core, click OK
    5) Select Set Affinity... again
    6) On the Processor Affinity dialog, select , click OK

    Depending on your rig, the map transitions should become nearly instantaneous.

  • freakzilla #53 2 years ago

    @tab
    GO FUCK YOUSELF.

  • Highwayman #54 2 years ago

    What makes me laugh is that PC is the primary format then its downscaled to consoles then scaled up from consoles again for home pcs...I mean whats the bloody point of that??? Why not put PC at the top of the ffod chain as it is the cutting edge for tech, and consoles can pick up the scraps from the leftovers.

  • Highwayman #55 2 years ago

    On the low grade texures, why not make hi-res textures on PC a free DLC...i'd gladly DL a few gig to make it look the way it should

  • Highwayman #56 2 years ago

    And the reviewer on about the 360's slow fps when running directly of dvd.... well durr running games from discs is so 1990...get a flipping HD already.

  • Highwayman #57 2 years ago

    Also lets see if DX11 patches will arrive for us lucky PC owners to really grind the console gamers down to a small bunch of underpowered girls.