Vampires are a horror genre staple so it’s quite shocking we haven’t really had an amazing game release featuring them as the central villain in quite some time. So when Arkane, the makers of amazing games like Prey and Dishonored, announced Redfall in June of 2021, it captured my bloodlust. Xbox’s current weak place in the market is begging for a great release which puts a ton of extra pressure for Redfall to exceed expectations.

The excitement for Redfall’s hero-based looter-shooter gameplay centering around vampires has such a high ceiling because of this atmosphere. Microsoft needs a win. It’s Arkane, so we know they have a history of hitting it out of the park with combat, stealth, and a great story. But after delays, the announcement that consoles would be locked to 30fps at launch, and after a quiet launch week, some concern set in.

The press embargo was set right before tomorrow’s release at 8:01 PM ET today. A red flag went up instantly. This is a review-in-progress as we were provided a key close to release and have not had time to complete the entire story but have completed the majority of its major missions. In fact, a 69.4GB patch dropped this morning adding DLC.

After playing, I understand the fear of reviewers about gameplay spoiling major elements of the latter half of the game. For FPS fans, Redfall provides some great gameplay elements to sink your teeth and time into, but it also lacks direction and its vision is muddied with formulaic systems and some glaring issues. Let’s take a deeper look at Redfall in our review of the PC version for Steam. Thank you to Nvidia and to Arkane for providing a review copy for our coverage!

Characters

Redfall has you choose one of four main characters which is one of the biggest draws for me upon release. Going in with friends to experience a 4-player massacre of vampires and their minions could be a real blast. Central to Redfall is its first person and hero shooter design. The four playable characters at launch are cryptozoologist inventor, Devinder Crousley; telekinetic student, Layla Ellison; combat engineer, Remi de la Rosa; and special forces sniper, veteran Jacob Boyer. Redfall has more character releases planned later.

Each character has a trio of upgradable special powers, two are useable for limited times, and an “ultimate” that recharges more slowly over time. Each power has its own unique spin on combat and abilities to play with. Vampires invade the area known as Redfall, and after some opening events, there is no physical way to escape from the area. You and the town’s citizens are fish trapped in a bucket being saved for feeding time.

The opening sequence is pretty great and sets the tone well. The massive cascade of frozen water serves as an ominous foreshadowing of the immense power our enemies hold. Our characters had previous run-ins with the main antagonists that provided them with their abilities.

I really disliked that Bungie made us go to their website to read “grimoire” cards to understand the lore. The same thing is done here with Redfall – most of the backstory ends up by being briefly told in side conversations, and if you want more, you need to read one of the many, many notes strewn across the world or by gathering 100 items that provide more exposition from a central character. It is hard to describe how grandiose the game can be and yet so small at the same time before you actually jump in to play.

Disappointingly, Redfall at times can feel paper thin, and I believe it could have been truly great with more time in the coffin until it was ready to withstand the heat of the sun and its place in the current landscape. Gamers will notice.

We want the deep world-building and narrative that Arkane is known for, and if more time was needed for a sophisticated presentation, I would have begged for it. Without going into later story spoilers, Redfall’s premise is that a biotech corporation known as Aevum was working with a scientist seeking immortality, an experiment went wrong and the vampire hoard was unleashed. Almost immediately, many of the town’s residents became cultists who wanted this same immortality and began to worship and defend the vampires with the promise that once they die they would be reincarnated as all-powerful beings.

A once idyllic island town is now the center for survivors, and you are someone luckily granted special powers that you have right off the bat. Conceptually, its a great setting for this game and it was very interesting to explore. With vampire nests to destroy, bosses to defeat, safehouses to set free, and so much loot to gather for upgrades – the base systems are there for a great time.

But while Redfall’s premise does an amazing job of setting up some great missions, the presentation feels extremely dated. So much so I am not sure that most players will stay long enough to experience the latter half of the game which begins to feel incredible at times.

Let’s take a deeper look at the gameplay.

Gameplay

After the opening sequence, your first mission is to approach a surrounded firehouse with survivors inside. Cultists are standing outside, literally, not banging on the walls or trying to break in – they are standing there in groups just waiting to pick survivors off. This is the same immersion-breaking feeling most of the encounters have in the game. Something feels like it was missed or changed in development.

Most gamers won’t care about small details as they may just care about the overall story and the gunplay. Well, after first picking off the cultists, you meet your first set of survivors for your new home base. There is little to no backstory for the characters without reading interactable letters, and they sort of just fall into place as expert base builders with a doctor, a gun expert, a clergywoman, and more. Redfall is shockingly light on explanations and barebones in so many other similar places that lowered our expectations for the rest of the game.

This base is never attacked and is literally just a place you come back to get supplies, make occasional small talk, and interact with a missions table to get photo cutscenes between your custom character and the survivors. I believe the reason for this is because of only having four characters and it may have been easier to just replace their skin for the cutscenes. I understand that the visuals needed to be presented, but with such barebones characters it would have made me care more about them if they actually talked to you.

Between missions, they will talk to each other and then later you get in-game conversations with dynamic character movements and interactions that I really enjoyed especially near the end of the first half of the game. If this was more fleshed out, I would have cared much more about these characters and saving them.

However, none of it matters as once a major defeat occurs, in order to progress the story you have to leave the main island and can never return. I’d prefer to go back and experience those levels again when I want to and have fun in the sandbox that was created, but its completely shut off.

The second area feels more like the real main game in almost every way. Characters are more vocal, the area feels more dense and packed with hidden items and more enemies to fight. The story is finally fleshed out and its vast world is begging to be explored. Only in the second half is where Redfall shines and becomes extremely fun.

Gunplay

We suggest not playing the healer characters during single-player as they won’t offer much utility. Some of the abilities become extremely powerful with later unlocks like Jacob’s raven damaging anyone in its path. However, the AI needs some serious work and I often found myself ignoring gun perks and upgrades as a necessity to improve my experience.

None of it is truly fundamental to the experience and most hero’s abilities would help multiplayer sessions. However, story progression is not shared due to the nature of the game’s design but the loot and levels you gain are.

Flawed AI is one of the biggest issues we ran into. It’s bad. I mean really bad especially for the poor cultists who get the short straw. They funnel in the same path, get stuck on rocks, have clunky animations, and have no real cognition or ability to flank and outsmart you while at the same time having god-aim. It’s a bad combo especially when being sniped at from a distance.

I am not sure any patches can address this, but with Jacob at launch, AI is broken and basically stuck in easy mode. Even on higher difficulties and with later invisibility unlocks, I could cycle between walking directly into a large group of enemies, grabbing the quest item, and then going invisible again, and they would just go on their way. The same could be said about shooting from a specific area – the AI just funnels directly to you and poses no real challenge ala Deathloop.

Other characters have similar “cheese” but I would recommend increasing the difficulty of the game for a better challenge. The shooting experience is still fantastic – from sniper rifles to UV lasers that petrify the enemy vampires – it is a blast to play.

In some well-designed areas like the vampire nests, it reminded us of entering the Elder Scroll’s Oblivion Gates. These moments however are few and far between if you love to fully explore the world. Some missions are surprisingly good but getting there is such a slog that some may never progress to experience them. The moment-to-moment gameplay constantly clashes badly with each other. It is tiring especially when combined with performance issues.

Speaking of vampire nests, these are some of the best gameplay areas in Redfall. They pack strong vampires in large numbers that can overwhelm you quickly even with Jacob’s invisibility and it requires careful planning. Conversely, there is little punishment for dying as progress does not reset and there are typically no timers, so if you can go in gun blazing.

Vampire nests reached another level that let me see the vision for Redfall which makes it hurt to see it ignored for the rest of the gameplay. The tone, the atmosphere, and with your back against the wall fighting off vampire hoards is such an amazing concept!

In one mission, you go to investigate a boat and as soon as the quest item is picked up it triggers an angry mob that immediately surrounds your only exits with deadly red mist, a mini-boss, and a mob of bloodthirsty vampires. You can see this all unfold beneath you from the boat’s windows. Your only option is to bite back and fight your way out. The game is filled with these bursts of incredible and stunning moments with fantastic and engaging gunplay that is then mixed with poor performance, bad lip-syncing, and horrible AI.

I am really reminded of Destiny 1’s live service launch which was obviously a victim of a large form of rewrite and rebuild. Perhaps Redfall had a similar fate but we will never know. Arkane has promised gamers that this will be their most supported game yet and we really hope so. The core gameplay is incredible but it reminds us of Cyberpunk 2077’s promise of a better future when all we need now is the vampire killing fun we have been salivating for.

The loot, the loot, the loot, the loot, the loot

Let’s talk loot. Vampire bosses keep repeating “the blood, the blood, the blood, the blood” but all I care about is if they will give me fun weapons to kill them with. Loot and gameplay can keep a game alive for a long time especially if there are fun quests or some great special weapons or “exotics” to chase. A community can grow quickly when secrets are found or the best load-outs to defeat bosses are found.

Redfall’s weapons scale with your level and just pump out higher numbers of damage. Pistols, shotguns, automatic rifles, UV lasers, stake launchers, snipers, and flare guns round out a fun and worthwhile experience. Unfortunately, as the game fleshes out you see how exploration is broken by other reward types. So build-crafting with the right perks and skill point selections doesn’t make much of a difference now.

Pistols are often one-shot minions, flare guns burn and stun lock vampires, and stake launchers massively chunk any boss or special vampire. It’s all amazing fun and the combo load-outs you run can really allow for great gameplay loops. Although the cultists are really bad enemies, they serve little to no threat until much later when their level just means their incredible accuracy can health-chunk you within a second or two if you get careless. I died a lot early being overrun in confined space by the fast vampire attacks as they surrounded me. Some enemy abilities can also one-shot you. This would not be much of an issue in multiplayer but it felt bad in single-player mode.

That said, you don’t have to worry about dying in a mission because no progress is lost and you have so much junk loot currency that you will likely never spend. You do not lose any progress from dying, any damage or defeated enemies stay dead, and your mission status is retained. Most of the world’s junk loot like bleach, toilet paper, water bottles, etc. that you pick up gets converted into a currency for purchases back at the home base.

Things like med kits, better guns, and lock picks can be purchased with converted drop currency. However, most of the rewire/hack kits just lead to more junk loot or heals, which enemies drop, and are strewn literally everywhere. Most of the lock picks do the same.

There was no master sword moment or a huge loot drop that I was super excited for. This is because they aren’t necessary because vampire nests and a later world event granted me the best loot in the game. Most of your old loot is junked as you move on to the next mission anyway.

The combos are fun though as you need to either stake, petrify, or burn vampires. You can mix using a UV gun to petrify groups of vampires and then shotgun them one by one to dispatch a large group easily. If you take too long as Jacob, you can just go invisible with no real danger. I did this for the first big boss and didn’t even lose 50% health because a large power weapon pumps out such large chunks of damage the boss gets health gated and frozen before they can even react. I broke the game rather easily. Balancing needs to occur and much more AI work is needed. There was a huge patch today that hopefully addresses some of these woes.

PC Performance

I am beginning to call DLSS 3 a godsend but it should not be necessary just to enjoy a major release. The industry has lately given PC gamers the short end of the stick, but that is a topic for another day. We started our playthrough with our Ryzen 7800x3D build with an RTX 4070 Ti and 32 GB of DDR5-6000mhz RAM on our TeamGroup 2TB NVMe drive. Ours is far beyond a typical system, but from the onset we had massive crashes, stuttering, bugs, and large frame dips. Microstutters and texture problems also occurred.

The latest Nvidia driver helped and DLSS 3 almost doubled our performance. This still did not address some areas of town where we would dip into the low teens. Entering the menu could often cause the game to crash. Glitches like this ruined some major moments of our playthrough but with patches this may be resolved soon.

DLSS looks incredible and is a must-have feature. It nearly doubled performance on the RTX 4090 which was already performing great except for the 1% lows. The same could be said for our RTX 4080 and 4070 Ti. The newly released RTX 4070 also performs well but the game really needs some serious performance improvements.

There was a large 69.4GB patch today so we redid our benchmarks. Here are our numbers using maxed/Epic settings:

Testbed 1:

Intel 13900KF/RTX 4090 FE/2x16GB DDR5 6400/Win 11 – 3840 x 2160

TAA high/No DLSS – 124.3 av /  42.1 1% low

Quality DLSS 3 – 178.0 av / 72.7 1% low

DLSS 3 in particular allows for stunning gameplay and steady framerates with comparable image quality to native. Unfortunately, Redfall is sadly locked at 30FPS for the console launch with 60 FPS mode coming soon but now we can understand why: It just needs more time in development.

Testbed 2:
Post-Day 1 Patch with AMD Ryzen 7800x3D, 2x16GB DDR6 6000, TeamGroup 2TB NVMe, Win 11.
3840×2160, Epic Preset DLSS comparison:

Conclusion – try if you have Game Pass

We can not recommend Redfall at launch. I was very excited for Arcane Austin’s Redfall, despite the console war chatter, the state of Xbox, and red flags coming out from the game development cycle. I still loved my time with it, and in many moments I was having a good deal of fun, but most of the time the world proved to be empty or uninteresting.

I would not have continued as far as I progressed if I did not enjoy some of the big set pieces so much. I believe anyone with Game Pass should play it, even at 30fps on console. However, it’s a messy mix of RPG, looter shooter, and a multiplayer game that lacks a cohesive and consistent presentation. Couple this with terrible AI and a plethora of bugs and there are very high highs and very, very low lows. 

Redfall can technically be played solo, but we recommend the experience with friends as it is much better. It is also not going to be the major release to start the Xbox renaissance that we so desperately need. This review score is going to be low, but I am still rooting for it. There is something there at the core that is clawing at the surface to come out and be enjoyed. It is your choice if you want to power through the mud to get to the meat of it.

If you can withstand some glitches, read the story in text form with barebones character development, and have friends to play with then you will have a decent time. That said, the world is already so empty that traversing its many roads with no vehicles or large enemy population it can feel lonely walking large swaths of areas as a solo player. At times, I grew so frustrated with the experience I found myself begging for a story, begging for those cool moments, and I often felt unrewarded and angry.

Redfall releases later today on Xbox Series consoles, PC, Game Pass, and is Steam Deck verified.

Metro Exodus is one of the rarest games that can immerse a player into its vast and varied world by keeping them entertained with more good story telling, depth, and atmosphere than found in just about any other video game. Exodus is the third game of the Metro series, and it has left the dark tunnels of the first two games on an exciting cross country train ride for a much more open world. We played for about 30 hours to arrive at a satisfying, touching, and bittersweet ending that is custom tailored for the kind of character that we played.

Metro Exodus will be released by 4A games on the EPIC platform on February 15 as a hybrid sandbox/linear FPS game that spans the course of a year and almost the entire width of a huge and varied country, post apocalyptic Russia, from Moscow in Winter to Novosibersk in Autumn.

BabelTechReviews received a reviewer’s copy of Metro Exodus for PC on Friday courtesy of 4A, EPIC, and NVIDIA, and we began playing on Saturday using both a RTX 2060 and a RTX 2080 Ti after downloading its 50GB files. This editor has spent three very long sessions playing the entire campaign from its start to completion. Here are our impressions of it, including a very short mini-performance and IQ evaluation that will focus on Metro Exodus’ revolutionary implementation of real time ray tracing of global illumination.

We are not going to spend a lot of time on benchmarking performance in this Exodus review as the built-in benchmark is flawed, not to mention that the game will be patched in two days for its worldwide release, and NVIDIA will also release new drivers for it making our current benchmarks instantly outdated. Instead, we will follow up at the weekend with a full performance review and image quality comparison. We will focus here on the game review and touch on the first real time ray tracing global illumination implementation for any video game.

Metro Exodus

Until Exodus, the Metro series has been confined to the dark subways or underground train stations of the Moscow underground which is based on the popular novels by Dmitry Glukhovshy. In this bleak and radiation-ravaged world, the last humans live underground after an all-out nuclear war fighting to stay alive by warring against each other in factions and against horribly mutated creatures.

The two Metro games are first person shooters with survival horror and stealth elements that are known for their incredible attention to detail and an almost supernatural atmosphere that also embody some interesting philosophy which focus on the human spirit and hope against all odds. The first two Metro games are very linear and require the player to wield hand-made weapons that are customized by scavenging for material and crafting upgrades, and this trend continues with Exodus.

Exodus brings the Metro series to the surface in 2036, two years after the events of Last Light by continuing the story of Artyom, now a newly married 23-year old man who was born just before the war, as he seeks a better life above ground away from the tunnels of the Metro. Exodus now features a dynamic weather system, a day-night cycle, and environments that radically change from one moment to another by intense storms along with the regular four dramatic season changes of Russia.

During the course of his adventure, Artyom learns that the Metro residents are not the only humans who survived, so he flees Moscow with his wife Anna and a small team of Spartan Rangers on a locomotive known as the “Aurora” that is commanded by his father-in-law, the gruff Colonel Miller. Your Spartan allies are capable in battle for the times that you must work together and you don’t have to babysit them as your wife is a skilled sharpshooter that has your back many times.

Metro Exodus is a relatively long single player game that most players will not want to rush through as it is best savored. We spent about 30 hours playing the game and would have completed even more sidequests except for the deadline that was imposed on getting this review completed in time, so we stuck mostly to the main story.

None of the side quests we played felt like grinding as they are exceptionally well done, integral to the story, and there is no leveling up nor experience points to be gained. In the tradition of a good novel, you the player begin to level up as you understand the game’s mechanics and the mind of the developers better. As you play, you soon realize when it is best to sneak or to run and gun, and you will just know which weapons to take with you for each adventure while remembering to clean them and always repair your gas mask.

The Metro Exodus weapons are varied, and our highly customized favorites included an automatic crossbow with night vision that never let us down. The 4-barrel sawed off shotgun and rail gun together with explosive ammo, along with Molotov cocktails and improvised grenades never failed us even against some huge mutant bosses or mobs of human enemies or creatures. The big fights are exciting and your heart will race as you survive wave after wave of enemy NPCs with the odds stacked against you.

The game doesn’t hold your hand, but as you play through Exodus, you learn crafting and which items to disassemble and which to upgrade. You can craft in the field by using your backpack in a limited fashion, or fully at workbenches scattered throughout the world at strategic locations, or in the Aurora which is your home base.

Instead of getting stuck on puzzles, you begin to naturally look in what seemed previously to be an odd place for a hidden ladder, or to cut something, or pull a well-disguised lever so that you can proceed. Although the game is still very linear, you have multiple ways to approach each objective and you are given many choices – to sneak, or even to knock out your opponents, or to kill them outright. Stealth takes careful planning and patience but it will save you hard to find ammo. All of your choices have an effect on your comrades and will determine the ending that you will get.

If you want to explore, you can spend as much time in the Exodus world as you wish. If you want more direction and updated objectives, just equip your compass and check your map and journal regularly and stick to the main storyline. You can race through it like a tourist in a hurry, or you can stay and linger to fully appreciate and absorb its atmosphere. There are several difficulty levels to pick – from Reader where you take little damage and heal quickly – to Hardcore where you take damage easily and find very little in the way of ammo or crafting materials.

The enemy AI is decent. It is rarely stupid and it reacts to your presence fairly well especially on the higher difficulty settings. You will have to infiltrate multiple groups to achieve your objectives, and you can sneak and knock out your enemies, or you can kill them and engage them as directly as you choose. You are always outnumbered, but the AI isn’t that good either as you soon learn how it works. Whatever method you pick does have an effect on the ending you get as well as on what happens to your companions so the game lends itself to successive playthroughs, perhaps on harder difficulties.

Although Metro Exodus is rather long for a single player game, it uses great writing which includes comedic scenes and witty dialog between your family of Spartan Ranger comrades that makes you care about them. There is even a long party and musical segment on the train where Artyom picks up a guitar and jams with another player as they sing traditional Russian songs and toast each other. If you want to bypass this dialog, just walk up to the front of the train and interact with the map to start the next chapter, but you will miss out.

Exodus also provides some touching and tender moments between the player Artyom and his wife Anna, the crack sharpshooter daughter of Colonel Miller who leads the expedition of Spartan Rangers out of the Moscow Metro to try and find a new and better life above ground. The Colonel jokes that he wants grandchildren so he can teach them how to dual-wield pistols. The dialog is exceptional and we are drawn to care about the characters if we just take the time to stop and listen.

There are some weaknesses in the writing perhaps. You may be forced to listen to NPCs at times drone on and on with no escape for you except to physically leave the game while it is running and make yourself a cup of tea as we did several times. There is a drunk and insane older sailor who won’t shut up and you have to indulge him to continue. Fortunately, most of the conversations generally add to the rich atmosphere of the game which is decidedly Russian, and it helps you to understand the world you are traversing. It is a dark world of intense despair, and yet hope keeps you moving forward despite tragedy, death, and perversion all around.

Metro Exodus is a metaphor for the world we live in now and what may be if we don’t take better care of ourselves and our planet for our children. It is self-indulgent, but like a great novel, it can be forgiven as you immerse yourself into its decidedly Russian yet universal culture. The villains are over-the-top yet somehow believable, and there is a cannibal segment worthy of “The Walking Dead” or the Resident Evil series, but there is still humor in it.

We won’t give any spoilers about how many chapters there are, or where we ended up, but we found the ending surprising, believable, and logical. We got the ending that our character deserved and we have been thinking about it since we stopped playing it. Overall, we loved Exodus and found it to be a significant improvement and expansion of the Metro series. We hope there are further installments.

Checkpoint Saves

This gamer hates the checkpoint system. However, this checkpoint system is particularly well implemented. When your character dies, you don’t have to start over way back nor are you forced to watch cutscenes over and over. You can Quick Save anytime except during battle, and loading is very fast from a SSD. In fact, the few Quick Time events (QTE) are well done and the action flows like a big budget movie.

Replayability

Metro Exodus has some replayability. Mostly a player will want to explore everything on the first playthrough which may reach 30 or more hours. You can start over at a higher difficulty and change from run and gun to pure stealth, as well as very the way you play to see if you can get a different ending.

Bugs, Graphics, and Performance

There appear to be no major game-breaking bugs, and during more than 30 hours of play, we did not experience a single lock-up nor a crash to desktop. However, there are issues with the built-in benchmark which does not apply DLSS, and like earlier Metro built in benchmarks, the minimums are not representative of the run. We developed our own benchmark in the Taiga Chapter that is not only completely repeatable and within less than 1% variance, it is only about 10% less demanding than the official benchmark.

There are some other minor graphical issues with the pre-release press copy that 4A promises to fix before the game launches, including a mini-bug that changes some character’s hair to pure white when DLSS is applied. The other issue we found is that the in-game screenshot capture tool doesn’t have a way to make it work, so we used Ansel to capture our DX12 screenshots and some DX11 captures were made with Fraps. Other than these very minor bugs, Metro Exodus is extraordinarily stable and well-polished for its release.

The Graphics

One thing that immediately stands out is the incredible detail and impressive graphics at Metro Exodus’ higher setting. The characters are about as detailed or as real as in Crysis 3, and it succeeds brilliantly to create a immersive world. A lot of emphasis was placed on the weather effects and the intense storms that plague post war ravaged Russia, so the player must deal with the varied harsh yet sometimes beautiful environments. At times, the winds kick up so much dust that you can barely see where you are going, yet it all fits perfectly into the story.

The settings are diverse – from subterranean dark settings, to moonlit nights, to brightly lit daytime forest scenes, and bleak wind-ravaged desert scenes, as well as extreme Winter’s bitter snow and ice. The game makes very good use of the 4A engine’s advanced capabilities. There are settings that range from Low to Medium, to High, and Ultra. And there is even an Extreme setting that will bring any current top graphics card to a near slideshow.

Ray Tracing Global Illumination

Ray traced global illumination, a first for any video game beginning with Metro Exodus, brings far more realistic lighting to set the mood and especially the dark gritty atmosphere much like the way filmmakers use it. Ray traced global illumination gives Metro Exodus a deeper level of anxiety for greater immersion.

Instead of prebaked unnatural rasterized lighting that game developers have had to use, ray traced global illumination gives far more subtle visual lighting cues which work well with the almost supernatural effect that the Metro series strives for. Here are eight comparative screenshots that contrast the overbright pre-baked rasterized lighting with the ray traced global illumination techniques used in Metro Exodus.

In all cases, the rasterized overbright regular lighting is shown first followed by the almost cinematic ray traced image which is darker, more natural and subdued.

Be sure to open each image larger and full-size if possible in a separate window or tab. First, the indoor scenes.

In this outdoor scene, the entire image without ray traced global illumination is brighter and the shadow brightness is faked and less real looking.

In the second image, ray traced global illumination makes for subtly more real images with better lighting and shadows. In all cases, the ray traced globally illuminated images are superior.

DLSS is what makes ray traced global illumination rendering in a game possible in real time at Ultra 4K settings with Ultra ray tracing. DLSS gives similar image quality to good post processing AI, and combined with ray tracing, far superior and playable frame rates. For a explanation on how DLSS works, see our Final Fantasy XV DLSS patch review.

Here is a comparison of DLSS On versus Off. First with DLSS Off.

Now with DLSS On.

The images have very similar image quality, but with DLSS on, the framerates go from unplayable to playable with about a 40% speedup.

Performance

We played Metro Exodus satisfactorily with decent fluidity on Ultra settings with everything on and highest (except for Motion Blur, Normal) all the way through the entire single player campaign at Ultra 4K using Ultra RTX features On with DLSS with our RTX 2080 Ti. We managed similar framerates at 1920×1080 with the same settings for our RTX 2060 except that we dropped ray tracing settings from Ultra to High

Playing with a RTX 2080 Ti in DX11 (no ray tracing and no DLSS) at Ultra 3840×2160 with everything On and maxed-out (except for Motion Blur, always Normal), we averaged 53.9 FPS with a low of 45 FPS which is fine for Metro Exodus even during firefights.

Switching to DX12 with the same RTX 2080 Ti at Ultra 3840×2160, with Ultra Ray Tracing, our average FPS dropped to 34.9 FPS with a low of 36.2ms for the .1 frametime – unsatisfactory. However, turning on DLSS together with Ultra Ray tracing got us 53.9 FPS average with 21.9ms frametime low, basically matching the DX11 averages but with much better IQ and with superior ray traced global illumination. Switching from Ultra ray tracing to High gained us an extra 3 FPS.

We got similar performance results with a RTX 2060 at Ultra 1920×1080, but with ray tracing set to High instead of to Ultra.

Ansel

Ansel is a GeForce Experience exclusive which puts the game camera into the control of the player and it is far more flexible than other universal capture programs such as Fraps. NVIDIA worked with 4A to add Ansel into the game. In the screenshot below, we were able to pull back from being in the scene and to take a much wider view with Ansel.

If you have a GeForce video card with the GeForce Experience installed, just press Alt+F2 to stop the action and to bring up the Ansel overlay to create your own custom captures including using post process filters. You can also use Alt+F1 to just capture without opening Ansel if you are in a hurry. There isn’t as much flexibility with the Ansel implementation in Metro Exodus as with some other games, but it is a great tool for capturing since the in-game photo tool isn’t yet functional.

The main settings are Low, Medium, High, Ultra, and Extreme. Extreme settings are very demanding future settings and should not be used unless SLI will be enabled by the devs. In fact the “Ultra” setting with Ultra ray tracing On is designed only for the fastest PCs with a RTX 2080 Ti at 4K.

A player can pick “default” or a NVIDIA graphics card owner may also choose to use the GeForce Experience to suggest optimal settings. Here is our test configuration which we shall also use in our multi-card follow up Part 2 which will focus on performance and IQ after the game is released, patched, and with new Game Ready drivers.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-8700K (HyperThreading and Turbo boost are on to 4.7 GHz for all cores; Coffee Lake DX11 CPU graphics).
• EVGA Z370 FTW motherboard (Intel Z370 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• HyperX 16GB DDR4 (2×8 GB, dual channel at 3333 MHz), supplied by HyperX
• RTX 2080 Ti, 8GB Founders Edition, stock Founders Edition clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• RTX 2060 6GB Founders Edition, stock Founders Edition clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• 480 GB Team Group SSD
• 1.92 TB San Disk enterprise class SSD
• 2 TB Micron 1100 SSD
• Seasonic 850W Gold Focus power supply unit
• EVGA CLC 280mm CPU water cooler, supplied by EVGA
• EVGA Nu Audio sound card, supplied by EVGA
• Edifier R1280T active speakers
• Grado SR60e headphones
• EVGA DG-77, mid-tower case supplied by EVGA
• Monoprice Crystal Pro 4K

Test Configuration – Software

• Nvidia GeForce 417.71 WHQL drivers. 418.81 is buggy with Exodus.
• VSync is forced off.
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 10 64-bit Home edition. DX11 and DX12 render path
• Latest DirectX
• MSI Afterburner, latest beta.
• OCAT, latest version
• Fraps, latest version

The Game

• • Metro Exodus, digital reviewer’s copy supplied by 4A/EPIC/NVIDIA

NVIDIA will have their own optimization suggestions which may be quite helpful, or a player can just use the GeForce Experience included with the new Game Ready drivers that will be released before the game launches on February 15. The GeForce Experience will, at the touch of a button, set near-ideal custom settings for any PC and for hundreds of games including for Metro Exodus.

Conclusion

Metro Exodus is a really good game and it is the most fun that we have had with any game in at least the past 2 years. We were completely taken with and consumed by the game only stopping to eat and to sleep. We neglected everything else while playing it. We went to bed late, exhausted, and when we woke up the next morning early, we returned immediately to the game to complete it in under 3 days.

If we have to give it a score, Metro Exodus deserves an “8.8” in our opinion as a very polished single player campaign. Metro Exodus brings a great story and expanded gameplay to an already awesome series. Gameplay is smooth and the story immerses you in the Russian culture to make you think philosophically about the world around us.

Metro Exodus comes highly recommended and it is a certain hit for Metro series fans and will probably win over new fans. The graphics are extraordinary, the gameplay is excellent, and the story is exceptional making a player care about his companions and his choices. The voice acting is absolutely top-notch and it feels like a great cinematic experience which is enhanced by ray tracing of global illumination. We feel it is worth the $50 asking price from the EPIC store for a fairly long and excellent single player adventure.

Metro Exodus has become BTR’s latest and 41st benchmark. Stay tuned as we have many more reviews and evaluations coming up. This week, you can expect a full review of the EVGA Nu Audio sound card which added greatly to our enjoyment of the excellent positional audio. And after the game is launched, patched, and new drivers are released by NVIDIA and AMD, we will revisit Metro Exodus performance using multiple video cards.

Happy Gaming!

We have been following Middle Earth: Shadow of War since it was announced, and we were also able to check it out at E3. We played Middle Earth: Shadow of War at 3440×1440 using a Core i7-6700K at 4.0GHz where all 4 cores turbo to 4.6GHz, an ASRock Z170 motherboard, and 16GB of Kingston HyperX DDR4 at 3333MHz on Windows 10 64-bit Home Edition. We used the very latest drivers from NVIDIA (387.92), and the latest drivers from AMD (17.10.1) for playing Middle Earth: Shadow of War. We lacked a quality ethernet cable but that was alright, because we’d installed WiFi. We primarily used a GTX 1080 Ti to play fluidly through most of the game, but we also played with a RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled edition at the same maxed-out ultra settings with good results.

One has to experience Middle Earth: Shadow of War by playing it to appreciate it, and absolutely not from viewing clips nor from watching Youtube gameplay videos. You cannot get the same feeling from watching that you will from playing the game as Talion the Ranger. We received a reviewer’s code courtesy of NVIDIA for preload just before the game released last Tuesday. The game is a huge 98GB download if you also use the optional high resolution texture packs and 4K cutscenes as we did.

This editor is an unabashed fan of everything “Lord of the Rings”, and we have spent over 50 hours playing the game according to Steam. We completed all of the primary side quests except for the Nemesis missions, but we have not yet completed the final battle for Mordor. We are a completionist and we intend to defeat Sauron with our hero clad fully in all-Legendary gear, but it will take us many more hours to finish everything before we proceed.

Even after banishing Sauron, there is another huge grind available to see what happens “afterward” in the story, years later. The game is absolutely huge, and if you are going to complete every single quest, you will probably put well over 100 hours into it. However, after more than 50 hours, we believe that we can bring you a good overview of the game.

Middle Earth: Shadow of War’s Main Story line can probably be completed in under 30 hours, but this is a game that should be savored by LotR fans. This game grabs you and takes you into Tolkien’s world like no other since the original game. It has been quite awhile since a game has moved this editor to stay up late for several nights in a row, only to wake up early the next morning tired, but eager to play again. And when we were not playing, we were thinking about the game and planning to get back to it as soon as possible.

Middle Earth: Shadow of War was very stable for us over 50 hours, although we had to restart the game once or twice with a crash to desktop. However, we did deliberately Alt+F4 as a strategy when we were clearly losing a battle so as to not be penalized by the Nemesis system; and we were not penalized in any way other than to have to restart a mission.

Generally we experienced very few bugs and almost no issues except when the combat gets so thick that it’s hard to respond to the prompts accurately and the camera view will sometime get stuck. The save system is Checkpoint which means that if you fail and die, you go back to the beginning of the checkpoint, but you are usually not sent so far back as to be discouraged except perhaps with the final mission to take Mordor.

Ansel

Ansel is a GeForce Experience exclusive which puts the game camera into the control of the player and it is far more flexible than any other universal capture program such as Fraps. NVIDIA worked with Monolith to add Ansel as well as HDR into the game at launch. So Ansel has given us a very unique opportunity to look at Middle Earth from many different perspectives that are impossible with any other capture tool. For example, here is a Fraps capture where you can see the objectives and the HUD that the player sees in-game.

In many of the screenshots that follow, first we will post the Fraps capture, and then we will follow up with Ansel captures from different angles to show what is possible. Each Fraps screenshot and similar Ansel capture will be identified in the caption. Now here is the same location but with the Ansel camera moved to a different angle.

If you have a GeForce video card with the GeForce Experience installed, just press Alt+F2 to stop the action and to bring up the Ansel overlay to create your own custom captures including using post process filters and even making extreme color changes – and you may then immediately share them to social media – including 360 degree captures!

Also, check out the first image in this review and compare it with the last image which is a 360 degree view that you can rotate in your browser. They were all taken from the same paused camera location and they are both 360 degree views. In fact, Ansel allows you to take stereo 3D captures that can be uploaded and then viewed in a VR viewer as below. Make sure to open all of the images in separate windows or tabs for best viewing.

Best of all, Ansel allows you to upload your 360 degree photos to Facebook or to Google Photos for viewing in a browser.

[vrview img=”/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Middle-Earth-Shadow-of-War-360-2017.10.15-19.28.53.52-scaled-1-jpg.webp” ]

With the in-game view in Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the camera is fixed in a single position in front of the character. After you bring up Ansel with Alt+F2, the action stops and you get the Ansel overlay. With the Ansel free camera, the camera can be moved anywhere around the character that is allowed by the dev. Here is a scene fighting a balrog – first captured by Ansel without any adjustments, then followed by another wider shot with color, contrast, and vibrance adjustments made.

With Ansel’s free camera enabled, you will get much more complete control of the game camera than allowed by the game. You will then need to hold the left mouse button and use the WASD keyboard keys to reposition to any angle, distance, or elevation. In addition, you can press Z or X to move up or down, or hold SHIFT to move the free camera faster.

You may notice that the second balrog image not only is viewed from a different perspective, but we used Ansel to adjust the field of view to be wider, and then used the included filters to adjust the contrast, brightness, and vibrance. We did not use the FX tools that are provided nor the option that the GeForce Experience gives to post these shots instantly to our linked social media accounts using the Ansel share button.

The Story

Middle Earth: Shadow of War is much darker than the Peter Jackson movies, and it captures the spirit of the “Lord of the Rings” very well. Tolkien purists won’t like it any more than they like the movies, but the story doesn’t really contradict the books substantially, and the game continues the new story line Shadow of Mordor created inserted into the time between “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings”.

You play as a Ranger named Talion who has been cursed to return over-and-over from death, and he has also been possessed by the Elven Lord Celebrimdor who now is a wraith and is joined to him. In this game dying makes sense, and each time you die, it affects your game, and the opponent NPC that killed you not only levels up, but he remembers you in the next encounter and may even become your Nemesis. Important encounters with these same orcs even create Nemesis Missions if he kills you again. And in this game, some of the named NPCs also return again and again from the dead, and you may get ambushed by them at the most inopportune time.

Since NPC enemies also develop and level up as your Ranger interacts with them, you can use this to your advantage as you can effectively “promote” certain Orcs with weaknesses that you can easily exploit later, and you can even force them to become allies through “branding”, or mind-control. But in this sequel you have to be aware as some of them revert to serving the Dark Lord or their own interests, and you will have to deal harshly with traitors.

Middle Earth: Shadow of War begins shortly after the first game ends. Celebrimdor’s new Ring of Power has been forged, but when he was in a weakened state, he was captured by the giant spider Shelob, now in female human form, and he was put into torment. The new game begins with Talion attempting to rescue Celebrimdor, but he has to give Shelob the Ring in exchange for getting Celebrimdor returned to him. The rest of the story concerns getting the Ring back, forcibly converting orcs and orc captains to the cause, raising an army, the attempts to capture fortresses, defeat the Nazgul and their dark plans to raise an undead army, and ultimately overthrow Sauron.

The story is superb for anyone but Tolkien purists, and the voice acting is top notch to carry the story as well or better than the LotR movies do. There is also a lot of comic relief afforded by some of the characters that the player may find memorable. There is also a sense of grandeur, and the varied settings support the story so well that the player is immediately immersed into it.

Everything feels much more urgent than in the original game – to carry out missions quickly with a great Purpose in mind – realizing that the Ring is also a burden and a great temptation. Do the means justify the end? As in the original, there is some depth to the story, and there are moral dilemmas presented which contrast with Talion’s gory slaughter and domination of the orcs.

The player has the option to level up Talion through skill trees. Some abilities are heavy on stealth, while others improve combat through upgrading either the Ranger Talion’s abilities, or the Elf abilities of Celebrimdor. There are also options to upgrade each weapon and complete sets of armor give bonuses in combat. If a player is a completionist, he can take advantage of online challenges to get better loot and gear, and ultimately, he may end up completely outfitted with Legendary Gear with all stats completely maxed out.

The Nemesis system has been expanded and there are quests that are created after certain interactions with important Captains. As before, you can turn Captains into spys and even order them to assassinate their superiors. The result is a fast-paced, huge open-world game with a great story, superb voice acting, awesome music, and relatively large battles to delight even the most jaded gamer.

The Shadow of War plot is developed very well and the gameplay supports it. You get to travel around much more of Middle Earth than in the first game, and there is a lot more variety At first, you have to run away from huge beasts you will later hunt, dominate, ride, and you will even hunt enemy Orcs from atop them.

As Talion, you get to meet Gollum again, and he assists you because of the “Bright Master” wraith that he sees inside you. But one of the very best written parts is when you get to meet and interact with an very comical orc and your interaction with him forms a good part of the story. You also get a few surprises with some returning characters from the original story that you thought you had lost.

The battles to capture enemy fortresses are a big feature as they are quite large, and it’s challenging to match up your assault force with the orc defense force. The strategy you need to employ in capturing a fortress make for some of the most exciting parts of the game as you have to capture and hold points inside of it while keeping your captains alive until you finally face off with the orc warchief or leader.

A complaint about the original game was that all of areas generally looked the same with very little variety. Well, things have changed in this game as there are sweeping vistas of green mountains and bodies of clear water to view instead of just slogging through the dirty ash of Mordor.

You get to meet characters that are mentioned, but not particularly well-developed, in the “Lord of the Rings” and in the “Silmarillion”, and Shelob is a prime example of a character that is developed well beyond anything J.R.R. Tolkien envisioned or intended. You also can put your followers into battle in the arenas where you are basically just watching and betting that they will win by matching your choice of champion’s strengths against the enemy NPC’s weaknesses.

Performance

Middle Earth: Shadow of War played smoothly with a GTX 1080 Ti at 3440×1440 with maxed-out Ultra settings with an average over 110 FPS, and it would perhaps be suited also for 3840×2160 with framerates mostly above 60 FPS. The Vega 64 will also handle Ultra settings at 3440×1440, but it isn’t suited for 4K at these settings any more than a GTX 1080 is. Lower end cards can play at 1920×1080 and if necessary drop detail settings while the game still looks great. NVIDIA has released GeForce 387.92 driver recently that is specifically optimized for Middle Earth: Shadow of War, and for the best AMD experience, use their latest drivers – Crimson Software ReLive 17.10.1.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Conclusion

Middle Earth: Shadow of War comes highly recommended. It is a solid improvement over the original game although it feels like a continuation of the same story, and this time the player’s choices affect the game more. The settings are far more varied over the original, the graphics are extraordinary, the gameplay is enhanced with more combos and armor choices, and the story and voice acting are absolutely top-notch. Not to mention, the improved Nemesis system works brilliantly in this game. We are looking forward to playing future DLC installments of the Middle Earth: Shadow of War series. It comes highly recommended!

[vrview img=”/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Middle-Earth-Shadow-of-War-360-2017.10.15-21.02.06.66-scaled-1-jpg.webp” ]

Shadow of War is definitely not for those who are easily offended by over-the-top violence. And although there are also some real nitpicks with the liberties taken with the Lord of the Rings story, this is a very solid game that is a lot of fun to play. It may even have too much content for some players. The very existence of micro-transactions may irritate some players, but they are completely optional and unnecessary to play through the game.

Middle Earth: Shadow of War is extremely well optimized and will play well on a range of cards from the GTX 1080 Ti on maxed-out ultra settings at 4K to the GTX 1080 and RX Vega on Ultra settings at 3440×1440 or 2560×1440. Lower-end cards will do fine with lesser settings at 1920×1080. The tiniest details and the game design are incredible, and the mega-texture packs are appreciated for 4K. Middle Earth: Shadow of War is a really fun game with some replayability as no two games or will be identical, but it is unlikely that a player will want to start a new game with at least a hundred of hours available in the first playthrough unless he wants to play again on a harder setting.

If we have to give it a score, Middle Earth: Shadow of War deserves an “8.5” in our opinion as an excellent game with incredible immersion that stands up with the best open world games available today. The story, the voice acting, some good character development, the fighting combos, the big battles, and the incredibly varied environments, and above all – the improved Nemesis system – all come together to make for a superb game.

Middle Earth: Shadow of War comes highly recommended especially for LotR fans and for fans of the first game. We feel it is worth the current asking price of $59.99 for a really long, high-quality customizable game experience. We are really looking forward to completing every quest and we are hoping that the DLC makes more changes to the game world than to the original game. We also enjoyed using Ansel to compose our screen captures which goes far beyond traditional Fraps screenshots.

Middle Earth: Shadow of War has become BTR’s 29th PC benchmark. Stay tuned as we have many more reviews and evaluations coming up. Our next scheduled review is of the VertDesk v3 this week.

Happy Gaming!

With 24 human upgrades and 20 unique alien powers to choose from an upgrade tree, no two Morgans will be the same, and no two players will have identical experiences in Prey. Along with the human abilities, players have access to three Typhon-based ability trees. We chose a build mostly featuring security weapons and came to regret it somewhat.

Players must also choose carefully as there is no re-spec and some builds are more effective than others. The game also gets significantly harder as the player progresses, and ammo, psi power boosts, and med kits are always in short supply. The player will also have to craft supplies and med kits from raw materials using a recycling system.

The player will take the role of either twin, Morgan, a younger sibling to the CEO of TranStar, Alex Yu, who is responsible for most of what is happening on Talos I. It’s a complex well-written story, and the relationship between the siblings is explored as the game unfolds.

The game focuses on simulations and in the beginning, Yu is stuck in a “Groundhog Day” type of loop with memories erased. Soon things go horribly wrong and an alien infestation begins to take control of Talos I. It becomes apparent that Yu is the only hope with his/her unique bio-enhanced abilities.

The game follows with the somewhat “cartoony” retro style visuals of BioShock, and it appears to use an earlier version of the CryEngine that is focused more on performance than on cutting-edge graphics which means that a GTX 1050 Ti will be able to play on Very High (maxed) settings at 1920×1080 at close to 60 FPS. The entire game is deeply atmospheric that focuses on creating a sense of dread and loneliness much like in System Shock 2. Audio is very good and it supports the atmosphere and builds tension for the player.

The story is well-written and it is set in an alternate future where Kennedy survived his assassination attempt and mankind has moved into space, becoming more advanced by studying first contact with the Typhon alien species and learning to use genetic enhancements. The characters you have to interact with are generally interesting and there are numerous plot twists. As you interact with the crew, the player will get numerous requests and it is natural to care about what is happening to them.

The basic enemies, the mimics, are very well done. They are Typhon enemies that can take the shape of anything and as the player approaches they will suddenly attack. Even one mimic can be fatal to the unsuspecting player and often there are multiple enemies tossed at the player simultaneously. Unfortunately, the more advanced enemy NPCs such as the Weaver (below) are not quite as interesting as the mimics but they are just much harder to destroy, and ultimately there is not a lot of variety in the alien species. As the player progresses, they will have to also combat human enemies and their laser-wielding robotic allies in increasing numbers.

The settings of Talos I are not varied. Either you are inside or outside of the space station and one section looks rather similar to another with few exceptions. Outside, you have to contend with a lack of gravity and your suit propulsion system is quite frustrating to use at first. Although the story is well-written high-quality science fiction, there are still some things that stand out as impossible – you can still hear in the vacuum of space, and you cannot continue to accelerate using your suit thruster as some physical laws appear to be set aside for the gameplay. And you will visit the same areas over and over as you will do a lot of back-tracking as you realize that exploration and finding items and clues are the keys to your survival. There is reasonable variety to the weapons if you choose to engage the enemy directly – or you can go for a stealth build to sneak past most of the enemies without engaging them at all.

The player also has a choice whether to use powerful psionic alien powers against them or not. As the player encounters new varieties of the Typhons, they must use an analysis tool to find the alien’s weakness, and you can even change your own DNA to gain new alien powers using the Neuromod tool. Using these psi power slows down time, allowing players to target their enemies accurately.

Unfortunately, if you choose to use alien powers your biology changes and the stations’ defense turrets will begin to target you along with a very powerful NPC, the Nightmare, that is on a countdown timer as it hunts you relentlessly. The Nightmare is very difficult to kill and it is often better to run and hide until it gives up chasing you.

One of the stand-out weapons is the Gloo Cannon. It can help sticky and stop enemy NPCs by holding them in place temporarily, or it can stick to anything but glass to allow the player to climb to areas that would otherwise be completely inaccessible – as in the image below. Note the gobs of white Gloo that have allowed the player to climb to the shuttle.The level of frustration that Prey can bring a player is quite high. Several of the main objectives are not spelled out very well, and some objectives are almost impossibly difficult to find. For example, one of the main quest lines requires that you find a key card that is on a dead crew person’s body. You are given a general area to search, but only after putting out a roaring fire can you even see the well-hidden body. Also, the objective markers tend to disappear as you near them leaving you to search an entire area which can be especially difficult under enemy fire. And as you progress, the game becomes more difficult and it simultaneously gets harder to find ammo and psi reloads.

You will never run out of things to do if you are a completionist. Prey offers dozens of ways to approach an objective, and it would be easy to sink well over 30 hours into the game on the first playthrough. We will definitely give a recommendation to this gem of a game, and now we want to see how it performs on 17 video cards with the latest drivers:

• GTX 1080 Ti 11GB
• GTX 1080 8GB
• GTX 1070 8GB
• GTX 1060 6GB – EVGA SC
• GTX 1060 3GB
• GTX 1050 Ti 4GB
• GTX 980 Ti 6GB
• GTX 980 4GB
• GTX 970 4GB
• GTX 780 Ti 3GB
• Fury X 4GB
• RX 480 8GB at RX 580 clocks
• RX 570 4GB – Red Devil overclocked version
• RX 460 4GB
• R9 290X 4GB
• RX 280X 3GB
• RX 270X 2GB

You have to experience Prey for yourself as a player to appreciate it much as you do a movie or a play, and absolutely not from viewing clips on a tablet, nor from watching Youtube gameplay videos. The introduction is a well-disguised and seamless tutorial that hooks you immediately into the game and draws you into the world by its clever writing,

Although the main story evidently has multiple endings that answers a lot of questions and provides a coherent backstory, it leaves other questions unanswered for future downloadable content, and perhaps for Prey to continue the story in future installments.

Gameplay

The Prey gameplay is good. The computer controlled AI enemy NPCs are adjusted by the game difficulty levels, and even on the easy difficulty, they are quite challenging, especially as the conclusion of the games nears.

Saves and difficulty

There are 33 game saves which may be deleted to make room for newer saves along with a “quick save” and “quick load” feature which works perfectly for fighting difficult enemies and for the few “platforming” sections.

Replayability

Prey has some definite replayability. Mostly a player will want to explore and find everything the first playthrough which may require 30 or more hours. You can start over as your twin at a higher difficulty and you can also try making a couple of crucial decisions differently. You can also choose to treat the surviving members of the station crew well – or badly – and it will have an effect on the ending.

Bugs, Graphics and Performance

There appear to be very few bugs that affect the game performance, and even during more than 20 hours of play we only experienced only one lock-up which required us to restart the game. It is important to remember to save at regular intervals so as to not lose progress.

The implementation of DX11 in Prey is good but not cutting-edge graphics, and it appears to be very reasonably well optimized.

Performance

We played Prey at the default highest settings (Very High). We mostly played at 3440×1440 or at 3840×2160 at default Ultra settings using a GTX 1080 Ti with excellent performance results, and then replayed much of it with 16 other video cards using our Core i7-6700K at 4.0GHz where all 4 cores turbo to 4.6GHz, an ASRock Z7170 motherboard and 16GB of Kingston HyperX DDR4 at 3333MHz. The repeatable Fraps benchmark that we created on was about 10% more demanding than the game’s average framerate, but about 10% less demanding than the toughest boss fights which slowed framerates the most.

On the next page, we will introduce static image quality screenshots to compare some the main settings, and later we will give performance results using the default Very High settings.

Let’s check out the Settings that we used as well as their impact on Image Quality (IQ).

Recommended Settings

A GTX 1060/6GB or RX 480 are recommended for 1920×1080, while a GTX 1080 can mostly handle 4K at some reduced settings, but the game is very scalable for lesser GPUs on lower settings.

Recommended Specs:

PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Minimum

CPU: Intel i5-2400, AMD FX-8320

GPU: GTX 660 2GB, AMD Radeon 7850 2GB

Memory: 8 GB

Recommended

CPU: Intel i7-2600K, AMD FX-8350

GPU: GTX 970 4GB, AMD R9 290 4GB

Memory: 16 GB

Let’s look at Prey’s settings and image quality (IQ). There are several major settings that can affect game performance. Here are some of the game options and the settings that we used.

Image Quality & Settings

Prey has overall Low, Medium, High, and Very High settings. Let’s look at a series of screenshots taken from the same place beginning with the highest Very High setting and progressing through the default setting options to High, Medium, and Low. All screenshots were taken at 1920×1080. Make sure to open these images full sized into a separate window or tab for a much easier IQ comparison.

Very High

Very High uses SMAA 2TX and full resolution Screen Space Direction Occlusion and Reflections. As with all the following comparison images, all images are at 1920×1080

Our GTX 1080 Ti at 3840×2160 using default Very High settings could manage 60.8 FPS average/58 FPS minimum.

High settings

High settings share using SMAA 2TX with Very High settings which really helps with shimmering and crawling with the camera in motion. However, Screen Space Directional Occlusion and Reflections now use Half Resolution.

High Settings are still very good. Performance with a GTX 1080 Ti at default High settings is 84.2 FPS average/81 minimum at 3840×2160.

Medium Settings

Medium settings drop to FXAA instead of temporal SMAA 2TX and the crawling and shimmering becomes much more apparent now. Anisotropic Filtering is dropped to 4X (we recommend always using 16X as it has a minimal impact), Screen Space Direction Occlusion is off, and Reflections are at Half Resolution.

Performance with a GTX 1080 Ti at default Medium is 100.2 FPS average/95 minimums at 3840×2160. It still looks good but there is a lot more shimmering with the camera in motion.

Low Settings

Using low setting means that there is no anti-aliasing at all. Here is the screenshot:

The detail is poorer, there is a lot of shimmering and crawling with the camera in motion , but performance with a GTX 1080 Ti at Low settings is 140.6 FPS average/132 minimum at 3840×2160.

Let’s look at our Test configuration on the next page.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-6700K (reference 4.0GHz, HyperThreading and Turbo boost is on to 4.6GHz; DX11 CPU graphics).
• ASRock Z7170M OC Formula motherboard (Intel Z7170 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• HyperX 16GB DDR4 (2x8GB, dual channel at 3333MHz). All of the following video cards are at reference clocks except as noted.
• GTX 1080 Ti 11GB
• GTX 1080 8GB
• GTX 1070 8GB
• GTX 1060 6GB (EVGA SC clocks)
• GTX 1060 3GB
• GTX 1050 Ti 4GB
• GTX 980 Ti 4GB
• GTX 980 4GB
• GTX 970 4GB
• GTX 780 Ti 3GB
• GTX 770 – 2GB
• Fury X 4GB
• RX 480 8GB, at RX 580 clocks
• RX 570 4GB, at PowerColor Red Devil clocks
• RX 460 4GB
• R9 290X 4GB
• RX 280X 3GB
• RX 270 3GB
• Two 2TB Seagate FireCuda 7200 rpm SSHDs for each platform
• EVGA 1000G 1000W power supply unit
• EVGA CLC 280 CPU liquid cooler, supplied by EVGA
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• Genius SP-D150 speakers, supplied by Genius
• Thermaltake Overseer RX-I full tower case, supplied by Thermaltake
• ASUS 12X Blu-ray writer
• Monoprice Crystal Pro 4K

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce WHQL 382.05 was used for all NVIDIA cards. High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display. See control panel images below.
• AMD Crimson Software 17.5.1 hotfix drivers were used for all AMD cards. See control panel image below.
• VSync is off in the control panel. G-SYNC is off.
• Specific settings enabled as noted on the chart.
• All results show average frame rates including minimum frame rates shown in italics on the chart next to the averages in smaller font.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 10 64-bit Home edition, Prey was run under the DX11 render paths. Latest DirectX
• Prey has been patched to its latest version at time of publication (no patches) and the game is left stock except the framerate cap has been removed.
• MSI’s Afterburner used to set all Power Limit/Draw and temperatures to maximum and clocks to reference speeds.

The Game

• Prey, digital retail copy.

AMD Crimson Control Center Settings

We used the latest ReLive 17.5.1 drivers with these settings and used MSI’s Afterburner to lock the boost clocks to reference as well as set the power limit and temperature sliders to their maximums.

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

We use NVIDIA’s latest drivers plus used MSI’s Afterburner to set all the clocks locked to the reference speeds and also set the Power and temp limits to their maximums.

Prey GeForce gamers will want to use the GeForce WHQL 382.05 driver. According to NVIDIA, an i7-6700K system using the new Game Ready driver, the GeForce GTX 1060 gives gamers a good experience at 1920×1080. At 2560×1440, the GeForce GTX 1070 and GeForce GTX 1080 are recommended, and at 4K, a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is the card of choice. We will test these claims. We did not have a chance to test multi-GPU although evidently both SLI and CrossFire give good scaling.

Let’s check the performance of our seventeen tested video cards on the next page and then head for our conclusion.

Performance & Conclusion

NVIDIA has their own optimization suggestions which may be quite helpful, or a player can just use the GeForce Experience included with the latest recommended 382.05 GeForce drivers. The GeForce Experience will, at the touch of a button, set near-ideal custom settings for any GeForce powered PC and for more than 100 other games.

For the best AMD experience, use the latest drivers – Crimson Software ReLive 17.5.1 is optimized for Prey.

Performance

There is no built-in benchmark but we found and created one from a minute-long Fraps run that is 100% repeatable and reasonably representative of Prey gameplay’s most demanding indoor scenes.

Here are our performance results using 17 video cards at 3 resolutions using the default Very High settings. Average framerates are given in bold and the minimums are shown in italics in slightly smaller font next to the averages. Please open this chart in another window or tab for better viewing.

A GTX 1080 Ti can max out Prey at the default Very High settings at 3840×1080 if you don’t mind framerate dips into the upper 40s. A GTX 1080 at the same settings and resolution can generally stay in the upper to mid-50 FPS range with the same minimums, while a GTX 1060 needs to be at 2560×1440 to stay in the 60s FPS for averages. A Fury X does not appear to be limited by its 4GB of vRAM as it is faster than a 8GB RX 480 at RX 580 clocks. An RX 580 will give a decent experience at 2560×1440 on Very High while a RX 570 and a 290X are best suited for 1920×1080. Even a GTX 1050 Ti or a 280X can play well at Very High at 1920×1080.

Prey is a moderately demanding and a good-looking game that scales very well. Let’s head for our conclusion.

Conclusion

Prey is a really fun game right from the beginning although it starts to get a bit repetitive as it get harder near the end. If you are a completionist, you will likely put will over 30 hours into the game. If you just stick to the main storyline, you may play for 20-25 hours if you don’t get lost.

If we have to give it a score, Prey deserves an “8.0” in our opinion as an excellent game in the mold of System Shock 2 and BioShock. However, it is rather unforgiving and difficult even on easy.

Prey comes highly recommended especially for fans of System Shock 2 and the BioShock series. The graphics are very good, the gameplay is tight, and the sci-fi story is excellent as it moves the action along. We feel it is worth the current asking price for a decent length and overall high-quality single player adventure.

Prey has become BTR’s latest benchmark. Stay tuned as we have many more reviews and evaluations coming up. Tomorrow we are heading to NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference for Jensen’s keynote.

Happy Gaming!

Here are our impressions of RE 7, including a mini-performance and IQ evaluation using 18 of NVIDIA’s and AMD’s top video cards.

Resident Evil 7 was released last Tuesday morning on January 24. Resident Evil Biohazard is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It is the eleventh installment of the popular Resident Evil series and it is the first time that it is played from the first person view, usually the series is played from the third person view.

Set about 4 years after the events of Resident Evil 6 and in the same universe, the story follows the player as Ethan Winters, an ordinary man armed only in the beginning with a flashlight and with his wits to survive. Shortly after starting the game, you find your wife Mia, who has been missing in action for the past 3 years, in a apparently abandoned plantation, that was home to the Baker family. The rest of the game is a struggle just to survive against overwhelming odds and with little in the way of weapons.

Fortunately, you can help Ethan find, make, and use various weapons and tools in the fight against the Baker family and versus creatures known as the “Molded”. Healing herbs can be used in the event of injury and stronger meds can be concocted from herbs combined with chemicals, and puzzles may be solved to further the story.

The events of RE 7 center around an abandoned plantation in Dulvey, Louisiana. Ethan finds Mia imprisoned in the basement of the main house. While they attempt to escape, Mia becomes possessed and attacks Ethan, who kills her to survive. Ethan is next attacked by a resurrected Mia and subsequently knocked out by Jack Baker, the head of the Baker family. Ethan is held captive by Jack, his wife Marguerite, their son Lucas, and an old lady sleeping in a wheelchair.

Although Ethan escapes his captors, he is repeatedly confronted by Jack, who like Mia and the rest of the family, can apparently regenerate from fatal wounds. Jack is a special enemy that pursues Ethan relentlessly and in the beginning, he cannot be stopped – he will even break through walls to get to you. You will have to run and hide until it is time to face him repeatedly as a boss until you can find a more permanent solution.

RE 7 gameplay is a more traditional survival horror game which are not action and fighting oriented like RE 5 and RE 6 are. Returning to it’s Resident Evil roots, RE 7 focuses more heavily on horror, and there are many events that will make a player jump. Like earlier Resident Evil games, puzzle-solving and resource management are important to success. The player never feels that he has enough bullets even after searching everywhere for them, and special weapons like a homemade flamethrower provide a bit of welcome relief.

For this evaluation, we are focusing on the single player campaign which will probably last for at least a dozen hours for the first playthrough. After you are done, you may unlock harder difficulty settings and may even bring a powerful weapon with you for subsequent playthroughs. And there is an achievement available for beating the game in less than 4 hours.

Here are the video cards that we tested at the highest settings at 1920×1080, 2560×1440, and at 3840×2160 resolutions with the very latest drivers:

• GTX TITAN XP 12GB
• GTX 1080 8GB
• GTX 1070 8GB
• GTX 1060 6GB
• GTX 1060 3GB
• GTX 1050 Ti 4GB
• GTX 980 Ti 6GB
• GTX 980 4GB
• GTX 970 4GB
• GTX 780 Ti 3GB
• GTX 770 – 2GB
• Fury X 4GB
• RX 480 8GB
• RX 470 4GB
• RX 460 4GB
• R9 290X 4GB
• RX 280X 3GB
• RX 270 3GB

NVIDIA is featured as “The Way it is Meant to be Played” in the opening screens. NVIDIA’s HBAO+ is a high level of Ambient Occlusion that adds to the atmosphere by creating better shadows and lighting. The settings are varied, from subterranean laboratory horror settings, to nighttime, to rare brightly lit daytime scenes, and the game makes good use of its own custom RE Engine capabilities.The story is very dark and absolutely not for the squeamish or for those offended by gore, guts, body parts and sadism. The RE 7 story is the stuff that nightmares are made of and it is more than adequate to move the action forward. And there is a lot of action, from running and hiding to confronting giant bosses with weak spots that need to be discovered and exploited. Although the game is rather linear, it does not feel that way and the player can approach objectives from multiple pathways. There is one choice that a player will have to make two-thirds of the way through the game that will even determine a “happy” or an “unhappy” ending.

You have to experience RE 7 for yourself as a player to appreciate it much as you do a movie or a play, and not from viewing clips on a tablet, nor from watching Youtube gameplay videos. The settings although focused on a plantation, also feature some varied locations – from exploring a nearby shipwreck, to liberating a salt mine.

RE 7 is part of a series, and it captures the spirit of the earliest games and it expands on the horror element by moving to the first person view. The controls are easier to manage in this game than the earliest games of the series which are from the third-person viewpoint.

Although the story has a satisfying ending that answers a lot of questions and provides a coherent backstory, it leaves other questions unanswered for future downloadable content, and perhaps RE 8 to continue the story.

Gameplay

The gameplay is superb. In the first part of the game, the player is mostly just concerned with hiding, solving puzzles, and running to survive. Headshots are crucial as bullets are never in good supply even after the player finds a handgun. The computer controlled AI NPCs are adjusted by the game difficulty levels, and at the highest levels, they pursue the player relentlessly. There is a function (X on the keyboard) to spin the player 180 degrees in an instant to facilitate quick getaways which is a nice feature.

Checkpoint Saves and difficulty

This gamer hates the checkpoint system. However, this checkpoint system is particularly well implemented. There are times when they are far apart and the strategy of using “safe rooms” and a tape recorder to save in one of the 14 available slots is crucial to not repeating events or battles over and over. Mercifully, there are no Quick Time Events (QTEs) to react to.

Replayability

RE 7 has some replayability. Mostly a player will want to explore and find everything which may require 15 or more hours. You can start over and attempt to collect every item, or at a higher difficulty, but little changes unless you want to try the second ending. You also get to carry over a special weapon that you get in the ending of the first playthrough. And you can try to complete the game in under 4 hours which will win the player an achievement award.

Bugs, Graphics and Performance

There appear to be very few bugs that slow the game performance, and during more than 15 hours of play, we experienced a single lock-up which required us to restart the game. There have been a couple of patches since it was released last week, and RE 7 is a very polished experience. The implementation of DX11 in RE 7 is good, and it appears to be reasonably well optimized. However video memory does not appear to be well-managed, and even video cards with 3GB or 4GB of vRAM may suffer performance issues. Even 6GB appears to be less than ideal if you are playing at higher resolutioins. Shadow Cache is one of the settings that can impact performance. If you are using a 4GB vRAM-equipped video card or less, it may be best to turn it off. If you are using 6GB or more vRAM, it may improve performance.

Performance

We played RE 7 at the highest details and settings all the way through the campaign at 2560×1440 using our Pascal GTX 1080 and then replayed much of it with 17 other video cards using our Core i7-6700K at 4.0GHz where all 4 cores turbo to 4.4GHz, an ASRock Z7170 motherboard and 16GB of Kingston HyperX DDR4 at 3333MHz. The repeatable benchmark that we found was about 10-15% more demanding than the game’s average framerate, but about 10% less demanding than the toughest boss fights which slowed framerates the most.

On the next page, we will introduce static image quality screenshots to compare some the main settings, and later we will give performance results using the highest settings. Let’s check out the Settings that we used as well as their impact on Image Quality (IQ).

Recommended Settings

A GTX 1060/6GB is recommended for 1920×1080 at 60 FPS or higher, while a GTX 1080 can mostly handle 4K at some reduced settings, but the game is very scalable for lesser GPUs on lower settings at 1920×1080.

Recommended Specs:

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770 3.4 GHz or AMD or better

Memory: 8 GB RAM

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon R9 280X or better

Let’s look at settings and image quality (IQ). There are about 20 settings that can affect game performance. Here are our some of our options and the highest settings that we used.

Image Quality & Settings

Resident Evil 7 doesn’t have overall Low, Medium, High, Very High, and Ultra settings. Instead, a player is given a choice of adjusting 18 different settings individually. The game will make suggestions as to what settings to lower by providing a ‘default’ setting. However, it tends to lower settings too far. A NVIDIA graphics card owner may also choose to use the GeForce Experience to suggest optimal settings, and NVIDIA has offered some suggestions in their Resident Evil 7 graphics and performance guide.

Now let’s look at a series of screen shots taken from the same two places beginning with the highest settings and progressing through several other setting options. Make sure to open these images full sized into a separate window or tab for a much easier IQ comparison.

Highest Settings (including HBAO+ and FXAA+TAA)

Low – all lowest settings

As with all the following comparison images, first at 3440×2160 and then at 1920×1080:

As you can see, Low settings look decent even if the lighting is pre-baked and a little washed, out but the detail is still good even if shadows are weak. And with setting on all-low, RE7 will play on a toaster – well, a GTX 1060-3GB that struggles to maintain 40 FPS at maxed settings at 1920×1080 will fly with over 130 FPS!

Highest settings – Low Texture/Texture Filtering settings

Texture Filtering or Anisotropic Filtering sharpens textures and leads to a cleaner image while Texture Quality affects the resolution of the game’s textures. The higher the texture quality, more VRAM is used by the graphics card. In the above images, we maxed out all of the settings but left the Texture settings on their lowest so that vRAM is less impacted. And our GTX 1060/3GB now gets at least an additional 10 FPS over maxed out settings with very high texture settings.

Lowering textures settings are a good place to start after lowering shadows to look for performance if your card has less than 6GB of vRAM, but leave Texture Filtering on.

Highest Settings but No Ambient Occlusion

Ambient Occlusion (AO) affects the contact shadows where two objects meet and it lends an additional layer of realism to the environment. However, Ambient Occlusion will take a large performance hit when it is enabled – perhaps up to 30 percent of the total framerates. Because RE 7 is so dark, AO is a setting that can be turned off, but if it can be applied, it adds significantly to the immersion.

Highest Settings but with SSA0 instead of HBAO+

If HBAO+ is too demanding for the chosen video card, SSAO is a good step back that will give about ten percent more performance.

Highest Settings – plus 2 times resolution scaling (SuperSampling)

The highest settings with Resolution Scaling 2.0 (SuperSampling) is a real performance killer. It may be best to try it perhaps at 1920×1080 with a GTX 1080 for playing, or just for that killer screenshot. It can be enabled also with a TITAN XP. When resolution scaling is used at 2 times, it completely eliminates the blurriness that using FXAA, SMAA or FXAA+TAA cause. However, using FXAA+TAA gives the best images with the camera in motion as the crawling and shimmering is apparent by not using TAA. AA is not that important to still screenshots, but it is very helpful with the camera in motion.

Other Settings

Depth of Field (DOF) blurs the images which are out of the player’s focus. It is a cinematic type of rendering which adds to the game’s atmosphere in attempting to replicate (and exaggerate) human vision. However, it has a strong performance impact by being turned on. Volumetric Lighting and Shadow Quality also affect performance significantly but turning them off hurts the realism of the visuals.

Let’s look at our Test configuration on the next page.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-6700K (reference 4.0GHz, HyperThreading and Turbo boost is on to 4.4GHz; DX11 CPU graphics).
• ASRock Z7170M OC Formula motherboard (Intel Z7170 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• HyperX 16GB DDR2 (2x8GB, dual channel at 3333MHz)
• GTX TITAN XP 12GB
• GTX 1080 8GB
• GTX 1070 8GB
• GTX 1060 6GB
• GTX 1060 3GB
• GTX 1050 Ti 4GB
• GTX 980 Ti 4GB
• GTX 980 4GB
• GTX 970 4GB
• GTX 780 Ti 3GB
• GTX 770 – 2GB
• Fury X 4GB
• RX 480 8GB
• RX 470 4GB
• RX 460 4GB
• R9 290X 4GB
• RX 280X 3GB
• RX 270 3GB
• Two 2TB Seagate FireCuda 7200 rpm SSHDs for each platform
• EVGA 1000G 1000W power supply unit (for both platforms)
• Thermaltake Water2.0, supplied by Thermaltake
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• Genius SP-D150 speakers, supplied by Genius
• Thermaltake Overseer RX-I full tower case, supplied by Thermaltake
• ASUS 12X Blu-ray writer
• Monoprice Crystal Pro 4K

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce WHQL 378.49 was used for all NVIDIA cards. High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display. See control panel images below.
• AMD Crimson Software 17.1.1 hotfix drivers were used for all AMD cards. See control panel image below.
• VSync is off in the control panel. G-SYNC is off.
• Specific settings enabled as noted on the chart.
• All results show average frame rates including minimum frame rates shown in italics on the chart next to the averages in smaller font.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 10 64-bit Home edition, RE 7 was run under the DX11 render paths. Latest DirectX
• RE 7 has been patched to its latest version at time of publication.
• MSI’s Afterburner used to set all Power Limit/Draw and temperatures to maximum and clocks to reference speeds.

The Game

• Resident Evil 7 Biohazard, digital Steam retail copy

AMD Crimson Control Center Settings

We used the latest ReLive 17.1.1 drivers with these settings and used MSI’s Afterburner to lock the boost clocks to reference as well as set the power limit and temperature sliders to their maximums.

Nvidia Control Panel settings

We use Nvidia’s latest drivers plus used MSI’s Afterburner to set all the clocks locked to the reference speeds and also set the Power and temp limits to their maximums.

Let’s check the performance of our eighteen tested video cards on the next page and then head for our conclusion.

Performance & Conclusion

NVIDIA has their own optimization suggestions which may be quite helpful, or a player can just use the GeForce Experience included with the latest recommended 378.49 GeForce drivers. The GeForce Experience will, at the touch of a button, set near-ideal custom settings for any PC and for more than 100 other games.

For the best AMD experience, use the latest drivers – Crimson Software ReLive 17.1.1 or 17.1.2 hotfix which are both optimized for RE 7

Performance

A GTX 1080 can max out RE 7 at the highest settings at 3840×1080 if you don’t mind framerate dips into the low 40s. RE 7 is a fairly demanding and a good-looking game that scales very well.

There is no built-in benchmark but we found and created one from a minute-long scene that is 100% repeatable and reasonably representative of RE 7 gameplay’s most demanding scenes. However, it falls about ten percent short of the most demanding scenes in extreme boss battles.

Here are our performance results using 18 video cards at 3 resolutions using the Highest settings. Average framerates are given in bold and the minimums are shown in italics in slightly smaller font next to the averages.

Here is the chart of 3860×2160 showing average and minimum framerates.

Here is 2560×1440:

Here is 1920×1080:

You will probably need 6GB of vRAM to max out your settings if you game above 1920×1080 resolution. We can see how the 3GB GTX 1060 struggles compared with the 6GB version and it may need to be optimized further by NVIDIA’s driver team. It is surprising to see a slower card, the GTX 1050 Ti 4GB, beat the 3GB GTX 1060. And older cards such as the 290X don’t fare as well as the RX 470 although both are 4GB cards. The GTX 780 Ti 3GB even falls slightly behind the GTX 970 4GB card. And even the Fury X appears to be somewhat limited by its 4GB of vRAM compared with the GTX 980 Ti and even with the RX 480/8GB video card. Perhaps some further memory management by AMD’s driver team will improve its performance.

The TITAN XP is the only card that can play RE 7 at 3840×2160 at 60 FPS with maxed out settings although the GTX 1080 can manage it with drops into the 40s FPS. Both the GTX 1080 and the GTX 1070 are well-suited for playing smoothly at 2560×1440 and the RX 480 isn’t far behind. And quite a few cards are well suited for maximum settings at 1920×1080. Let’s head for our conclusion.

Conclusion

RE 7 is a really fun game and it is the most fun we have ever had with a horror/survival game. We would have probably finished in two session instead of three if we did not have to sleep the first night right after it released. And when we woke up the next morning, we returned immediately to the game to complete it in two more long sessions.

If we have to give it a score, Resident Evil 7 Biohazard deserves an “8.5” in our opinion as a very polished horror/survival single player campaign. What it does, it does very well. Gameplay is smooth and nearly flawless and the atmosphere of terror, disgust, and apprehension that it creates is flawless.

RE 7 comes highly recommended and it is a certain hit for Resident Evil series fans – especially those who may have been disappointed with the direction that the series took since RE 4. The graphics are very good, the gameplay is excellent, and the story is decent enough to move the action without insulting the player’s intelligence. The voice acting is absolutely top-notch and it feels like a long nightmare horror movie experience. We feel it is worth the $60 asking price for a decent length and excellent single player adventure.

RE 7 has become BTR’s latest benchmark. Stay tuned as we have many more reviews and evaluations coming up. This week, you can expect a full review of the 2TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD versus a regular 7200 rpm 2TB HDD. And we are also updating our drivers for our next driver performance evaluation to see if the GTX 1060 has regained performance after the last driver regression.

Happy Gaming!