Alan Wake 2 appeared so late final yr that you simply’d be forgiven for pondering that it was a 2024 launch. You’d even be forgiven for believing that its excellent visible design and use of ray tracing can be a regular constantly achieved this yr. Alas, for all the pieces that I’ve seen and analysed these previous 12 months, Treatment’s masterpiece continues to be the bar that others have failed to succeed in.
That is not to say that there have not been some incredible technical achievements this yr. Dragon’s Dogma 2 launched in March however regardless of being an ideal sport, its extreme {hardware} necessities, inconsistent efficiency, and last-gen graphics did not precisely kick issues off with a bang. Happily, that disappointment in that sport was countered by Nixxes Software program’s port of Horizon Forbidden West.
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As the unique sport by no means used ray tracing, the builders sensibly selected to not make any try and combine it within the conversion. As an alternative, it targeted on bettering the basic belongings, in addition to implementing upscaling and body era to spice up efficiency, fairly than offset any heavy-handed rendering know-how.
The sport won’t be to everybody’s style and it is not so good as the primary Horizon Zero Daybreak, however by way of technical achievement, Nixxes knocked it out of the park.
The identical was true of one other PlayStation port, Ghost of Tsushima in Might, which—shock, shock—was one other Nixxes mission. No ray tracing, simply good ol’ conventional rendering accomplished effectively. Admittedly, relating to floor reflections, as soon as you’ve got seen what ray tracing can do on this facet, going again to display area reflections simply feels yuck.
By June, I used to be starting to want that Nixxes was chargeable for each console-to-PC port as a result of we had been ‘handled’ to Shadow of the Erdtree, Elden Ring’s first growth. Having solely briefly performed the primary sport I would utterly forgotten what a multitude it was on the PC and had even assumed that the brand new content material would come with an replace to the engine. That wasn’t the case and as soon as once more, stutters and an ever-present lag can be there for PC players to get pleasure from.
The primary 2024 video games to closely characteristic ray tracing took some time to make an look, however in August, Black Fable: Wukong and Star Wars Outlaws had been the primary massive releases to be ray-traced solely. Not the primary video games ever, thoughts, however you get what I imply.
Wukong makes use of Unreal Engine 5, whereas Outlaws runs on the identical engine as Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, however each exhibited the most typical traits of the yr: Variable efficiency, traversal stutter, interminable shader compilation, and an virtually crucial use of upscaling to realize any semblance of an honest body fee.
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A minimum of one might say that on most settings with Full Ray Tracing (aka path tracing) enabled, Wukong’s visuals justified the efficiency. That is not one thing that might be mentioned for Outlaws, although it does run rather a lot higher now after a number of patches.
Whereas it’s less complicated for builders to simply deal with one rendering pipeline, I really feel that we’re nonetheless not less than one era of GPUs away from ray tracing being the appropriate norm for video games to make use of completely.
Not all the pieces this yr has been a janky mess. In September, PC players might get pleasure from an unbelievable port of God of Struggle Ragnarök (and by the unique builders, no much less) and Warhammer 40K: Area Marine 2 ran very effectively for a sport with tons of of enemies to battle in opposition to. Neither had been a tour-de-force by way of graphics however they had been adequate.
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‘Ok’ might be the phrase that the builders of the Silent Hill 2 remake sarcastically mentioned after ending its PC model as a result of whereas that is been one in all my favorite video games of 2024, it is a stunning mess on the common-or-garden PC.
For instance, I needed to copy one file from a folder within the sport’s set up and paste it into the primary folder simply so it might begin. Then I needed to cope with so many visible glitches and body fee jank that I genuinely thought I used to be taking part in a beta launch. It is a excellent remake and worthy of all its acclaim, however I’ve little reward for the PC conversion.
The technical terrors continued because the weeks rolled on: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 refused to work for over per week after launch and Stalker 2: Coronary heart of Chornobyl seemed nice, and performed nice, however ran prefer it had a persistent case of hiccups (Unreal Engine 5 strikes once more).
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Cue patches, extra patches, and much more patches. Within the case of Stalker 2, you are taking a look at over half a terabyte’s price of downloads, simply within the type of patches. Perhaps I ought to be writing concerning the Finest Patch of 2024.
Anyway, to be honest, each video games aren’t too unhealthy on a high-end gaming PC however something sporting {hardware} on the backside finish of the system necessities goes to require each ounce of upscaling and body era to run easily.
Given all that had transpired, I had few hopes for Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle, particularly after I discovered that it might all the time be utilizing ray tracing, in addition to having a path tracing mode. Sorry, Full Ray Tracing. Properly, glaze me in honey and name me Susan, how fallacious I used to be.
Properly, largely fallacious. Nice Circle runs fairly effectively, even on low-end {hardware} (although the GPU will need to have ray tracing {hardware}), and if you will get the Full Path Tracing mode to run properly, then it is virtually as spectacular as Alan Wake 2. And it is filled with a lot of good touches, resembling the best way the sport masses a earlier save as the primary menu. Sadly, it’s fairly glitchy and it is taken a couple of patches to make body era work as supposed.
A minimum of it wasn’t one other Unreal Engine 5 sport however anybody anticipating Doom Everlasting ranges of efficiency simply because it makes use of the ID Tech 7 engine is in for a shock. The sport itself is a big quantity of enjoyable, not less than, and appears fairly darn good.
PC Gamer 2024 Sport Efficiency Evaluation
Looking forward to the primary half of 2025, we have some massive video games incoming which can be going to sport cutting-edge graphics: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Closing Fantasy VII Rebirth, Civilization 7, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Murderer’s Creed: Shadows, The Final of Us Half 2, to say however a couple of.
If any of them are going to do rather well on PC, I hope the builders have seemed rigorously at what’s gone proper and what’s gone poorly with this yr’s releases.
At all times-on ray tracing is not essentially a nasty factor however shoehorning in an all-singing path tracing mode simply appears to be a recipe for catastrophe in the meanwhile, as so few GPUs can actually deal with it. However even with conventional rendering methods, it is nonetheless potential to finish up with a stuttery, unplayable mess and counting on upscaling and body era to masks such points is not acceptable.
Alan Wake 2 gave me such hope for 2024 that I really feel considerably cheated by what I truly received this yr, however a couple of gems did present up. And if these builders might do it, I am certain others can too. This is to 2025 and let’s hope it is a good one.