Logan! I'd really like to know your opinion on Wolfenstein: The New Order. I'm not asking you to review it or anything, but I know you have been less than enthusiastic about it due to the experience you had at PAX and the fact the Carmack and Romero are not involved (Technically Carmack is involved since it's using idTech5, but whatev's)
I think I'm as big if not a bigger I.D. fan than you guys, and I have to say... The New Order is fantastic! It's fun, it's the levels are interesting and have a bit of exploration to them like the old school games. I feel like it is the perfect modernization of the Wolfenstein 3-D/Doom days of yesteryear. But like I said, I wanna know what you think. PLAY IT if you haven't already.
(fun fact, I work within walking distance of I.D.'s offices... pass it almost every day. I want to go in there SOOO bad but I'm shy)
I may do a full review. It is fun, but feels rushed and somewhat buggy. I like the stealth elements of gameplay but the AI is pretty dumb and It should be a bit like deus ex where you have to hide the bodies if you don't want to alert the guards. I've triggered a guard before who follows me around (walk, not run) but he doesn't seem to alert the other guards. Only if I bother one of the commanders does it rain down more guards.
I feel like it could have been many times better with just a tiny bit more attention to detail like that. I do like that some of the fights can be avoided all together by cleverly manipulating the environment.
While I'm not really feeling an innovative game play mechanic, the most fascinating thing is that my CPU, a 770, can play at 4k with mild to medium texture pop (likely because of 2gb). If id's engine can do that, at 4k, that's a really impressive engine. Really. Impressive. Would like to know more about how it's able to do that when a lot of other engines struggle at 4k. E.g. Metro: LL is crap at 4k on a 770.
Nice to hear. The id Tech 5 engine has some built in detail balancing that is probably helping in cases such as these. Although it nowadays comes with a lot more manual options than how Carmack had initially envisioned it, at its core it's still aiming towards providing 60 fps by balancing detail down when necessary.
Unfortunately that goal incorporates a hard limit at 60 fps, so that if a monitor runs at a higher refresh rate then the engine doesn't care. Since I'm normally running my main monitor at 70 or 72 Hz I get constant micro stuttering because of this. And since the game has no display mode setting beyond the resolution, the way to fix it is to manually change the mode before launching the game. That and the consolitis ends it for me. I'll probably just watch some future lets play that focuses on on the story line. That I want to see.