Calling Stav

Hey chump,

You became a regular, and you did it of your own volition...don't wuss out now. I'll ask Moz to go easy on you haha

Are you playing the new Doom?

Must admit, it looks good.

If you are playing it, clip some of your gameplay and link it for us. Then we'll see if the skills match the mouth.

Odd forum to be asking this question.

Why would you ask Moz to go easy on me...he's the debating equivalent of setting the difficulty to I'm too young to die.

In answer to your question, I just purchased and installed it yesterday, game is only available to play today for the premium edition users but I may hold off on playing it until they release the path tracing update for PC.

The reviews have been generally quite good, but some have expressed a concern I have that the game is a little safe and conservative.

I personally thought Doom Eternal was one of the finest FPS game's ever made but it seem to have something of a marmite game that people either loved or hated.

It got a lot of criticism for various aspects, too much emphasis on the story (for a Doom game), too much platforming, too many sealed arena fights, the Marauder boss being a vertical cliff of a skill check and the developers trying to force a certain style of gameplay that many players didn't like (or refused to come out of their comfort zone for). Personally I loved the style of gameplay the developers where trying to encourage.

So having look at the Dark Age, the gameplay doesn't seem to have the speed or verticality of Eternal or the emphasis on using the right weapon to take out enemy weak points. Instead the focus seems to be on a parry system, which still could be fun.

I don't ever bother clipping games, I use to post some SF IV and V matches but haven't done so in years.

Also I wasn't the one who was bragging about skills. You brought up Doom Eternal and the difficulty level you were playing on and how challenging it was. Had been a while since I played Eternal and I mistook the level you where playing on Nightmare for Ultra Nightmare. I only brought up the fact that I beat Doom Eternal twice on Nightmare difficult in response to you. Wasn't bragging, hell I don't even consider Doom Eternal on Nightmare that challenging a game. It's first expansion the Ancient Gods Part 1 was far more challenging (before they patched it to reduced it difficulty). Also come back to me after you beat Far Cry on realistic difficulty with difficulty balancing switched off, Sin Episodes: Emergence before it was patched to fix it's broken auto adjusting balancing or Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree's final boss.

I liked the marauder fights in Eternal, and I think this one is gonna be along those lines but with parrying, charging, etc. Looks like its gotten decent reviews so far.

Did you try Khazan? - The first playthrough is pretty tough.

The Marauder fight is pretty tough the first time you encounter him, but once you understand how to fight him he is actually quite fun. The Ancient Gods Part One puts you against three of them at once, I even remember Id Software sort of trolling with the brief clip of that they put into the end of the trailer for it, because they knew how hated the Marauder was by the average player.

The reviews have been good and in a way it's good that Id keeping changing up the formula. I suspect I'll enjoy it, just maybe not as much as Eternal.

Can't say I even heard of Khazan.

"Why would you ask Moz to go easy on me...he's the debating equivalent of setting the difficulty to I'm too young to die."

LMAO!

That's probably being generous . . . but never underestimate ButtPlug's eagerness to plunge his dirty little snout up Moffie's arse.

I have been going easy on him Plum. Anger is the debating equivalent of a Google search, now TRUMPED by ChatGTP. He has been remarkably quiet of late but then Ireland the Tax Haven is feeling a bit of stress. I believe our last communication ended when I pointed out that Irish Royalty payments from the tax dodge were a large part of the European deficit in services. Hahaha.

But to paraphrase Ronald Reagan …I will not exploit my opponents youth and inexperience just to win a debating point.

As for Timestamp, Vaccine, Drinksbreak…..he’s a bit like a broken man these days. But still obsessed with the male nether region, witness above.

Poor Moz doesn't get the joke, so he has to reach for the in the case of emergency break "Irish Tax Haven" glass to attempt diversion.

So you admit, the Irish Tax Haven is such a contradiction of Irish holier than thouism, that it trumps any Board spat. Thank you. Debating 101, don’t give your opponent a winning counter.

I’ve never played a video game in my life

Not even solitaire or minefield?

Not even Pac-Man ?! :)

If PacMan counts then yes, a handful

of times

If PacMan counts then yes, a handful

I knew it...f**king nerd!

:)

Ha ha ha ! We are so ‘80’s :)

Poor old RooiBalls is well and truly broken. That's why we need to take it easy on you, Stav. It's a dreadful fate, Rooi's.

I've not really played a shooter with a parry system. But I can see my self enjoying that much more than Eternal with its constant need to be mindlessly moving around. It'll probably give it a more Souls feel. Evil West had something similar but I'm not sure it was as well fleshed out.

I know it's basically impossible but a Doom open world game would be amazing.

But I can see my self enjoying that much more than Eternal with its constant need to be mindlessly moving around. It'll probably give it a more Souls feel.

I didn't consider the movement mindless in Eternal, there was purpose too it, but it was also fun. I'm not sure TDA will be anything like Souls. I have heard some comments that it incorporates elements of a bullet hell shooter. I've also come across an article over on tweaktown that it's easier than Eternal was.

I found it to be movement for movement sake. Like it never punished you for moving too much, as long as you just keep moving then most projectiles miss you.

Honestly, I found it to be a bit of a flaw with the game. I prefer movement to be more intentional.

I don't mean it will be a souls game. I mean close combat, incorporating a parrying and blocks, against things that one-shot you, smacks a bit of Souls. Which it does.

"Evil West had something similar but I'm not sure it was as well fleshed out."

I liked the game, but it was too difficult fot the casual game I have time for.

I found it to be movement for movement sake. Like it never punished you for moving too much, as long as you just keep moving then most projectiles miss you.

Emm...that was the whole point, you got punished for staying still. The combat loop revolved around taking out enemy weak-points and constant movement, because if you took out the enemy weak-points and kept moving, you wouldn't get hit.

I don't mean it will be a souls game. I mean close combat, incorporating a parrying and blocks, against things that one-shot you, smacks a bit of Souls. Which it does.

Well maybe that part of the game is something like Souls, but that's about it. No idea if enemies one-shot you in it.

You lot are fucking weird

"Emm...that was the whole point, you got punished for staying still."

Yes, and so you basically never stop moving.

So half the time you are moving because there is a plan and the rest of the time you are just moving because the moment you stand still you get ganked.

Put it like this; In Eternal, if you get a phone call while playing, you can stay alive by just running around without having to concentrate too much.

And that gives everything a very samey feel. So I think Dark Ages should be better because timing seems to be more of a requirement. I prefer having to mix it up. Which is why I like the close combat, mixed with movement, cover, and longer range attacks - add quick scoping and I'm there for it. Variety creates depth.

I liked Eternal a lot, but think DA will be an improvement.

Alright Plum I finished it.

Good game overall but as I expected not as good as Eternal.

Most importantly the gameplay is still quite good but I think it's a step down from Eternal, base character speed is quicker than Eternal which is a god send as the maps are much larger and more open than Eterrnal's and the player actually quite slidey but the loss of the meat hook and the reduction in verticality mean's it still feels slower and more restrictive in movement. But the weapons are still satisfying and the parry system is a fine addition as well. Good variety of enemy types, not sure about some of the cosmetic changes to some of the classic monsters but the Nightmare Imp who returns from Doom 64 is actually the scariest and most deadly of the new opponents IMO.

Under default difficulty settings the games is a bit easier than Eternal, but I wouldn't call it an easy game for a more casual player. There is customization options that allow you to tailor difficulty to your preferences.

Technically the game look good and runs well considering what's it displaying (also abit crash prone) but I was a a bit disappointed with the look of the levels, it's not that they played badly but they looked kinda bland and abstract, the muted colour pallet and lackluster HDR implementation probably didn't help. Music was also a step down from previous games, not terrible but virtually nothing stuck in my head for any length of time. Just a day latter and I literally can't remember a note. Amount of story was reduced for Eternal, it's far from amazing but serviceable enough.

Overall a good solid entry, not the best in the series, but I appreciate the developers desire to try to mix up the formula with each entry.

I watched a friend stream it and haven't played it myself. Not sure did I will soon either.

Got kinda addicted to Dune Awakening for a couple of weeks and built some epic bases.

...I wouldn't recommend playing it right now though, they need to add much more to it to actually have an endgame.

Got totally blue balled by the fake release of Arc Raiders. Scumbag devs let us all believe the game was dropping...and the big announcement was a release date in October.

Have decided to invest in a decent gaming pc. I have a Nvidia 4060 atm and it runs okay but wanna spend proper money on a good pc and finally get a couple of 240hz 4k OLED screens. I think it's time. Console games are so limited and PC really is the master race, literally everything is more convenient on PC.

Was looking at GPUs...lol the RTX 5090 is crazy expensive. And it's only like 8% better than a 4080.

What would you go for if you were buying a pc now, Stav?

. I have a Nvidia 4060 atm and it runs okay but wanna spend proper money on a good pc and finally get a couple of 240hz 4k OLED screens. I think it's time. Console games are so limited and PC really is the master race, literally everything is more convenient on PC.

I highly recommend OLED, a considerably improvement over old monitor technologies when it comes to motion clarity, better blacks and for proper HDR support. I have that first gen Alienware AW3423DW QD-OLED and it was miles beyond the old VA monitor I was using. Its not 4K though, its a 3440x1440 Ultrawide, that does 175hz (8bit colour) or 144 (10bit colour). I only have the one monitor, lack of room prevents me going for a dual screen set up.

The next gen version of my monitor is out. Price has come down a lot compared to the first gen model but the only real difference other than a resigned monitor stand is a bump up to 240hz and HDMI 2.1 support.

I might consider upgrading to it at the end of the year, but will see if other monitors offer more.

Was looking at GPUs...lol the RTX 5090 is crazy expensive. And it's only like 8% better than a 4080.

I have a 5090 (still trying to sell my 4090) and frankly the black screen issue is a real pain in the ass. For a such stupidly expensive product it sure has a lot of issues. Not sure where you got it's 8% better than a 4080. According to hardware unboxed the 4090 was 30% faster than the 4080 and the 5090 was 27% faster than the 4090 which itself wasn't a great improvement.

What would you go for if you were buying a pc now, Stav?

Well since I have a 9800X3D and 5090 combo that's what I'd buy. It's pretty much the best of the best for gaming, but obviously it's miles away from being the best value for your buck.

If your looking high then CPU wise 9800X3D, the 12 and 16 core 9000 series X3D chips are not worth it for gaming unless you also have serious none gaming, productivity needs.

GPU wise the market is truly awful. I see for mainstream gamers hardware unboxed was recommending the RX 9060 XT based on current pricing. Above that the RX 9070 XT compared to the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti, its tricky and really comes down to pricing which is different region by region, prices can bob up and down.

I'd skip the RX 7000 series, the lack of FSR 4 support really hurts it going forward despite its high end models being faster in raster performance than RX 9000 series.

5080 (5080 is slower than a 4090 in raster and ray tracing performance, it does have multi factor frame gen though, that 4090 just has standard frame gen ) and 5090 are in performances classes of their own. They are not good value products though, really comes down how much your willing to pay.

All I'll say is you really do want something with a least 16GB VRAM in 2025. Nvidia and AMD have been taking the piss with 8GB cards for years.

Check this video out. It's about two weeks old.

"I have a 5090 (still trying to sell my 4090) and frankly the black screen issue is a real pain in the ass. For a such stupidly expensive product it sure has a lot of issues. Not sure where you got it's 8% better than a 4080. According to hardware unboxed the 4090 was 30% faster than the 4080 and the 5090 was 27% faster than the 4090 which itself wasn't a great improvement."

I watched a couple of videos and it came down to the fact that CPU bottlenecks are mostly the biggest issue and that the 5090 is kinda overkill and pretty bad in terms of efficiency...200 extra watts to add a mere 15fps.

See top comments on this video...

"5080 (5080 is slower than a 4090 in raster and ray tracing performance, it does have multi factor frame gen though, that 4090 just has standard frame gen ) and 5090 are in performances classes of their own. They are not good value products though, really comes down how much your willing to pay."

For more fps in competitive modes one could simply run slightly lower res and still hit high fps ranges. I'm assuming that a 4090 on 1080p could push out more fps than any monitor could actually display, 1440p probably still well over 200 and at 2k probably 120 easy?

And that's kina all I'm looking for.

Very much agree o the ram too. 16gb minimum.

For more fps in competitive modes one could simply run slightly lower res and still hit high fps ranges. I'm assuming that a 4090 on 1080p could push out more fps than any monitor could actually display, 1440p probably still well over 200 and at 2k probably 120 easy?

It really depends on the game. An e-sports game like say Counter Strike 2 or Rainbow 6 Siege your going get insanely high FPS like 300-600fps even on max settings at 1080p and even at higher resolutions. But some games you may run into CPU bottlenecks well before you get into the 200FPS territory.

Sounds like all you need is RTX 5060 16GB model or RX 9060 XT, one of them should cover your needs.

The problem is that I do still want to achieve 50-60fps at 4k on RPGs and single player games.

You reckon your suggestion will work?

Well looking at Hardware unboxed benchmarks at 1440p the 5060 16GB averaged 76 FPS with the 1% lows recorded as 59FPS

At 4K that drops to 42 FPS average and 1% lows of 32 FPS.

The majority of modern games support DLSS so if you have a 4K monitor and run the game at 4K with DLSS set to quality your actually rendering from 1440p so the performance at 1440P above is more relevant than the 4K.

DLSS at Quality settings looks very good. About 33% of the time it will be slightly better looking than native as what happen is the DLSS replaces TAA in game, some games have TAA implementations that are quite poor and make the picture very blurred, so DLSS can look better than native. The other 66% of time is around about the same quality as native (both images would have pro's and con's)

However the above refers to raster performance, if you add Ray Tracing into the mix, hardware unboxed have the 5060 16GB at just 27 FPS average and 1% lows of 20fps which would require 5060 users to use performance DLSS which I can't really vouch for (I know Alex over at digital foundry think its perfectly fine) as I don't use it. You would probably need to turn down Ray tracing settings as well. Performance DLSS at 4K is rendering up from 1080p.

Looking at the 9060 XT raster performance looks virtually the same but ray tracing performance is a bit worse. The problem for the 9060 XT is that while FSR 4 upscaling is very good and near as good as the latest version of DLSS, it's much newer technology and so isn't implemented in near as many games as DLSS, there is also no AMD equivalent to multi frame gen, and while I wouldn't call that a major issue, if would help you get the most out of a high refresh rate monitor in single player games so it does have its uses. The 9060 XT's advantage primarily is that it should be cheaper than 5060 16GB.

Thanks Stav

I feel like a 5080 is gonna be the way I'll go. Now i just need make sure that i pick the correct CPU.